IPV4 as a Commodity for Profit

Tue Feb 19 15:56:44 UTC 2008

Per,

On Feb 19, 2008, at 12:22 AM, Per Heldal wrote:
> A price-tag may create an incentive to sell, but doesn't create more  
> units
> or magically solve other problems (e.g. fragmentation).

It doesn't create more units, but it does increase the incentive to  
find ways to be more efficient in use.  Does MIT really need a /8?  
Does InterOp? Does HP need 2 plus a bunch of /16s?  Etc.  In the  
extreme, does any reasonably sized organization really _need_ more  
than a few /32s (which could be allocated out of PA space thereby  
reducing fragmentation) for their NAT gateway and public facing  
servers?  How many ISPs still allocate from a small set of fixed size  
block to customers regardless of what the customers actually _need_,  
simply because that's what their backend systems were written to do?

> Many are those
> who look forward to a v4 market. Not to invest in in, but because will
> be the most powerful catalyst driving the transition to v6.

That's the optimistic view...

Regards,
-drc