[arin-ppml] Straw poll on special policy for electric energy industry

[michael.dillon at bt.com]

This is just a question to see what people think about creating a
special policy that applies to companies wishing to provide
infrastructure for the electric utility industry Smart Grid.

Basically, the situation is this as described by Richard Shockey on the
IETF list:

   Myself and others are deeply concerned by how this effort is
developing.
   There is no current consensus on what the communications architecture
of the
   SmartGrid is or how IP actually fits into it.

   The Utility Industry does not understand the current IPv4 number
exhaust
   problem and the consequences of that if they want to put a IP address
on
   every Utility Meter in North America.

   What is equally troubling is that many of the underlying protocols
that
   utilities wish to deploy are not engineered for IPv6. We have an
example of
   that in a recent ID.

Basically, what I am suggesting is that we introduce a special policy
that
bans the Electric Utility industry from receiving any IPv4 addressing at
all,
either direct ARIN allocations or ISP assignments, if those addresses
are intended
for any kind of Smart Grid application. This ban would also apply to
third parties
and subcontractors who might be operating components of the Smart Grid.

Note that this special policy would not apply to any other use of IP in
an
electric utility company, only to the Smart Grid.

This would send a clear message to the utility industry that there is
simply not enough IPv4 address space left for a new major user, and
would
help them get their plans around IPv6 worked out earlier, rather than 
wasting their time and money on something that will NEVER fly.

Seems to me this fits well within ARIN's educational purpose.

If possible, we should try to word this policy in such a way that it
could be adopted by the other RIRs because the Smart Grid movement is
now world wide.

--Michael Dillon