[arin-ppml] Revised -- Policy Proposal 2009-4: IPv4 RecoveryFund

[Tom Vest]

On Apr 13, 2009, at 8:50 PM, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:

>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Tom Vest [mailto:tvest at pch.net]
>> Sent: Monday, April 13, 2009 5:23 PM
>> To: Ted Mittelstaedt
>> Cc: arin-ppml at arin.net
>> Subject: Re: [arin-ppml] Revised -- Policy Proposal 2009-4:
>> IPv4 RecoveryFund
>>
>>
>> On Apr 13, 2009, at 7:22 PM, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: arin-ppml-bounces at arin.net
>>>> [mailto:arin-ppml-bounces at arin.net] On Behalf Of Tom Vest
>>>> Sent: Monday, April 13, 2009 4:07 PM
>>>> To: arin-ppml at arin.net
>>>> Subject: Re: [arin-ppml] Revised -- Policy Proposal 2009-4:
>>>> IPv4 RecoveryFund
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Lucrative businesses often take root in gaps like this;
>> what's going
>>>> to prevent them from doing so in this case?
>>>> More to the point, what's going to motivate the new market
>> makers to
>>>> accept a near-term closure of this particular gap, given the
>>>> possibility of keeping it open indefinitely?
>>>>
>>>
>>> Nothing.  But, there are still people selling old wooden
>> candlestick
>>> telephones for home use:
>>>
>>>
>> http://www.eurocosm.com/Application/Products/Teleph/150-series-GB.asp
>>>
>>> "...What distinguishes our range of candlestick telephones
>> is ... the
>>> care we take in producing an attractive museum piece that
>> can be used
>>> every day for making calls..."
>>>
>>> Once the majority of the Internet has
>>> switched to IPv6, there will be plenty of IPv4 available
>> for those who
>>> want to dual-stack for the next 50 years.
>>>
>>> What matters is what the large networks do - what the
>> majority does.
>>> For where they go, the rest of the world will eventually follow.
>>>
>>> Ted
>>
>> History suggests that what the large networks do may indeed
>> dictate what the rest of the world can/must do.
>> But I suspect that we've all noticed that the two
>> activity-sets are rarely the same -- and quite often they
>> represent non-overlapping subsets of the universe of
>> commercial strategies.
>>
>> Think about how interconnection works.
>>
>
> I watched first-hand the migration of
> corporate networks from IPX to IP as at the time I was not working
> for ISPs.
>
> I remember back in 1991 asking the head of the telecom department at
> the 300+ person company I was working for at the time if he had
> given any thought to TCP/IP and the Internet.  His response was:
> "I don't know what your talking about"
>
> 3 years later the acting CEO of that company was asking me if
> they should spend a whole lot of money on TCP/IP licenses from
> Ipswitch.  My response was to wait for win95 - which they did.
>
> By '96, their entire corporate internal LAN and WAN was IP.  I
> remember loading '95 on '486's in order to keep people going for
> a few more months before the prices on new systems dropped enough
> to be able to forklift stuff.
>
> It's not that I was better than these folks.  It was simply that
> I had experience with NSF-net as a user, much earlier than any
> of them did, and, having first hand experience, I saw the potential
> more than they did.
>
> It would not surprise me the least if someone, somewhere was
> puttering away on a little insignificant application that
> requires IPv6 - and that 5 years from now, will be an absolute
> must-have.  This entire discussion over IPv4 could be rendered
> moot by something going on right now that we are oblivious to.

I do hope that you are right.
Because I watched first-hand a migration of another kind, one that  
followed a more recent technology advance that was, at least  
initially, only or most relevant to large operators. Some of the most  
experienced and insightful people in the industry pioneered the  
adaptation to that change too, only very shortly thereafter that  
adaptation occasioned the collapse of the telecom/internet sector, c.  
mid-late 2002.

We could (but won't) quibble over the specific causes behind both  
migration moments ad nauseam.

The point is
	-- Not all adaptations are sustainable, much less "good" (as in "not  
self-evidently suicidal in the near-to-medium term").
	-- Given strong enough short-term incentives, even extremely smart  
people -- people that no one would ever accuse of malign intent --  
will sometimes drive an industry straight over a plainly visible,  
universally acknowledged cliff.

I'll repeat once more that this is not a criticism -- not of the  
leading industry decision makers of the crash era, nor of the industry  
decision makers of today (many of whom are one and the same people).  
It's a reminder that the system that we largely, collectively define  
dictates the incentives and the opportunities, and that clever people  
are going to do what they always do -- what the system requires them  
to do, what we all count on them to do under "normal" circumstances --  
"good" or "bad," sustainable or suicidal though it might be in this  
particular case. Pretending otherwise won't change things one bit, but  
maybe -- maybe -- by acknowledging that reality and planning ahead,  
e.g., by trying to minimize loopholes and to develop credible  
deterrents and/or counter-incentives, the real, looming, industry-wide  
risk could be minimized.

TV