shim6 @ NANOG (forwarded note from John Payne)

Mon Mar 6 23:14:57 UTC 2006

Thus spake "Daniel Golding" <dgolding at burtongroup.com>
> On 3/6/06 10:25 AM, "Stephen Sprunk" <stephen at sprunk.org> wrote:
>> So, unless there's policy change, most end-user orgs will have no
>> choice but to pay the market rate for IPv4 addresses.  Spot markets
>> are good when demand is elastic, but we're faced with a market that
>> has growing inelastic demand that will outstrip fixed supply in a
>> decade.  Capitalism doesn't handle that well.
>
> There will be a average cost per host to transition from v4 to v6. When 
> the
> cost of IPv4 addresses exceeds the transition cost, then you have the one
> thing missing from IPv6 discussions: an ROI.

Please quantify the cost of not being able to multihome your 
mission-critical business.  Compare to the cost of obtaining an IPv4 PI 
block.  Both are likely to exceed the possible revenue for small businesses 
at some point not too far off.

IPv6 is not a replacement for IPv4 today; it's less attractive for a number 
of reasons, and running out of IPv4 addresses will only solve one (maybe 
two) of the problems.

> Many organizations wont even look at this without an ROI. Folks who
> want to see v6 adopted would be well advised to support the creation
> of a hard ROI through these means.

That'd be interesting to see, but there's just too many variables we don't 
(and can't) have numbers for yet.  Maybe it'd be a useful exercise to at 
least identify what needs to be quantified...

> ARIN (and/or RIPE, APNIC) should really use a bit of their budget
> surplus to provide a few grants to economics professors who are experts
> in commodity market issues. As engineers, we grope in the dark
> concerning fairly well established scientific principles we are unfamiliar
> with. Its like reinventing the wheel. :(

That would require the RIRs to admit that IP addresses are marketable 
commodities, which is something that, to date, they have refused to do.

S

Stephen Sprunk        "Stupid people surround themselves with smart
CCIE #3723           people.  Smart people surround themselves with
K5SSS         smart people who disagree with them."  --Aaron Sorkin 