[NANOG] fair warning: less than 1000 days left to IPv4

Sun May 4 16:39:17 UTC 2008

nanog at daork.net (Nathan Ward) writes:

> > That also doesn't take into account how many /8's are being hoarded by
> > organizations that don't need even 25% of that space.
> 
> Unless you're expecting those organisations to be really nice and make  
> that address space available to other organisations (ie. their RIR/ 
> LIR, or the highest bidder on ebay), ...

first, a parable:

in datacenters, it used to be that the scarce resource was rack space, but
then it was connectivity, and now it's power/heat/cooling.  there are fallow
fields of empty racks too far from fiber routes or power grids to be filled,
all because the scarcity selector has moved over time.  some folks who were
previously close to fiber routes and/or power grids found that they could
do greenfield construction and that the customers would naturally move in,
since too much older datacenter capacity was unusable by modern standards.

then, a recounting:

michael dillon asked a while back what could happen if MIT (holding 18/8)
were to go into the ISP business, offering dialup and/or tunnel/VPN access,
and bundling a /24 with each connection, and allowing each customer to
multihome if they so chose.  nobody could think of an RIR rule, or an ISP
rule, or indeed anything else that could prevent this from occurring.  now,
i don't think that MIT would do this, since it would be a distraction for
them, and they probably don't need the money, and they're good guys, anyway.

now, a prediction:

but if the bottom feeding scumsuckers who saw the opportunity now known as
spam, or the ones who saw the opportunity now known as NXDOMAIN remapping,
or the ones who saw the opportunity now known as DDoS for hire, realize that
the next great weakness in the internet's design and protocols is explosive
deaggregation by virtual shill networking, then we can expect business plans
whereby well suited shysters march into MIT, and HP, and so on, offering to
outsource this monetization.  "you get half the money but none of the
distraction, all you have to do is renumber or use NAT or IPv6, we'll do
the rest."  nothing in recorded human history argues against this occurring.
-- 
Paul Vixie