An Internet IPv6 Transition Plan

Wed Jul 25 11:21:04 UTC 2007

> > Lack of IPv4 addresses will put the brakes on growth of the 
> Internet 
> > which will have a major impact on revenue growth. Before long stock 
> > market analysts are going to be asking tough questions, and 
> CEOs are 
> > suddenly going to see the IPv6 light.
> 
> What exactly will cease to grow tho? The 4 billion IPs that 
> have always been around will continue to be. I think you 
> overestimate the effects.. 

I think you misunderstand the dictionary definition of growth. Yes, the
IPv4 addresses, and much of the network infrastructure using them, will
continue to be. But growth is about expansion, adding more, increasing
the size and scope of the network. Few businesses are satisfied with
collecting the same monthly recurring revenue from the same customer
base. They either want to grow the customer base or grow the monthly
revenue per customer. In the Internet business the main engine of
revenue growth is growing the customer base by growing the network and
adding more customers.

> All the existing big businesses can operate with what they 
> already have, Google and Yahoo are not going to face any sort 
> of crisis for the foreseeable future. 

I disagree. In reality, the customer base of a business is never static.
If the company does not grow their base, they certainly will see that
base shrink through attrition, churn, etc. Customers will die, move to
another town/country, and switch suppliers for some reason or other. In
order to keep from fading away, a company has to grow its base, and if
there are hard geographic limits to growth because of IPv4 exhaustion,
that makes it complex (and therefore expensive) to maintain a steady
state.

> And as I've been saying 
> for a while and Randy put in his presentation, supply and 
> demand will simply cause the cost of having public IPs to go 
> up from zero to something tiny - enough to see IPs being put 
> back into the pool to those who really need them.

And when your Internet supplier tells you that there will be a $10 per
month increase in fees to cover the increase cost of IPv4 addresses,
will you be happy? Will you start shopping for an IPv6 Internet
supplier? When IPv6 Internet access is cheaper due to IPv4 address
costs, then ISPs face a wholesale loss of their customer base. Of
course, most business managers are smart enough to see this coming and
resist paying for IPv4 addresses in the first place.

Let's face it, the majority of ISP and telecom executives in place
today, have spent their careers navigating through a period of growth
and abundant resources. They don't know how to manage through scarcity
and constraints and shortages. Many of them realize this and will steer
their businesses to avoid scarcity and constraints and shortages. That
means that most of them will see IPv6 as an opportunity to see who can
race the fastest and build market share before the competition does.
They know how to do this, and the investment bankers also understand
this model of business. When the IPv4 shortage begins to bite, then you
will see enormous amounts of money and effort put into IPv6 conversions
(and new IPv6 startups who intend to unseat Google, Yahoo, etc.).

There's another killer application of IPv6.

--Michael Dillon