WG Action: Conclusion of IP Version 6 (ipv6)

Tue Oct 2 22:57:35 UTC 2007

At 3:15 PM -0700 10/2/07, David Conrad wrote:
>I'll admit getting a bit weary of the FUD.  It would be a bit more interesting if we hadn't been here before.

Fear, uncertainty, and doubt?  Much to the contrary,
the more consideration the community gives to the
potential outcomes, the better prepared we'll be.

"Just have faith that'll all work out" is perfectly
reasonable when comes to calling a hand in a
poker game, but it's an irresponsible approach
for us to take on maintaining one global Internet.

>Realistically, I suspect there are less than 100 /8s that fall into the category of address space whose terms of use are sufficiently ambiguous that they are likely to be traded.  Rounding up, assuming those /8s are all shattered down to /24s (won't happen of course since ISPs will want to get the largest aggregates they can, but for sake of argument...),

Hold on here... uniqueness is the desired property for
the vast majority of potential holders of those address
blocks, and they have no particular reason to respect
your imaginary /24 boundary.

It all depends on the rules of the "market".  Lots of
folks have been saying "don't worry, the market will
figure it all out."  Well, unfortunately I agree, but that
means that an open market will behave to maximize
value.  If the community wants to set one up, then
there *will* be sites that chop up their existing /24
into 4 pieces, NAT behind one /26, and sell the other
3 just for $$.   Let's just hope that the value of 16
/28's isn't more compelling.

FYI - there isn't an ISP out there who won't go along
with that, allow the customer to "bring-your-own IPv4"
block and attempt to route it when it means the difference
between adding a new customer or turning them away.

>that would mean an additional O(1M) routes dumped
>into the routing system over the remaining lifetime
>of IPv4.

Nope...  one gets to go much much higher as the pressure
increases (unless you've got some interesting assumptions
about how this all plays out that differ from the above...)
Does your market model prevent fragmentation?  Or is
their an global routing table entry fee that is somehow
established to provide back pressure?

If you want to say "the market will figure it out", that's
okay too... (but *that* is the path with the highest
uncertainty and doubt of all, so don't be surprised if a
folks ask for a little more certainty before they bet their
livelihood on faith)

/John