IP4 Space - the lie

Owen DeLong owen at delong.com
Sun Mar 7 20:02:58 UTC 2010


On Mar 7, 2010, at 1:47 AM, Saku Ytti wrote:

> On (2010-03-07 14:21 +0800), Owen DeLong wrote:
> 
>> While it is more complete than many other countries, there are still rural
>> areas where it is not, and, the relatively high churn rate in competitive
>> markets will actually still lead to a need for increasing address allocations
>> and assignments as customers move from ISPs that already have space
>> for them to ISPs that need more space.
> 
> My wording could have been better, by 'mostly complete' I was trying to be
> in mindset of company offering products and service over Internet. I think
> US is somewhere between 65-70& BB penetration? Companies might feel the
> part of the country not having BB accesss are not potential customers,
> perhaps due to lack of purchase power.

Us is somewhere close to 90% BB penetration in urban areas and closer to
30% in rural areas.  Overall, that makes 65-70%.  My point was that the
raw 65-70% number is misleading because of the strong dichotomy between
urban and rural instances in the US.

While you may be right that some larger national companies may not feel
the impact, do not underestimate the number of companies that depend
on providing and delivering local content to these rural markets as well.
Given the number of initiatives to expand rural broadband within the US,
such as BTOP,  I think there is potential here.

> Interestingly enough, here local incumbent ex-monopoly started removing
> DSLAM network from remote rural areas, quoting it being unprofitable.
> 
That would probably not happen here unless it was replaced by an alternative
technology for the same market, lest it attract the attention of regulators.

Additionally, one of the largest broadband providers in the US is Comcast.
I suspect that of the US markets which are monopoly or duopoly Comcast
is probably present in a majority of those markets. They have expressed
a definite strategy for moving to IPv6 and enabling their residential
customers to have IPv6 services. I think this fact will make it difficult for
their competition to offer less and get away with it.

>> If you look at the ARIN consumption statistics, or, the RIPE consumption
>> statistics, there is certainly no indication that the demand for addresses
>> has been significantly reduced in EU+US.
> 
> But have these addresses been mostly delivered to new home users? Or have
> they been to new companies offering products and services?
> 
The largest address consumers even today as I understand it are the residential
"eye-ball" ISPs. However, even if it is new companies offering products and
services, then, it will not take long after IPv4 runout for there to be a critical
mass of IPv6-only companies in this area of the net.  Either way, I think that
IPv4 runout, in addition to creating a temporary train-wreck of end-user
experiences for IPv4 content, will accelerate deployment of IPv6 on both
sides of the equation and that any acceleration on one side will drive
further acceleration on the other.

>> It may not bring you new business, but, it may be necessary to avoid losing
>> the business you have.  Most businesses that are built on an MRR model
>> have to pay attention to that.  Generally speaking, customer retention is
>> regarded as important in most such organizations.
> 
> I can't see end users currently having IPv4 connectivity changing to
> provider who can't provide access to IPv4 sites. Which I believe would
> translate that all existing users will continue to have access to the
> service.
> 
No, but, if their choice is between a current provider which offers extremely
degraded IPv4 services without IPv6 and a provider which offers IPv6
services and a similarly degraded service which only affects IPv4-only
content, I can see them switching rapidly towards the latter.

>> I think at least the first several such startups will be able to get space out
>> of the /10 reserved for transitional technologies to provide front-end
>> proxies and such for their services.  Startup eye-ball ISPs may be at
>> a greater disadvantage for a relatively short period of time as they will
>> essentially have to deploy an IPv6 customer network along side a
>> technology such as NAT64 or DS-LITE.  However, the more of these
>> are created, the more pressure there is for content and service providers
>> to provide native IPv6 availability of their content and services, so, I think
>> it will rapidly solve itself on that level.
> 
> I really hope you are correct. But I fear only way to fix the situation is
> to force IPv6 connectivity down the throat of every existing IPv4 end-user.

I hope not, because that simply won't happen.

> Some companies sellings products and services might even find the new
> situation favourable, by not deploying IPv6, they make sure that users
> won't change to IPv6 only service as they need to reach the site, and thus
> they would be protecting themselves of new competition, who can only offer
> the service over IPv6.
> 
I don't think i will work out that way.  I think that new companies that need
to offer new sites will use proxy servers and obtain VIP addresses out of
the /10 reserved for transitional technologies.  Thus, new services will
be able to easily come up dual-stack with almost no disadvantage vs.
their IPv4-only competition. Since their IPv4-only competition will then
be providing an increasingly degraded user-experience to their end
users, where as dual-stack end-users will get a full native user experience
with the newer competitor on dual-stack, I think that the newer
competitor will actually have the advantage here.

>>> I would personally hope that EU+US would mandate that residential ISP add
>>> IPv6 to their subscribers by default, without possibility to opt-out in
>>> n years time. Hopefully n would be no more than 3.
>>> 
>> I wouldn't hold my breath on that. It simply doesn't map to the regulatory
>> framework and culture prevalent in the US at this time.
> 
> Quite right, but EU has history requiring rather more silly things,
> especially if it means getting free money with ridiculous monopoly claims.
> 
I'm not sufficiently familiar with the EU regulatory climate to comment
knowledgeably. I can say that I would not expect that to work in the US
which is where I live. I'll even go out on a limb and say it is unlikely
in Canada.

Owen





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