IPV4 as a Commodity for Profit

Tue Feb 19 16:47:01 UTC 2008

David Conrad wrote:

> Joe,
> 
> On Feb 19, 2008, at 4:28 AM, Joe Maimon wrote:
> 
>> When IANA free pool exhaustion happens or even appears to be  
>> imminent, one can expect push for allocation policies to be changed  
>> drastically towards the miserly.
> 
> No.
> 
> You might see a push towards this, but it will take far longer to get  
> policies modified than there will be time left and there will be  
> increased 'competition' among the RIRs that will strongly discourage  
> this course of action (as someone who has proposed a policy that would  
> impose more restrictions on v4 allocations, I have already heard the  
> "if we modify our policies to be more conservative, then the folks in  
> other RIRs will get an advantage" several times).
> 

Things might get different when the end is staring us in the face.

> The RIR bureaucracy is a ponderous ship that turns very slowly and has  
> multiple captains who do not necessarily agree on the direction to  
> turn.  IPv4 allocation policy revisions aren't going to save us.

RIR's have bylaws about emergency policies, dont they?

Its not about saving, its about prolonging the end and how long that 
migh be expected to last.

> 
>> Furthermore, I expect more credence will be lent to the reclaiming  
>> efforts, and pre-RIR swamp space has lots of candidates.
> 
> 
> What incentive to a holder of early allocations is there to return  
> address space voluntarily?

None, but the nice thing about being a registry is that reclaiming 
things is as simple as allocating it to somebody else. Buyer beware and 
all that.

And in the absence of any other method of obtaining ipv4, I would expect 
RIR mebership to push for aggressive reclamation, with policy change to 
make it worthwhile.

> 
>> Class-E,
> 
> 
> Efforts to redefine class E have stalled because there is simply no  way 
> it can be used for anything other than private space.

Amazing that so much effort can go into ipv6 but nobody can spare a few 
hours per product to remove a couple lines of code?

>  There are  too 
> many implementations out there that will never be modified (e.g.,  
> Windows 98) on which you can't even configure class E space.

Faced with a choice of ipv6 and no ipv4 or ipv6 and class-e ipv4, which 
would you choose? Not like windows98 (if there are any still around that 
mean anything to anybody) has ipv6 either.

> 
>> rfc3330 and similar reclamation might occur as well.
> 
> 
> IANA recently reclaimed 14/8.  I think that added 3 _weeks_ to the  
> expected runout date.  That was likely the last "easily" reclaimable  
> block.

Reclamation efforts without policy change isnt profitable and would only 
become so if miser mode is in effect.

> 
>>> The  question is how ARIN will deal with the market after the IPv4  
>>> free  pool exhausts.
>>
>> I expect the value will skyrocket, whether on the black, grey or  
>> white market.
> 
> 
> Yep.  And the question is: as an ISP or other address consuming  
> organization, what will you do when the cost of obtaining IPv4  
> addresses skyrockets? 

Pass it on to the customer. Reclaim. Scavenge. Engineer more nats and 
workarounds while accelerating ipv6. Get budget and manpower to actually 
make changes. Drag the users kicking and screaming, cause thats what it 
will take.

> So far, as far as I can tell, the answer to  that 
> question (in most cases) has been putting hands over ears and  saying 
> "La la la" loudly.  See 
> <http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/020608-ipv4-address-depletion.html 
>  >.

Things will likely be different in 2010

> Regards,
> -drc
> 
> 