[arin-ppml] Draft Policy 2009-2: Depleted IPv4 reserves

[michael.dillon at bt.com]

> Stephen's comments are spot on.  The large ISP's are the very 
> ones who have both the resources and clout to make the IPv6 
> transition happen. If they are unwilling or unable to do so, 
> what does that say about the viability of ever making that 
> transition?  Mr. Wilder doth protest too much.

Fact is that we can either give all the remaining IPv4 addresses to a
few large ISPs or send the large ISPs to the brick wall much earlier
than everybody else. Which is the politically more palatable choice?

Cut small business out of the picture? Or tell the large ISPs to start
mining internal resources and transition to IPv6?

The fact is that the large ISPs, because they have large numbers of
IPv4 addresses, have the possibility to recover addresses internally
by cancelling less profitable customer contracts, by moving certain
classes of customer to their choice of NAT/PAT or IPv6, and so on. They
have juggling room. My company is such a large ISP and we fully expect
that all of the LIRs we deal with will cut us off before they cut off
the smaller ISPs. As long as our competitors, other large ISPs, are on
the same level playing ground, this seems fair.

And it is true that we have resources that others do not, for instance
we can influence box vendors on improving their support for IPv6, we
have input into things like the Broadband Forum who are including IPv6
in their next standard for DSL gateways, and so on. In fact, I expect
that many large ISPs, like us, have already got IPv6 customers on the
net. It's just not yet considered a standard product that any account
manager can sell.

--Michael Dillon