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

[michael.dillon at bt.com]

>  Who are you to say that 
> because you have some numbers and they don't, you should get 
> more and they can't have any? 

Because the current IPv4 address holders are providing an important
service that is dependent on a continued supply of IPv4 addresses
for at least a couple more years until the transition picks up steam.
And these newcomers, haven't got any NEED for IPv4, since they haven't
actually built out their infrastructure, and everything that they want
to do can be done with IPv6. In some cases they can do it better and
cheaper with IPv6.

> That seems very arbitrary and 
> selfish.

ARIN's purpose is to be arbitrary and selfish. It is called "regulation"
and it is not unlike making new laws. The main difference is that ARIN's
activities are limited in scope (managing numbers) and that ARIN does
its arbitrary and selfish allocation activity in public, in the open,
with participation of all stakeholders who care to join in. 


>  The group has been complaining about nobody 
> converting to v6.  Maybe if the power company came in and 
> took the rest of the v4 addresses, people would be forced to 
> change to v6.

Now that is arbitrary and selfish. It is also not something that ARIN
could do because it is out of scope for ARIN as an organization. And
it smacks of unilateral action to do this without openly discussing it
with all stakeholders first.

> I'm not saying doing this is the best thing but I don't see 
> any reason why a big consumer should be denied access to v4 
> just because they are a big consumer.

Numerically speaking, they would be a very big consumer, at least
as big, if not bigger, than the cable industry. And they would set
the mold for two other industries, gas and water, which will more
than double the total consumption for this kind of use. In addition,
if you count numbers in terms of the percentage of available 
unallocated IPv4 space globally, the electric utilities would be
far larger than the largest ever use of IPv4 space in the past, 
which would be the US defense industry.

>  If you can't convince 
> them via system design/overwhelming logic that IPv6 is the 
> best for them, there is truly no hope for v6 adoption.  

"Convincing" is a political activity, not design and not engineering.

Note that this is the ARIN public policy mailing list which means
that anyone from the utility industries is more than welcome to 
explain things, and join in the dialog. 

--Michael Dillon