[governance] Why IPv4 address depletion matters (was Re: Reinstate...)

Tue Nov 27 08:35:20 EST 2007

McTim <dogwallah at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Nov 27, 2007 1:12 AM, Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch> wrote:
> >
> <snip>
> > I think that mismanagement exists right now with regard to preparing
> > for the transition to IPv6.
> 
> Who are you thinking is responsible for this? (management or
> mismanagement).  In other words, is there some body org. supposed to
> have coordinated this?

Ideally it would be taken care of by the relevant industry stakeholders
(primarily ISPs and equipment and systems vendors) with governments and
civil society simply observing to convince themselves that things are
getting done properly.

When not everything that needs to be done gets done properly, it's IMO
the responsibility of governments to do as much as necessary (and not
more) to get things back on track.  IMO governments have responsibility
for doing this with regard to all important matters of the public
interest which are not taken care of culturally or as the effect of
indiustry action and market forces without government intervention.

What then is the Swiss government doing?  They say they're "following
attentively" the "discussions and work" at GAC (www.gac.icann.org) and
ICANN and "study group 2" of ITU-T.  I think they ought to in addition
hire someone who understands the issues and who would be able to revive
the "IPv6 Task Force" in the sense of inviting ISPs to send someone to
a meeting every few months where the relevant issues are discussed.

Alas I don't have the kind of influence that I could reasonably expect
them to do this just on the basis my saying that.

> > For example although Switzerland has an "IPv6 Task Force" website
> > with a wonderfully comprehensive supposed organigram of that "IPv6 Task
> > Force", that "IPv6 Task Force" doesn't really exist anymore in reality.
> > There are no activities and no-one is in charge.
>
> Should it be a top-down process?

I don't think so.

But right now, we have no process and AFAIK no progress at all.  IMO
something should be done to get us moving again.

> If you want to look at just CH networks, you can.

Thank you for these links!

> In fact, CH seems to be in the top 10:

Do you know if historic data is available somewhere, so that I can
check whether there has been any movement forward recently, or
whether perhaps (as I fear) all that is from several years ago
back when the "Swiss IPv6 Task Force" was active?

> > This kind of situation is IMO a clear indication of mismanagement, and
> > while I don't know anything definitive about other countries, I'd be
> > very surprised if this kind of problem exists only in Switzerland.
> 
> I just don't understand why the emphasis is on national deployments.

IMO, this is about using national pride as a motivating factor where
objective business reasons for deployment are lacking.

> Countries don't get ready for a change like this, networks do.
> Countries CAN help networks tho, as I have said before.

I agree wholeheartedly.

> > > > Now the problem with IP address depletion is that unless progress is
> > > > made with the transition to IPv6, there will in a few years be two
> > > > fundamentally different types of internet access.  "Consumer" internet
> > > > access will be behind several layers of NAT, which allows to "surf
> > > > the web", use email, etc, but which does not make it possible for
> > > > businesses to allow customers to interact with their IT systems.
> > >
> > > Unless they use a web interface.  I must be missing smt, why do you
> > > need a public address for this?
> >
> > How do you set up even a simple HTTP-based web interface if the entire
> > geographic area where your company happens to be located is behind
> > several layers of NAT each designed to facilitate only "consumer" web
> > access, without any support for accepting remotely-initiated connections?
> 
> Why does it have to be in the area where your company is located? Many
> if not most corporate web sites are hosted offsite.

For most corporate web sites existing today this is indeed not
a problem, since they're typically just "dumb" websites, like
a kind of electronic brochure, not an integrated part of a true
e-business process.

However I think that creating genuinely integrated e-business
processes in key for truly making use to that "digital opportunity".

Removing the option of doing that locally will IMO make it more
difficult to make use of that opportunity.

Not impossibly difficult, but more difficult, with the effect that
there will be less successful start-ups truly making use of that
"digital opportunity", and therefore a smaller overall positive
effect on the economies of those regions, which will be perhaps
most visible in the effect of higher prices for internet access.

> > > If the former, well a market may develop in IP addresses at some
> > > point,
> >
> > IMO, if we reach that kind of scarcity of IPv4 addresses, the
> > transition to IPv6 has been severely mismanaged.
> >
> > BTW, if that occurs, I'm also concerned about routing table growth.
> 
> IPv4 routing table or IPv6? Ipv6 routing table explosion is the
> potentially scarier monster.

What I'm concerned about right now is what it will do to the IPv4
routing table if no real transition to IPv6 gets underway and a market
for IPv4 addresses develops instead.

You are of course right that if there's mismanagement with regard to
the IPv6 routing table, that'd be another way in which a potentially
scary monster of a routing table could get created, but I'm not
currently aware of any reason to be concerned about that kind of
mismanagement being likely to happen.

> > Can you explain the precise economic machanism which will (in your
> > opinion) make IPv6 deployment surge?
> 
> supply and demand I reckon.  Supply of v4 decreases while demand
> continues to increase, market develops, costs of v4 rise, eventually
> to a point where folk will take up cheap plentiful v6 instead, v4
> market collapses.  Of course, that's just a guess.

The problem is that this will only happen when IPv6 addresses
are able to serve as substitutes for IPv4 addresses.

How do we get to that point?

> > Iljitsch van Beijnum has a proposal which I think goes in the right
> > direction:
> >
> > http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-van-beijnum-modified-nat-pt-02.txt
> >
> > However considering that it will take significant time to discuss the
> > remaining technical details, reach consensus, implement and deploy,
> > IMO we're really uncomfortably close to IPv4 address space exhaustion
> > already.
> 
> While NAT-PT will probably be useful, there are already many other
> transitions mechanisms to choose from.

I think they're all lacking in some important respects.

One of my next steps will be to write a paper comparing them and
explaining why I think that they're not quite good enough.

> > > What do you propose?
> >
> > 1. We should do what we can to move specification and implementation
> >    of "Modified NAT-PT" (the Internet-Draft that I mentioned above)
> >    forward as quickly as possible.
> >
> 
> "We" as in the IETF?

As in the author of that Internet-Draft, plus myself, plus everyone
else whom we can convince that this work is important and urgent,
which should hopefully include enough people at the IETF as well as
among IT systems vendors, ISPs and IT departments of other companies
to get an RFC published and implemented and to get the resulting
technology deployed reasonably quickly.

> > 3. They should also make significant funds available as developmental
> >    aid for poor countries in the form of investment incentives to
> >    create good dual-stack IPv4+IPv6 infrastructure.
> 
> Unlikely methinks.

I agree that it doesn't look this would be likely to happen anytime
soon, but that isn't going to stop me from talking about this need
when someone asks me for proposals for what should be done.

Greetings,
Norbert.

-- 
Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch>                      http://Norbert.ch
President of the Swiss Internet User Group SIUG    http://SIUG.ch
Working on establishing a non-corrupt and
truly /open/ international standards organization  http://OpenISO.org
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