[arin-ppml] IPv4 Transfer Policy Change to Keep Whois Accurate

[Owen DeLong]

On May 20, 2011, at 9:42 AM, Larry Ash wrote:

> Hi Owen,
> Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com> wrote:
>> On May 19, 2011, at 4:59 PM, Matthew Kaufman wrote:
>>> On 5/19/2011 4:48 PM, Mike Burns wrote:
>>>> And you believe this and still think there is a danger from speculators? When the market is at most 4 years in duration and then subject to collapse due to IPv6?
>>> That's really the best question. Who are the speculators that we're worried about who have enough cash to actually affect the price of IP address space and availability *and* who are stupid enough to do that when they know a collapse is coming soon?
>> Speculation for profit is not the only form of speculation I am concerned about, but, even that if you corner the market at T0 and sell it all off at T2
>> with a 200% price increase is damaging.
>> The form that worries me the most, however, is if $MEGA_TELCO and $MEGA_CABLECO purchase all of the available addresses as they come on
>> the market, leaving nothing for their smaller less capitalized competitors to use, they may be bale to forestall (and would now have a financial
>> interest in doing so) their IPv6 deployments for enough years to seriously damage their competitors that had no non-IPv6 alternative.
> 
> Unfortunately this may already have happened. One of my techs in a conversation
> with a cable tech (low level so take with a little grain of salt) was told
> that the cable company he worked for (changed owners recently so I'm not sure
> who the parent currently is) and comcast have gotten so much IPV4 that there is
> no shortage in V4 addresses and that they had no plans in converting to IPV6.
> The current needs basis may have been too loose to accomplish the purpose it
> was intended to do.
> 

Comcast is definitely moving forward with IPv6, they've made numerous public
statements and have even begun delivering some level of IPv6 services to
trial users.

Further, the idea that a single-sided retention of IPv4-only is feasible is as laughably
absurd as the idea that a single-sided migration to IPv6-only is feasible. You need
a common protocol at both ends to make the internet work and there are enough
end-points that will be forced to go with IPv6 that nobody will be able to remain
IPv4-only for all that long, regardless of their supply of addresses.

Owen