IP4 Space - the lie

Sun Mar 7 06:07:47 UTC 2010

On Mar 6, 2010, at 9:06 PM, Mark Newton wrote:

> 
> On 06/03/2010, at 1:10 AM, Dan White wrote:
> 
>> On 05/03/10 12:39 +0000, bmanning at vacation.karoshi.com wrote:
>>>> I *wholeheartedly* agree with Owen's assessment. Even spending time
>>>> trying to calculate a rebuttal to his numbers is better spent moving
>>>> toward dual-stack ;)
>>>> 
>>>> Nice.
>>>> 
>>>> Steve
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 	er... what part of dual-stack didn't you understand?
>>> 	dual-stack consumes exactly the same number of v4 and v6 addresses.
>> 
>> I would expect the number of v6 addresses assigned to a host to be a
>> multiple of the number of v4 addresses, depending on the type of host.
> 
> That's because you haven't done it yet.  When you start doing it,
> you'll see that the number of v6 addresses assigned to a host will
> bear almost no relationship whatsoever to any metrics you've previously
> used to allocated IPv4 addresses.
> 
With all due respect, your latter statement is true, but, your former
is not. While there is no direct relationship, at least on my network,
I can guarantee you that most of the hosts, especially all of the ones
that received static addresses, did end up with more IPv6 addresses
than they have IPv4 addresses.

I don't know whether the person who stated the expectation has or has
not added IPv6 capability to his network yet. I know I have, and, i know
his statement essentially holds true in my case.

>> Or, dual stack today. When you've run out of IPv4 addresses for new end
>> users, set them up an IPv6 HTTP proxy, SMTP relay and DNS resolver and/or
>> charge a premium for IPv4 addresses when you start to sweat.
> 
> I expect that once we all work out that we can use SP-NAT to turn "dynamic
> IPv4 addresses" into "shared dynamic IPv4 addresses," we'll have enough
> spare IPv4 addresses for much of the foreseeable future.
> 
Ewwwww... The more I hear people say this, the more I am _REALLY_ glad
I am unlikely to have to live behind such an environment. I cannot imagine
that this will provide anything remotely resembling a good user experience,
or, even close to the current degraded user experience most people tolerate
behind their current NAT devices.

> If I have half a million residential subscribers and I can get ten 
> subscribers onto each NATted IPv4 addresses, then I only need 50,000
> addresses to service them.  Yet I have half a million addresses
> *right now*, which I won't be giving back to my RIR.  So that turns
> into 450,000 saleable addresses for premium customers after the
> SP-NAT box is turned on, right?
> 
Interesting way of thinking about it.  I suspect that rather than pay your
premium prices, the customers you just degraded in order to charge
them more for the service they had will look to your competitors for
better service.

> Problem solved :-)
> 
Indeed, once your customers move to a provider that will respect them,
their problem is solved.

Owen