On Saturday, March 22, 2014 05:54:06 PM Justin M. Streiner wrote:
Interesting analogy, but it misses the larger point. The larger point is that the ongoing effort to squeeze more mileage out of IPv4 will soon [1] outweigh the mileage we (collectively) get out of it. IMHO, that effort is better invested in preparing for and deplying IPv6. Things like LSN/CGN are stop-gaps that result in performance problems for people behind them, and aren't terribly useful for people who need to run inbound services. Shaking down entities (to the extent that they can be shaken down) that have chunks of IPv4 they're not currently using doesn't change the end-game for IPv4.
And to keep into perspective, the fact that a good portion of the registry community have run out of IPv4 space to allocate. A number of existing and new ISP's are going to find that getting IPv6 going is probably a better solution than keeping IPv4 alive (many will learn this the hard way). Heck, it won't surprise me if some popular OTT and social networking providers "force" the IPv6 issue since democracy isn't often the best way to get something like this done. In such a case, where you are still pushing the case for IPv4, how do you envisage things will look on your side when everybody else you want to talk to is either on IPv6, or frantically getting it turned up? Do you reckon anyone will have time to help you troubleshoot patchy (for example) IPv4 connectivity when all the focus is on IPv6? AFRINIC still have lots of IPv4 space. I'm not sure that gives operators in that region any advantage over anyone else, if the rest of the world is active on IPv6, i.e., while it may be easier to justify a /8 of IPv4 and get it from a registry that still has space, you're likely doing yourself a disservice in taking this route (and spending all the time and energy numbering out of that /8), because that /8 won't be very helpful if the most of the rest of the Internet is letting IPv4 go. Mark.