[governance] Why IPv6 has trouble to be financed

[Stephane Bortzmeyer]

As someone who believes that the IGF should spend less time on domain
names and more time on actually critical Internet resources, such as
IP addresses, let me forward a very interesting analysis of a
skeptical person about IPv6 financing:

----- Forwarded message from "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <pbaker at verisign.com> -----

Subject: RE: IPv4 to IPv6 transition
From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <pbaker at verisign.com>
To: Artur Hecker <hecker at wave-storm.com>, IETF Discussion <ietf at ietf.org>
Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 13:19:59 -0700

[Y2K-related text deleted]

So how does this all relate to IPv4/6? It does not. The problem with the IPv6 transition is that the cost and benefit are completely out of phase. The cost falls on those who have IPv4 addresses, the benefits acrue only to those who do not. If you have an IPv4 address the fact that others do not is not going to make a huge difference to the benefit you get from the network. 

Metcalf's law is overstated, the value of a network to an individual user is at best proportional to its size. In practice the Blockbuster effect means that there are diminishing returns. A network of four billion plus one users is worth more or less the same to me as a user as a network of four billion. The fact that there could be one more user is not something that would greatly encourage me to upgrade my kit. At best the value of the network to existing users is going to be the log of the number of users. 

Looking back at my personal use of networks I can certainly agree that the number of users increases the value. I have seen the Web grow from 100 users to a billion. The value has not increased at anything like the same rate. The Web is certainly more useful today than in 2000 or 1995 or 1992 but the increase in value has been linear, not exponential. The Web does not help me to find ten million times more useful information today than it did in 1992.

So the idea that we can rely on the Internet haves to invest money to benefit the Internet have-nots on the scale necessary is unfortunately misguided. 


I do think that we can make the IPv6 transition work. I do not think that we can just expect it to happen and for everything to turn out just right. Or that merely convincing people that there is going to be a problem will result in a solution.

We have to think like marketting people.


[...]

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