[arin-ppml] Fraud reporting and self-incrimination

[Matthew Petach]

On Sat, Nov 6, 2010 at 11:48 PM, Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com> wrote:
> On Nov 6, 2010, at 1:52 AM, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote:
...
>> We have, I think, a model for how a mass technology transition like this
>> can be pulled off with a reasonable level of success and without too
>> awfully much confusion and pain, i.e. the transition, in North America,
>> from analog to digital TV.  In that transition also, we had producers
>> and consumers and a massive chicken & egg problem, but somehow it all
>> worked.  I think it worked for one simple reason... somebody, and I'm
>> not even sure who (the government?) put their foot down at some point
>> and said ``OK, after this date certain, EVERYBODY is going to get onto
>> the new standard, and to make sure that we get even the lazy, and the
>> stupid, and the die-hards to do that, we are going to actually pull
>> the plug on the old system and SHUT THE DAMN THING DOWN ENTIRELY as of
>> date X.''
>>
> The main reason that transition wasn't so painful is because regulators
> were able to force the largest dependencies to switch. That doesn't apply
> here.
>
> The set top box program from NTIA was an absolute disaster of epoch
> proportion in terms of the consumer confusion and irritation created,
> but, $40 STBs are a pretty easy thing for the majority of consumers
> to eat anyway, so, at the end of the day, the coupon problems were
> mostly noise.
>
> The IPv6 transition, unfortunately, isn't as easy as putting a $40
> STB in front of every computer, so, the CPE solution space is
> also different.
>
> I don't think your model fits as well as you think it does, and, we don't
> have time to apply it at this point, anyway.

Over the five year period from 2005 to 2010 when the switchover (mostly)
happened (there are still analog stations running, grandfathered in, which
you can read about in the wikipedia page at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DTV_transition_in_the_United_States  )
the US government *directly* spent over $2 billion dollars on coupons
for conversion boxes, and spent an estimated $1 billion more in the
overall public awareness campaign, equipment upgrades, assistance
programs for public television stations, etc.

I imagine if the government had stepped forward with $3 billion in
money five years ago, and started a massive public awareness
and education campaign, including coupons for v4-v6 translator
appliances to go into the home to support legacy gear, we would
be in a much better position than we are now...and that's just for
one country.  The rest of the ARIN region would still have to come
up with their own funding, let alone the rest of the world.

>> For whatever reasons... and I don't even know the reasons because I
>> wansn't in the room at the time... the decision was made that this
>> would NOT be the way the v4->v6 transition would be handled... no
>> big brother coming in and pointing a gun at all our heads, no date
>> certain for the ``universal'' changeover, and most importantly, no
>> committment by anybody, as far as I know, to turn down and turn off
>> IPv4.
>>
> Note: At the end of the last deadline, the FCC tried to get the broadcasters
> to accept yet another extension to the deadline and the broadcasters basically
> said "Look... You set a date by which we had to be on digital. You don't have
> anything that legally requires us to keep running analog and we're stopping
> because it's costing too much to keep it running."
>
> So... While regulation and a date certain got the ball rolling, it was actually
> the industry decision not to keep spending money on the legacy that
> actually completed the transition and turned off analog. The FCC actually
> wanted to extend the date.

Look, that's all nice and whatever, but THERE IS NO WORLD GOVERNMENT.

There's nobody out there to say "look, planet, we're all going to flip
from v4 to v6
tomorrow, and since we're your planetary government, you have no choice to
comply."  Look at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_television_transition
There's countries that won't be converted to digital TV until *2030*.

Realize that the IPv4 to IPv6 conversion will be in a similar state, where some
areas convert quickly, and others linger for a long, long time.  We don't hold
up innovation in digital television because Cambodia is still 20 years away
from it; nor did Nokia wait to make DTVs until 2010 because the US hadn't
converted, even though Finland had gone all digital in 2007.  Different areas
move at different paces, and we're not going to stop innovating on IPv6 just
because some areas are still using IPv4.  However, the need for growing the
IPv4 presence dwindles over time, as the bulk of the traffic will move to IPv6,
and thus the pressure on v4 address resources also decreases; at some point,
it will be like IPv6 was five years ago, where you could only get it by special
request.

*heh*  In fact, I can imagine Owen, ten years from now, registering
tunnelbroker4.net
and tunnelbroker4.org, and providing legacy IPv4 tunnel services for the crusty,
crufty few who live on the bleeding, trailing edge of the Internet.  ;-)

Matt