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

[michael.dillon at bt.com]

> Most 
> utilities in North America are becoming very much aware of 
> these addressing issues as a result of Critical 
> Infrastructure Protection regulations and the implementation 
> of mandated cyber security regimes.  Our clients are looking 
> at IPv6 as the natural course of development rather than 
> IPv4.  Many already support dual stacks on their networks today.

Anecdotal evidence indicates that while SOME people in the
electric utility industry are aware of this, there are a lot
who are not aware and the awareness is not embedded in their
organizational memories yet. Note that dual stack is just as
bad as plain IPv4 in this context because there will not be
enough IPv4 addresses to dual-stack the whole Smart Grid.

> I am very much opposed to this Chicken Little approach to a 
> special policy that bans public access to utility companies 
> for Smart Grid applications.
> It's unnecessary and unduly discriminatory.

Perhaps policy is unecessary, but publicity is not.
And this proposed policy is NOT unduly discriminatory. It is,
in fact, duly and specifically discriminatory based on the
reality that we DO NOT HAVE enough IPv4 addresses to populate
the whole of the Smart Grid, and that giving the electric
utilities a big chunk of what is left, would impose undue
hardship on the Internet industry as a whole.

Fact is, that everybody is expecting IPv4 to last another
couple of years and many of us have been testing and trialing
IPv6 with that date in mine. If the Smart Grid folks come
along and take a big chunk of address space, that will bring
the date forward materially.

In any case, there is no need to actually create this policy
because even if the Smart Grid folks show up tomorrow and
fully justify their /7 allocation, many ISPs will be applying
for injunctions against them, and ARIN before the week is out.

> I believe that we'll run out of IPv4 addresses long before 
> the Smart Grid applications become a widespread consumer of 
> public IP addresses.

In which case, the Smart Grid folks should be happy to support
a policy which bans them from receiving globally registered 
IPv4 addresses since it makes the road ahead much clearer. They
can focus on IPv6 only, and drop the complexities of IPv4 and
dual stack.

--Michael Dillon