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

[McTim]

Hi,

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?

>
> 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?  If you want to look at just CH
networks, you can. Some networks in CH have allocations already, which
is the first step:

http://v6metric.inetcore.com/en/html/st1/08.html

Some are being announced (2nd step)
slide 9
http://www.ripe.net/ripe/meetings/ripe-55/presentations/doering-ipv6-routing.pdf

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

http://www.sixxs.net/tools/grh/dfp/


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

>
> > 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.
<snip>

> 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.

>
> In my opinion it is the worst aspect of the mismanagement of the
> transition to IPv6 that the economic aspect of the problem has
> generally not been thought through carefully enough.
>

Again, who was supposed to do this "thinking through"?

Many folk have been talking/warning about this for many years, In
English, there is a saying; "You can lead a horse to water, but you
can't make it drink"  I think that's an apt phrase for this situation.

> > If the latter, as I have mentioned before, the 2 youngest RIRs have
> > the slowest rate of address "usage", so Africa and Latin America may
> > have IP addresses to give away long after the USA and EU run out.
>
> Isn't it much more likely that the decision-makers in Africa and
> Latin America would agree, due to pressure and/or by some form of
> bribery, to a policy proposal like the following?
>

It would have to be a global agreement amongst all RIR communities,
which is difficult to get.  I am on the mailing lists of the
"decision-makers" (in Africa), my sense of previous discussions is
that the AfriNIC community might not want to give up any perceived
advantage in this area.  However, since the consensus is that they
want to lead in IPv6 deployment as well, they might agree. In any
case, IIRC, it hasn't (yet) been introduced in the AfriNIC region as a
policy proposal.

<snip>
>
> 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.
<snip>
> > 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?

> 2. Governments should check whether their national "IPv6 Task Force"
>    or equivalent is alive and well and preparing responsibly for
>    facilitating an orderly transition to IPv6.
>

sure

> 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.

-- 
Cheers,

McTim
$ whois -h whois.afrinic.net mctim
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