[arin-ppml] Q2: on Address Transfers - Overkill on the freezeperiod?

[Paul Vixie]

> From: Leo Bicknell <bicknell at ufp.org>
> ...
> Post-run out your statement becomes correct, the only way for a
> speculator to have addresses to sell is to purchase them on the
> market first and then hold them for some period of time.

if i were a speculator, i'd set some kind of floor price and bid aggressively
on everything that comes available.  since there's only 2^32, a couple billion
$USD is all it would take to corner the market.  since the costs of moving to
ipv6 are perceived as very high, i'd offer to lease the use of these resources
on a recurring cost basis.  

if i were doing this in the person of china or google or cogent, i'd keep the
lease periods short to ensure market instability and also ensure that i could
end certain leases when i needed to consume some of the space (or to put some
kind of pressure on a competitor at just the wrong moment.)

if i were doing this as a VC-funded "numbers play" i'd make the lease periods
moderately longer to ensure market stability while still clearing a minimum of
10X my initial investment during the time it would take the world to switch to
ipv6, and, i'd keep prices low enough to keep the ipv6 transition cost higher
than the recurring lease costs, so that the serfs would remain somnambulant.

there's no hope that one or both of these won't happen, since ipv4 is at this
moment something large companies with money "must have".  i foresee a robust
market with high prices as the speculators, who are no doubt already organizing
themselves, divide the pie.  note that some speculators won't go in as buyers
but rather as property managers, telling HP or MIT that they can help monetize
these "assets" for a share of the recurring lease revenue.

sitting out, or recycling through the RIRs, or selling early, are all stupid
things to do if you have a lot of (money or address space) and ambition.  the
only the way the world could prevent an oil-like speculators market in ipv4
and thus avoid being a cash cow for the harvard business school grads was to
adopt ipv6 before they had to, and folks generally felt like that would also
be stupid.