The Department of Work and Pensions, UK has an entire /8

Thu Sep 20 19:14:59 UTC 2012

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joe Maimon [mailto:jmaimon at ttec.com]
> Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2012 7:11 AM
> To: George Herbert
> Cc: nanog at nanog.org
> Subject: Re: The Department of Work and Pensions, UK has an entire /8
>
> ...
> 
> Baking in bogonity is bad.

Really ???  If stack vendors had not taken the statement about 'future use'
at face value and had built the stacks assuming the 240/4 was just like all
the other unicast space; then someone came up with a clever idea that was
incompatible with the deployed assumption such that the vast deployed base
would be confused by any attempt to deploy the new clever idea, wouldn't
your argument be that 'the stack vendors broke what I want by not believing
the text that said future use'? Undefined means undefined, so there is no
reasonable way to test the behavior being consistent with some future
definition. The only thing a stack vendor can do is make sure the space is
unused until it is defined. At that point they can fix future products, but
there is no practical fix for the deployed base.

> 
> Predicting the (f)utility of starting multi-year efforts in the present
for future
> benefit is self-fulfilling.

To some degree yes. In this particular case, why don't you personally go out
and tell all those people globally (that have what they consider to be
perfectly working machines) that they need to pay for an upgrade to a yet to
be shipped version of software so you can make use of a handful of addresses
and buy yourself a couple of years delay of the inevitable. If you can
accomplish that I am sure the list would bow down to your claims that there
was not enough effort put into reclamation. 

> 
> Let us spin this another way. If you cannot even expect mild change such
as
> 240/4 to become prevalent enough to be useful, on what do you base your
> optimism that the much larger changes IPv6 requires will?

240/4 is only 'mild' to someone that doesn't have to pay for the changes.
IPv6 does require more change, but in exchange it provides longevity that
240/4 can't. 

Denial is  a hard thing to get over, but it is only the first stage in
process of grieving. IPv4 is dead, and while the corpse is still wandering
about, it will collapse soon enough. No amount of bargaining or negotiation
will prevent that. Just look back to the claims in the '90s about
SNA-Forever and 'Serious Business doesn't operate on research protocols' to
see what is ahead. Once the shift starts it will only take 5 years or so
before people start asking what all the IPv4 fuss was about. 

IPv6 will happen with or without the ISPs, just like IPv4 happened despite
telco efforts to constrain it. The edges need functionality, and they will
get it by tunneling over the ISPs if necessary, just like the original
Internet deployed as a tunnel over the voice network. You can choose to be a
roadblock, or choose to be part of the solution. History shows that those
choosing to be part of the solution win out in the end.

Tony

> 
> Joe