IP4 Space

Lamar Owen lowen at pari.edu
Fri Mar 26 21:21:11 UTC 2010


On Friday 26 March 2010 01:31:33 pm Owen DeLong wrote:
> The other key point to take away... If your engineer is telling you that
> your ISP isn't ready yet, it's time for you to give your engineer your
> backing at telling the ISP that IPv6 is a requirement for contract
> renewal.

At least right now, I don't have many choices, as I'm in an area served by a 
rural ILEC under 47 USC 251(f) as cited by 47 CFR 51.401.  So there isn't an 
alternative at the moment.  But this ILEC has great engineers and techs, and I 
believe when they're ready to field trial IPv6 we'd likely be on the short 
list.

As for as the economy is concerned, due to the current situation I've already 
had to cut back on the bandwidth department, moving from an OC3 with full APS 
to a MetroE delivered via 1000Base-LX.  We are cutting our total Internet-
facing bandwidth by 75%.  We are scrambling as it is.  And my nickname of 'Mr. 
Make-Do' is getting a real workout.  

> You should ask your server guy how he plans to talk to your core
> stakeholders when they can't get IPv4 any more.

If full IPv4 deprecation is 10 years out, well, it's not yet on the radar, 
quite honestly.

> Here we come to the essential part of this which is hard to communicate.
> 
> It's kind of like flying up a box canyon (yes, I know flying up box
> canyons
> is best avoided, but, bear with me)...

[snip]

Our CEO is a FAA certified balloonist and balloonist certifier.  He understands 
these issues, with the caveat that a hot-air balloon can out-climb all but the 
most powerful airplanes, with climb rates of 1500 feet per minute being easily 
attainable.  So he's used to some agility in the climbing department, but 
understands how winds blow....

But the analogy is flawed to a degree, since this isn't really a hard 'wall' 
we're headed to.  The farther in, the greater the pain, obviously, but, unlike 
a canyon wall, there is some give.  

> > At the CxO level, it's all about the money.  Or the lack therof.

> How much less money will you have when donors can not reach your
> website or have a poor user experience doing so?

As those folk who might donate lose IPv4 connectivity, then the pain 
increases, yes indeed.  Most of the people we apply to don't come in that way, 
though.  The bigger issue to us is when the NSF goes entirely IPv6 with no 
IPv4 connectivity, or when NASA does the same, or any of our other major 
funders.  This is, I would think, farther down the road than when unallocated 
IPv4 space is exhausted.

Not that this means we have room to procrastinate, but it's just not as 
cataclysmic of an event as flying a plane, or a balloon, into the wall at the 
end of a box canyon would be.

> That's a good thing.  Hopefully you pull the trigger soon enough that
> quickly is fast enough.  The key point here is to at least have a plan
> that gets IPv6 deployed to the important parts of your infrastructure
> before you start losing business (with the full understanding that
> plans never execute as fast as planned).

We're small enough where our network inertia shouldn't prevent us being able 
to only take a couple of months of work to implement dual stack in all of the 
critical pieces.  The hard and most time consuming part isn't the creation of 
the configs or the assignment of the addresses, but in the planning of which 
equipment that is on hand can be used, testing that equipment, and planning 
the deployment so that we experience the fewest hiccups.  We're working on 
that piece already, as other projects permit, and with a mind to turn it 
around rapidly when needed.




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