OMB: IPv6 by June 2008

David Conrad david.conrad at nominum.com
Fri Jul 8 07:42:39 UTC 2005


On Jul 7, 2005, at 2:14 PM, Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:
> Right again. And like prospecting for oil, at some point you're  
> burning it up faster than you can prospect it.
>
> There are some 45 - 50 /8s assigned to single organizations. Let's  
> assume for simplicity that those can all be reclaimed. That's 4  
> years at a /8 a month. So far so good. Then there are 40 - 45 /8s  
> in class B space. That means 256 times as much effort to reclaim  
> the address space, or reclaiming about 10 class Bs a day...

There is, of course, a slightly different model:

As IPv4 address space becomes less freely available, there will be an  
increase in black and gray market transactions for that address  
space.  Since these transactions involve actual money instead of the  
more difficult to account for human activity dealing with the RIRs or  
ISPs, there will be financial incentive both to reduce consumption as  
well as offer allocated but unused space via the black and gray markets.

In this model, you get a natural, market-driven evolution towards a  
two tiered routing hierarchy (call it "the core" and "the edge")  
mediated by That Which Shall Not Be Named.  As folks who "own"  
address space (yes, I know, address space isn't "owned".  I suspect  
this convention might break down pretty quickly as address space  
becomes more scarce) figure out there's gold in dem dar unused tracts  
of address space, they'll make a quick buck selling it to somebody  
who desires it more (as demonstrated by their willingness to pay the  
"owner's" price) and moving their infrastructure behind a TWSNBN.   
Large blocks and provider aggregateable space will command a higher  
price, long prefix blobs spread out randomly a lower price due to the  
pain of trying to get it routed.

Imagine (to pick an example purely at random) the President of MIT  
being presented with the choice of receiving a very large wad of cash  
in exchange for 18/8.  How big would that wad have to be before she  
decided it'd be worth migrating 18/8 to 10/8 and living behind a TWSNBN?

Of course, I'm sure this is all just a feverish nightmare caused by a  
bad habanero pepper...  (why do I get a recurring image of Peter  
Lothberg wandering around the room collecting all the little balls he  
can?).

Rgds,
-drc

P.S. No, I am not suggesting this is a good or even a likely  
outcome.  Just pointing out that there can be other forces coming  
into play as scarcity becomes more noticeable.




More information about the NANOG mailing list