[ppml] NANOG IPv4 Exhaustion BoF

[Joe Maimon]

Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:

> On 5 mrt 2008, at 13:58, Joe Maimon wrote:
> 

> 
> So what are you saying here? That IPv6 is never going to fly, because  
> if it would, it had done so immediately after its creation?

ipv6 will fly when it has wings that can carry the weight people will 
want to place on it.

> People who have all the IPv4 address space they need won't  
> be doing much around the time we run out. But those who need an influx  
> of new address space to keep their business running (i.e., ISPs) and  
> those who want to start something new will have to do something  
> different than they've been doing so far. If that something is not  
> IPv6, that means the something won't be sustainable in the long run.

The long run might be a long time off, and we need a plan for the short run.


> 
> However, we just saw pretty pictures that indicate 83% of all ARIN  
> IPv4 address space is held by 1% of the ARIN members. Those few dozen  
> organizations use up millions of addresses each year. They pay less  
> than a cent per address per year for that now. For them, the prospect  
> of having to pay (say) $1/address the first year after the v4  
> exhaustion will be an unattractive one, but then having to work harder  
> and pay more each year is what makes this completely unworkable. So  
> either they'll collapse their existing address space by putting more  
> users behind a single address, or they'll go to IPv6.



Or they will do both. Which means they will be able to reuse 30-60% of 
ipv4 space they use currently. Nice room for network growth. Or they can 
sell it. New revenue stream.

So long as somebody is willing to pay for the addresses they have 
decided they need, it is completely workable.

> 
> 
> These are all things that can only be attributed to IPv6 AS IT IS  
> TODAY. 

And possibly things that can be attributed to ipv6 as it will be when 
ipv4 "runs out", so relying on everybody to mass-migrate over a few 
months or even a year or two is most likely out of tune with reality.

 >
> They are not inherent properties of the protocol. At some  
> point, we'll need to jump over our own shadow and stop demanding that  
> IPv6 has the same usefulness as IPv4 from the very first day it's  
> adopted. (That is not to say that ARIN shouldn't fix its IPv6 path MTU  
> discovery and routing issues...)

Its the people who we want to use it who demand it, not neccessarily the 
engineers who designed it. Thats actually the cause for its failure to 
be mass adopted as of yet.

> 
> I've written enough on why trading address space is a bad idea, but I  
> also wrote a lot about why PI for IPv6 was a bad idea, and that went  
> through anyway.

People who you want to use it want to use it that way.

> So I'm not wasting my time trying to convince the  
> unconvincable. But to the would-be IPv4 traders: depending on how  
> exactly this happens, it can be merely a waste of time and money, or  
> it can blow up in our collective faces. Please make sure you get it  
> right.

It will happen with or without the registries, so ignoring it or 
"outlawing" it are exactly the wrong courses of action.

Doesnt mean the current attempt of not ignoring it is the correct one, 
but at least it is an attempt.