An Internet IPv6 Transition Plan

Wed Jul 25 13:22:35 UTC 2007

John,

On Jul 25, 2007, at 2:13 PM, John Curran wrote:
> I believe that we'll see extensive use of NAT for client-only
> services (just look at many broadband residential services
> today), but that won't help business customers who want
> a block for the DMZ servers.

Well yes.  However there are likely to be far fewer devices in the  
DMZ that need numbers.

In addition, renumbering DMZ servers is a whole lot less painful than  
renumbering your entire network, so perhaps PA space would be more  
acceptable. I can easily imagine a world where ISPs migrate their  
internal infrastructure that is currently numbering in IPv4 space  
over to IPv6, thereby freeing up a large amount of IPv4 space that  
could then be used for customer DMZ servers.

My point is that once you associate a non-trivial cost per address,  
people will tend to use address space more efficiently (either by  
reusing space more efficiently or reducing the amount of space they  
need).  As such address consumption rates will change.

> They'll pay, but the question
> is whether they can afford the actual global cost of routing
> table entry, or whether it will even be accountable.

It never has been.  Not sure why this would change.  As we've seen in  
the past, it's much easier to do prefix length filters when it  
becomes an issue.

> ISP's
> can figure out the cost of "obtaining" IPv4 blocks, but the
> imputed cost of injecting these random blocks into the DFZ
> routing table is harder to measure and inflicted on everyone
> else.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

Rgds,
-drc