[arin-ppml] Solving the squatting problem

[Owen DeLong]

> On May 16, 2019, at 1:03 PM, Michel Py <michel at arneill-py.sacramento.ca.us> wrote:
> 
>> Owen DeLong wrote :
>> Let’s see what that entails…
>> Any of those organizations have Linux boxes? — I bet the answer is yes… OK… Have to update the Linux Kernel…
> 
> Already done.
> 
>> BSD? — Yep — OK, that too…
> 
> Not on top of that one, but I don't see a problem either.
> 
>> Cisco?…
> 
> Would not be an issue, since Cisco employees wrote one of the drafts.
> 
>> Juniper?…
> 
> Easy money : do it, or we switch to Cisco
> 
>> Windows?…
>> MacOS?…
>> Arista?…
>> iPhones?
>> Androids?
>> Windows Phones?
> 
> Don't care, don't use, don't need. Not on my internal network infrastructure.
> And you forgot FRR and BIRD, don't see an issue there either.
> 
>> I’m arguing that 204/4 wouldn’t have eliminated the squatting problem.
> 
> Come on, how could you say that ? if 240/4 was available, people would use it instead of squatting DoD space. They know it's wrong.

10.0.0.0/8 was available and I ran across multiple organizations that squatted all kinds of odd numbers like 100.0.0.0/8,
192.9.200.0/24, 200.0.0.0/8 (kid you not, before IANA had issued any of it to RIRs), etc.

People squat where they can regardless of other availability.

>> It does not work, and as time passes, it will work even less.
>> How do you figure this? It’s working more and more every day… Every statistical
>> measure shows IPv6 to be a growing fraction of internet traffic.
> 
> Obviously has not stopped people from squatting, and squatting is a much more recent phenomenon than IPv6.

I don’t see people implementing IPv6 as a solution to the squatting problem. I frankly don’t care very much about the IPv4 squatting problem. I see it as a minor element in the vast array of IPv4 problems.

I see IPv6 as a solution to IPv4 in general.

Sure, IPv6 hasn’t stopped people from running IPv4, yet. However, more and more of the internet is becoming IPv6 every day and that’s a good thing. As a result, eventually, less and less of it will be IPv4 and that’s also a good thing. Squatting will probably persist past the end of my lifetime. I don’t care. If we can restore the end-to-end addressing model and build a true peer to peer internet for the majority of people, I’ll be pretty satisfied with that.

>>> You're telling them to drink fruit juice, but they want booze.
>>> No matter what you say, they'll keep making moonshine.
>> Well, it’s more like I’m saying “Look, we’re out of petroleum and
>> continuing to use it is destroying the planet. Perhaps solar, wind,
>> hydro, or other renewables would meet your energy needs?” And you’re
>> saying that we should just keep supporting their petroleum habit.
> 
> You're missing the point here. Every bit of renewable energy we use reduces the use of fossil fuels.
> You know why : because energy is energy. There is no IPv6 energy incompatible with IPv4 energy.
> Using IPv6 barely reduces IPv4 usage : almost everyone has to dual-stack.

Actually, I’d argue that you’re not quite correct there. You’ve conflated two things.

Every IPv6 datagram is a datagram that didn’t require IPv4 infrastructure.

For now, sure, there are still plenty of IPv4 datagrams out there forcing us to retain legacy systems to support laggards that continue to operate on the toxic polluter business model with their nasty IPv4 only networks. In reality, these laggards are the only reason many of us have to continue to run dual stack.

Guess what… The laggard population _IS_ shrinking. Over time, it will get small enough to be irrelevant. Then we can turn off the IPv4 stuff in our networks without worrying about them.

>>> This is not what you and I wanted, 20 years ago. Owen, the
>>> prohibition looked like a good idea, but it did not work.
>> Phrasing it like prohibition is where you depart from reality. Nobody was trying to prohibit
>> people from using IPv4 as long as there were IPv4 addresses available. Now that we’re out,
> 
> They are not out. There is a /4 sitting unused, and efforts to torpedo it have led to squatting.

You keep saying this as if squatting is some sort of major problem that must be solved. While I agree that squatting is an undesirable behavior, I really don’t care what consenting adults do to their networks behind closed doors.

> Squatting is a direct by-product of RFC1918 space being too small. We have the solution, yet you support the prohibition.

I have the perfect solution… There’s vastly more than ALL of the IPv4 space in the world available for private addressing.

fd00::/8 can meet all of your private addressing needs and much much more. Enjoy. No need for silly 240.0.0.0/4 pet tricks.

> In order to promote your views of IPv6 deployment, you prohibit people from using 240/4.
> Result : they squat DoD space.

Again, not seeing a real problem here. Is it bothering DoD? I’m quite certain DoD is capable of defending their addresses should they determine that to be necessary. They have all of the most powerful guns.

Is it really bothering anyone other than you?

Seriously, what’s the real harm from this squatting? Make the case for why I should really care.

I’m not prohibiting anyone from using 240.0.0.0/4, I’m just suggesting that I don’t think it’s the best use of developer time.

> This IS prohibition : they want the barrel of 240/4 booze, you say they can't have it. At night, when the moon shines, they make their own. Down the hatch, a bottle of 30/8 gets the job done, and they still are not drinking your fruit juice.

No, in order for it to be prohibition, someone would actually have to be prohibiting an action. I’ve never said anyone couldn’t do something with 240.0.0.0/4, I’ve said that I think making that possible is a waste of resources that are better spent further developing and further deploying IPv6. It’s a resource management question, not prohibition.

If you want to go about wasting your time and energy pursuing a dead end of private address space, then more power to you. However, if you want vendors I use to waste resources on it instead of features I care about, well, I’m going to do my best to see that doesn’t happen. You make your economic case to the vendors and I”ll make mine and we’ll see what happens. Still not prohibition, just resource contention.

> People are not drinking less, and now the mafia owns the market. And you don't see it much as a problem.

What mafia? This is absurd… There’s no RICO organization managing the squatting of DoD space amongst the various squatters and nobody is paying any sort of vigg for those addresses. There’s no conspiracy, no cartel, no cornering of the market. There’s just resource contention and economics at work.

Owen