[arin-ppml] Legacy Space authority

[John Paul Morrison]

michael.dillon at bt.com wrote:
> The point is that we can't figure it out ourselves, and any opinions
> that we may state on this list really do not play any part whatsoever
> in the decisions about what happens. The interpretation of the past
> is up to the lawyers, and may never be figured out because in two
> years, anyone who thinks that IPv4 addresses have any value on the
> public Internet, is going to be considered a crackpot.
>
>   
Am I the only person who's made a calendar entry for 2 years from now, 
so I could laugh at this again?

Did I miss some flag day law being passed or a major carrier announcing 
that they were discontinuing support for IPv4?
I think I'd expect to see some notice in advance that my ISP was going 
to stop delivering IPv4 to me.
("please remember to change the batteries in your smoke detectors, set 
your clocks back 1 hour, and disable IPv4 on all your Internet routers 
and servers...")

Maybe I'm reading too much into your statement, but you're implicitly 
saying that IPv4 addresses will have NO value in two years.
And  it seems that for IPv4 addresses to have no value on the public 
Internet, it would have to be completely unusable on the public Internet.

I'm quite sure that using *my* current IPv4 addresses, I could do a DNS 
lookup, get an A record in response, and connect using TCP to any well 
known web site,  without any proxies or translations mangling things.  
Could someone else? Who knows, but that's going to be their problem in 
the future, not mine now. I'm sorry if it sounds cynical, but I just 
don't see vendors, ISPs, or businesses demanding that they or anybody 
else ready for IPv6 *now* for what might happen in two years.

You'll probably just see proxies/caches/NATs being used to expand IPv4 
address space, and anyone launching a new web service is going to need 
to find someone to host it on an IPv4 server, or their business is going 
to go bust, because they will be talking to a small crowd of IPv6 users, 
or only aiming at users in emerging markets/developing countries.