I would like to encourage everyone engaging in this discussion here to move the discussion over to the ARIN PPML and talk about the policy. It's great to talk about it on NANOG , and, indeed, many members of the ARIN AC are on this list. However, the rest of the ARIN community should also see your comments, and, that is technically the correct forum for addressing ARIN policy matters. Owen On Feb 19, 2008, at 2:42 PM, Geoff Huston wrote:
David Conrad wrote:
Joe, On Feb 19, 2008, at 4:28 AM, Joe Maimon wrote:
When IANA free pool exhaustion happens or even appears to be imminent, one can expect push for allocation policies to be changed drastically towards the miserly. No. ...
The RIR bureaucracy is a ponderous ship that turns very slowly and has multiple captains who do not necessarily agree on the direction to turn. IPv4 allocation policy revisions aren't going to save us.
A collaborative bottom-up consensus-based policy determination framework is a ponderous ship that turns ... [etc]. The problem is not necessarily in the machine room that implements these address allocation policies but in the process of determining policies that all interested parties can live with. It takes time. Probably more time than you have left.
So even if there are a flurry of last minute policy proposals to salvage the situation it may well be a case of too little too late.
The question is how ARIN will deal with the market after the IPv4 free pool exhausts.
I would suggest that the real question is "How will industry deal with the situation when the current supply streams for IPv4 vaporize?"
And the secondary question is "Will the industry's reaction to this shift in the supply of addresses destroy the integrity and utility of the entire IPv4 space?"
What I'm gettting at is that if there is no mechanism in whatever industry does for address supply after the unallocated pool exhausts to preserve the essential attribute of the address system, namely uniqueness of use, and we start to see competing claims to be able to use addresses without any agreed framework of resolution, then what happens to the Internet? Do we all just originate whatever addresses we feel like on the day in to the routing system?
Yep. And the question is: as an ISP or other address consuming organization, what will you do when the cost of obtaining IPv4 addresses skyrockets? So far, as far as I can tell, the answer to that question (in most cases) has been putting hands over ears and saying "La la la" loudly. See <http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/020608-ipv4-address-depletion.html
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indeed.
Geoff