[arin-ppml] Ted's Comment on 2009-2

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Scott Beuker [mailto:Scott.Beuker at sjrb.ca] 
> Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 11:13 AM
> To: Ted Mittelstaedt
> Cc: ARIN PPML
> Subject: RE: [arin-ppml] Ted's Comment on 2009-2
> 
> > Um, the fact of the matter is that -WE- don't have that 
> problem since 
> > our upstreams supply IPv6.
> > 
> > Others do, however.
> 
> ... then my comments apply to them.
> 
> > -I- am not making that argument.  As I said, we have seen these 
> > complaints on this list.  A search of the list archives 
> will provide 
> > plenty of examples.  I invite you to engage with those people and 
> > explain your philosophy of how money motivates and listen to their 
> > explanations of why you don't know what your talking about.
> > 
> > Personally, I agree with your "money talks, BS walks" 
> argument, I've 
> > made it myself, before.  But, I don't presume to tell some ISP in 
> > North Dakota how their upstream feed is supposed to act when 
> > threatened.  They tell me that they
> cannot
> > use financial motivation to force their feed to supply IPv6 - I'm 
> > going to take what they say at face value.
> 
> I will if/when they come to the table to discuss it. If 
> you're going to advocate for them in this discussion, then 
> expect counter arguments to come your way too.
> 

They HAVE come to the table, as I said previously, review the list
archives.

> As I've said, ARIN is not a vehicle for them to force their 
> upstreams to provide the services they desire. It's my 
> responsibility as an ARIN member and participant to stop them 
> from doing this.
>  

ARIN -already- forces "their upstreams" to do things.  You seem
to have no problem when ARIN forces a network to do something you
like, (like supply justification for utilization), but when it comes
to something you don't like, then your gonna trot out the old tired
argument that ARIN shouldn't be forcing orgs to do things, blah blah.

> > But, let's get back to some realities.  As I said, the largest ISPs 
> > will be unable to obtain usable IP number blocks from the 
> IPv4 schema 
> > for some time before the actual last IPv4 block is assigned.
> > Comcast recognizes this, which is why they made this 
> proposal to begin 
> > with.  Since that is the case in reality, what is the objection
> to
> > merely lengthening the time that large ISP's cannot get IPv4
> allocations
> > satisfied, so that we can extend the time that the smaller 
> ISP's can 
> > still get IPv4 allocations?
> 
> As I said numerous times during the discussion, Comcast do 
> not speak for all of us who use more than a /20 each year. 
> The policy proposal would take IP space from those who could 
> actually use it and reserve it for someone else. Just because 
> Comcast apparently doesn't want any part of the last /9, 
> whatever their motivation, that doesn't mean that the rest of 
> us should lose any fair use of it. Your argument that it's 
> "unusable" anyway doesn't hold any water. It's usable for us. 
> Comcast speak for Comcast and that's it. And for the record, 
> I had a couple representatives of small ISPs come up to me 
> after the discussion and indicate that they understand the 
> policy is unfair and they support my position. Do they speak 
> for you or the small ISPs you apparently have taken it upon 
> yourself to represent? Same situation.
> 
> The argument against withholding IPv4 space from larger 
> businesses to give it to smaller businesses is that it's an 
> unfair business practice.

The argument that large corporations get special treatment
by the US Dept. of Justice is also an unfair business practice
argument - but they do.  See the body of anti-trust law.  People
may not like it but it is standard operating procedure in business
to treat large organizations differently than small ones, and
using emotionally loaded terminology like "unfair business
practices" isn't going to change the law, or SOPs, one iota.

What we need to do is what is best for the entire Internet.  And
what is best is to get IPv6 up asap.  That isn't going to happen
when large orgs who aren't ready to deploy IPv6 stymie small orgs
who are ready for IPv6.  I realize that in all likelihood MOST large
networks are in the midst of IPv6 deployment plans.  But I can think
of a few which are so disorganized internally that they certainly
aren't going to be ready (I can name names) yet for
historical reasons they happen to have a lock on certain markets.
When the day comes that there is no IPv4 to assign no matter what
size, and these large orgs are STILL screwing around with IPv4
because they are finally getting around to cleaning up their
allocation mess, the small orgs who are dependent on them and who
have been following the rules, are gonna be screwed.

I sure hope that when that happens people will have a little more
sympathy to actually -DO- something than what's being displaying now.

> Are you Robin Hood? Large/medium ISPs who aren't Comcast 
> don't need to be told by you what they do and do not need. 

With that attitude my guess is that anybody large who is at
least trying to level the playing field is going to just throw
up their hands and say "screw you" to the small ISPs.

How anyone can make a claim that the Internet is a fair place for
both large and small networks is beyond me.  Large networks already
get pricing breaks from ARIN on IP addressing and have synergies in
marketing with other corporations that small ISPs don't have.
And more importantly, if all the large networks get together
and tell all their customers on the Internet that they gotta
switch to IPv6, those customers aren't going to be able to argue
with them and go elsewhere, they will have to grit their teeth and
switch.  They've done this before.

I'll give credit to Comcast for at least understanding that they
once upon a time came from a small network and that it's not
essential for a large ISP to follow a scorched earth policy 
every single time in it's dealings with smaller ISPs.  So, OK
Comcast didn't flesh out the proposal well enough, but they have
the general right idea.

> there were any truth to the argument that we couldn't use the 
> space, there'd be no need for this policy, would there? We 
> can use it, I'm telling you we can use it, please take what 
> I'm saying at face value.
> 

And I already said that the policy can use some tweaking - if
a /9 is too large, well then what isn't?  If your large, are you
going to argue with a straight face that you have the same consumption
rates of IPv4 that a small org does?  What it sounds to me like your
doing here is you just don't like the IDEA for philosophical reasons and
your going to argue against it with a bunch of practical nits - because
you know that if you argue against the idea on the basis of it being an
idea, you can't really make a fairness argument, now can you?

Ted