Brandon, On Feb 18, 2008, at 9:18 AM, Brandon Galbraith wrote:
Markets have a history of efficiently allocating resources, this much is true. My concern is when IP allocations are based on fiscal merit instead of technical merit. Also, don't forget speculators within a market. Do you really want the price of IP blocks bid up by "IP day traders"?
Presumably, the market would occur when the IPv4 address free pool has been exhausted. Without a market, there will be no IPv4 address space. With a market, IPv4 address space will be available at a price. That price will be constrained by the cost the IPv4-desirous ISP would face in deploying IPv6 + NAT-PT. If IPv6 + NAT-PT isn't sufficient, the IPv4-desirous ISP will face a choice of paying whatever the market will bear or doing without (implying double/triple NAT, etc.) since there won't be any other alternatives. It's not clear to me how many people actually understand the implication of IPv4 free pool exhaustion... Regards, -drc