IPV4 as a Commodity for Profit

Owen DeLong owen at delong.com
Tue Feb 19 17:15:23 UTC 2008



On Feb 19, 2008, at 8:47 AM, Joe Maimon wrote:

>
>
>
> 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.
>
By then, the policy process will take too long to be meaningful.

>> 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?
>
Yes, but, I think it is unlikely, at least in ARIN's case that the BoT  
will consider runout an emergency.

> Its not about saving, its about prolonging the end and how long that  
> migh be expected to last.
>
Prolonging the end in terms of tightening requirements is just a  
question of deciding who to fail
to serve.  Do you fail to serve those who came first, or, do you  
punish those who come first and
serve only those who meet some other arbitrary criteria?  What  
arbitrary criteria would you
suggest be used to decide who should not receive service?

>>> 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.
>
This would create significant legal challenges and costs.  Likely, the  
legacy holders would prevail
in many cases, and, you just might find that becomes the excuse that  
congress needs to hand over
management of the IP space to the ITU.  I don't see that as a good  
scenario at all.  By the time the
legal challenges were resolved, the ISPs receiving such allocations  
would be long-since out of
business due to the inability to provide reliable service to their  
customers.

> 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.
>
The RIR membership doesn't necessarily have standing to do much about  
legacy holders other
than what the legacy holders themselves choose to agree to.  You are  
assuming that the RIR
has power that is, as yet, untested, unproven, and, unlikely.


>>> 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?
>
Different entities and a belief that IPv6 is the correct solution on  
the part of those in a position
to do so.  Class E would actually not buy very much time, either.

>
>> 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.
>
True.  So, this will probably create the mandate for W98 to go away.   
I don't see this as a bad thing.
As it stands now, anyone who wants can try and use class-e IPv4.   
However, I don't expect any RIR
to be handing it out with guaranteed uniqueness any time soon.

>>> 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.
>
I haven't seen you propose a policy change that would affect this.   
While you're too late for the Denver meeting,
you are welcome to submit a policy to ARIN if you think policy can  
resolve this.

>>>> 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.
>
Yep... All of these will probably occur.

>> 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
>
True.  The question is not whether things will change, but, how they  
will change.  This is a much harder
question.  For now, all that we know is that few people are paying  
attention to the problem, and, that the
problem will get progressively harder to solve the longer that  
behavior persists.


Owen




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