ARIN Region IPv4 Free Pool Reaches Zero

Thu Sep 24 21:56:14 UTC 2015

I read an article from National Geographic from the early 90s about the conversion for CFCs to HCFC and I think IPv4 will transition similarly. I wish I could find the article on line, but I can't find it at all. It basically credited the speed of the transition (it was faster than most thought) due to CFC scarcity imposed by legislation. 

CFC used in A/C were known to be terrible for the environment for a number of years, but consumers didn't really demand HCFC equipment and you could always buy CFCs cheaply to repair your appliances. Once it was mandated that HCFCs could only be used on anything new and CFCs could not be produced at the same level, a market was created for reclaiming CFCs from old equipment. The price of CFCs went up for a number of years due to decline supply until there was enough of a uptick in HCFC equipment that eventually the price of CFCs tanked due to low demand. The limited CFC market helped pushed people in adopting HCFCs since the cost of repairing your old CFC A/C unit was very high for a number of years. By the time prices went down no one really cared that much for CFCs anyways.

Since we now have a market controlling the allocation of IPv4 addresses we will probably see the fastest uptick in IPv6 adoption yet. The price will go up until it is more reasonable to just go to IPv6 for everything than to figure out how to keep getting blood from the IPv4 stone. There is an upper limit to how much we can all pay for an IP address. Now would be a good time to invest in IPv4 addresses to sell at the high end of the market ;)

(Hope I did a decent job explaining, trying to remember the article from a few years ago is hard.)

-----Original Message-----
From: NANOG [mailto:nanog-bounces at nanog.org] On Behalf Of Bob Evans
Sent: Thursday, September 24, 2015 3:32 PM
To: nanog list <nanog at nanog.org>
Subject: Re: ARIN Region IPv4 Free Pool Reaches Zero

IPv4's works better today than ever before. IP space in North America has now officially turned into a revenue source for networks. Most private enterprise customers understand costs and profits. Business does not understand free stuff in a free market. Hence, IPv4 is no longer free in a block range perspective.

To any business with rising employee medical insurance, electricity and office rent rates, an IP address cost is just not on the radar. Just not a large enough cost to make IPv6 look financially attractive. Only when IPv4 address costs begin to exceed that of the hardware and labor conversion costs, will IPv6 gain traction in North America.

So for the most part your teenage kids will grow up in an IPv4 world until they are probably 30,something. But, your grand kids will see IPv4 as soooo old. That's all contingent upon all the networks we work on start charging $10 or more per IP address per month.

Thank You
Bob Evans
CTO

> Remember, the Internet being fully migrated to IPv6 is just 5 yrs away 
> just like fusion power plants is 20 yrs away (although I think now 
> they are saying 50 yrs away which would make IPv6 12.5 yrs away).  (=
>
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> On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 4:06 PM, Mike Hammett <nanog at ics-il.net> wrote:
>
>> =====
>> The whole reason for the inertia
>> against going to IPv6 is "it ain't broke, so I not gonna 'fix' it."
>>
>> Now it's broke.
>> =====
>>
>> ^^^^^^^This ^^^^^^^^^^^
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -----
>> Mike Hammett
>> Intelligent Computing Solutions
>> http://www.ics-il.com
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>>
>> From: "Stephen Satchell" <list at satchell.net>
>> To: nanog at nanog.org
>> Sent: Thursday, September 24, 2015 2:38:26 PM
>> Subject: Re: ARIN Region IPv4 Free Pool Reaches Zero
>>
>> On 09/24/2015 09:49 AM, Dovid Bender wrote:
>> > The issue now is convincing clients that they need it. The other 
>> > issue is many software vendors still don't support it.
>>
>> And this may trigger a refresh on routers, as people old or refurbed 
>> equipment find they need to change. The whole reason for the inertia 
>> against going to IPv6 is "it ain't broke, so I not gonna 'fix' it."
>>
>> Now it's broke.
>>
>>
>