What if, globally, and starting at January 1st, 2020, someone (imagine a government or similar, but with global reach) imposed an IPv4 tax. For every IPv4 address on the Global Internet Routing Table, you had to pay a tax. Let’s assume that this can be imposed, must be paid, and cannot be avoided using some loophole. Let’s say that this tax would be $2, and it would double, every 3 or 6 months.
Hi Antonios,
Folks already pay a "tax" for IPv4 addresses. For example, in AWS you pay $0.005/hr ($3.60/month) for an "elastic IP address" while the /56 of globally routable IPv6 addresses in your VPC are completely free.
What do you think would happen? Would it be the only way to reach 100% IPv6 deployment, or even that wouldn’t be sufficient?
Absolutely nothing that hasn't already happened, except perhaps annoy people in fresh ways. You don't have a mass-market Internet service without an IPv4 address, you do have one without an IPv6 address, and managing and securing both requires high-skill manpower which is one of your organization's highest-cost assets. No nominal tax or fee will ever be enough to weigh meaningfully in that cost.
Regards,
Bill Herrin