[arin-ppml] Easy vs Hard (was Re: Policy Proposal: Last Minute Assistance for Small ISPs)

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

David Farmer wrote:
> On 28 Jul 2009 Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
> 
>> Chris Grundemann wrote:
> 
> ....
> 
>>> I disagree that proposals 93 and 94 would make it harder to get IPv4.
>>>
>>> They would allow Orgs to get less IPv4 at once; which I guess could be
>>> stated as "making it harder for an Org to get large amounts of IPv4"
>>> or even "harder for an Org to get the desired amount of IPv4" but that
>>> in turn will make it easier (read: possible) for other Orgs to get
>>> some IPv4 (vs none).
>>>
>>> Neither of those proposals make the requirements any more strict -
>>> which is how I would define "making it harder."
>>>
>> I wasn't speaking about "more difficult" on an individual org level, but
>> rather a community level.  It would have been more accurate to say:
>>
>> "I'm suggesting we make increase the rate at which IPv4 is allocated at 
>> the last minute - those proposals are suggesting we decrease the rate at 
>> which IPv4 is allocated at the last minute."
> 
> I'm really only intending to ensure that we don't increase the rate by give it all 
> to one or a small number of groups in big chunks.   I want to make sure it is 
> spread around, giving it out in even smaller chunks to more groups is 
> completely compatible with my objectives.  I just want to make sure that it 
> goes to as many groups as possible and that no one ends up with a 
> competitive advantage for more than a couple months because of IPv4 Run-
> Out.

If there was a way we could make it all run out at the same time for
everyone that would definitely be the fairest situation possible.

Unfortunately, that's not how it's going to happen.  All you really
can do here is juggle things around at the RIR so that when the day
comes that they run out, they run out evenly for ALL sizes of requests -
not that they run out of, say /12-sized blocks but still have plenty
of /21 sized blocks left.  In short, you can make it fair for all of
the requests in the pipeline at the RIR to all fail at the same time.

But in the world it definitely won't be fair.  The orgs that come out
ahead are the orgs who have inefficient utilization of assigned blocks
and are able to retrieve those from customers.  For example someone
alleged on the list a few months ago that one of the cable ISP's was
handing out /29's via PPP to CPE NAT/routers - all perfectly legitimate
under the rules - but with a few tweaks in their router and now all 
their customers are getting a /32 the next time their
CPE disconnects and reconnects and the cable ISP has instantly
generated many 5 times more IPv4 than they had.

Assuming that every ISP out there has been hedging somewhat along these
lines, the advantage will go to the ISPs who have large amounts of IPv4
already allocated to themselves.

Ted