[arin-ppml] Policy Proposal 122: Reserved Pool for Future Policy Development

[Leo Bicknell]

In a message written on Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 06:43:31AM -0800, Owen DeLong wrote:
> > I realize folks want to have this define in advance, but I just
> > don't see how to do that in this case.  If we're going to modify
> > 4.10 in any way I think it should be to not give out any space (even
> > for "transition technologies").  We need a period of several months
> > where folks are forced to do without IPv4 to figure out what really
> > is and isn't the most useful way to use the last /10.
> > 
> I think that's a very poor choice. That basically says that all growth
> on the internet during that time is users who have no access to the
> remaining IPv4 content and services that have not adapted to IPv6
> yet.  This is an untenable situation for providers that are completely
> out of IPv4 space and a major competitive advantage for their
> competitors that still happen to have space for whatever reason
> or are able to obtain it quickly through the transfer market.

You are pitting a pair of choices against each other as if they are
the only two options, when the reality is there will be a continium
of solutions in the middle.

ISP's will come back for more IPv4 space and get told no.  I would
hope a savvy ISP could set aside a /28 of their previous allocation
to use for transition technologies at that point.  I pick on that
size only because it's a popular suggestion of how much space we
should give the ISP from the /10.  The more we can encourage folks
to make these sorts of wise decisions, the longer the /10 will prove
useful.

Even if the situation you describe comes to be, where folks are
monumentally stupid and give out every last IP of their allocations
keeping nothing to run a transition box your dire consequences still
come true.  Giving a provider who receives a /28 or two from the
last /10 will not change their competitiveness against another
provider who still has half a /8 available.

> I think another part of the problem is that people are coming from
> different perspectives on how the inability to get new IPv4
> addresses for expansion will affect their business and the
> criticality of their particular need vs. that of the rest of the
> community.

I agree with your statement, but I also believe there's enough
information to get everyone on the same page.  When we have only a
/10 left, everyone is screwed.  There is no using that /10 to make
even 1/1000th of the people happy.  We're out, done, and if your
business depends on it you might as well go ahead and turn out the
lights.  I've not seen a single person suggest how the last /10
could save businesses that have failed to plan.

The last /10 isn't about making a business with no IPv4 able to
compete against someone who still has half a /8 left.  That is
frankly, laughable.  What it can be about though is help for those
who planned well and ran into unexpected consequences.  The guy who
deployed transition boxes across his entire footprint and then
purchased a smaller ISP that did not plan so well, but also expanded
his footprint.  He's up and working, but latency to those transition
boxes is bad for his new customers.  He planned well, so maybe we
can give him one more /28 for a pop in the network he purchased.

We need to get out of the mindset that if someone has totally ignored
IPv6 transition we have something good waiting for them in the wings.
We don't.

-- 
       Leo Bicknell - bicknell at ufp.org - CCIE 3440
        PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 826 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.arin.net/pipermail/arin-ppml/attachments/20101123/d158154c/attachment.sig>