0) You rapid fired a few posts in succession yesterday. Some are interesting and crucial views that I would like to follow-up on. I will start from quoting the earlier ones. I hope that I am picking up the correct leads.

1) " ... 240/4 is way more effort than its proponents want to believe and even if it were reclassified effectively as GUA, it doesn’t buy all that much life for IPv4. ... ": Perhaps you have not bothered to scan through a two page whitepaper (URL below, again) that I submitted a week or so ago? It promises simple implementation and significant increase of assignable IPv4 addresses, even extendable to the similar size of IPv6 if we could forgo our mentality about the IP addresses as "Personal Properties", by switching to treat them as "Natural Resources".

https://www.avinta.com/phoenix-1/home/RevampTheInternet.pdf

2) " ... so that content providers can start turning off v4 where it’s costing them money to support it. .... " & "... Content providers turning off v4 face competition from content providers that don’t. ... ": These two statements appeared to come from two separate posting of yours. They seemed to be contradicting each other. Did I misread somehow?

Now from the last post below:

3) " ... 240/4 is way more effort than its proponents want to believe and even if it were reclassified effectively as GUA, it doesn’t buy all that much life for IPv4.... ": Please see information provided by Pt. 1) above.

4) " ... I think it should be reclassified from never going to be used into some part of the internet might actually do something with it. Its important that happens now, better late then never ... Please feel free to use it for router IDs in BGP and/or OSPF area numbers. :p ... ": I am in full agreement with you. Our proposal is the solution in Pt. 1) above.

5) " ... if we continue to waste effort that is better spent deploying IPv6 on bandaids and hacks to make v4 last just a little longer, .... ": This is not a productive opinion. Please do not forget that the Internet heavily promotes personal freedom. One can not force others to do something that they do not believe in. Stopping them from doing one thing does not automatically make them to do what you like. A project must have its own merits that attract contribution. The failure of the IPv6 actually started from when a decision was made to the effect of "not to emphasize backward compatibility with IPv4" which broke one of the golden rules in system engineering. Not recognizing such and focusing to find a way for remedying it, but continuing to force others to migrate to IPv6 camp with various tactics does not foster progress.

6) " ... The problem is that we’re not talking about parallel experiments. ... ": EzIP is a parallel experiment to the current Internet (not only IPv4, but also IPv6) operations, because its overlay architecture on the latter demarcates everything happening on it from the Internet. As long as packets exchanged between the two conform to the established Internet protocols, an EzIP deployment (called RAN - Regional Area Network) will appear as innocent as an ordinary private network.

On Mar 24, 2022, at 03:36 , Joe Maimon <jmaimon@jmaimon.com> wrote: In my view that takes the form of a multi-pronged strategy. Do what it takes to keep IPv4 as usable as possible for as long as possible.

I think this isn’t so much preempting the vacuum as trying to pretend we can survive on an hour of air for 20 years. 240/4 is way more effort than its proponents want to believe and even if it were reclassified effectively as GUA, it doesn’t buy all that much life for IPv4.

I think it should be reclassified from never going to be used into some part of the internet might actually do something with it. Its important that happens now, better late then never. Whether its GUA or not or a mix of whatever, whether it buys months or years will depend greatly on how its actually used if it is ever used.

You may be right about not being worth it. More importantly, you may be wrong. IPv6 is replete with not only a plethora of wrong predictions, but the same ones over and over again. To be clear, the only effort asked from the unwilling is to support cutting the red tape frustrating the willing. A hearty round of knock yourself out from the right folk in the right place and time and we dont have to debate this particular point ever again.

Certainly, if we continue to waste effort that is better spent deploying IPv6 on bandaids and hacks to make v4 last just a little longer, we will continue to fail and further delay IPv6 reaching a level of deployment that allows us to start turning down IPv4 and beginning to recognize the cost savings that come from moving forward.

The problem is that we’re not talking about parallel experiments. We’re talking about an optional activity which will inherently pull resources away from a necessary activity, thus delaying the necessary activity and becoming somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Hence I oppose this wasteful experiment in favor of doing what we all know eventually needs to be done.

Personally, that means that although I have long disliked proposals that keep moving to the left of the 128bit space, were I to believe it likely to increase deployment and momentum I would champion it in my own limited fashion much as I do 240/4.

Meh… I haven’t seen too much of that. I’ve been guilty of a certain amount of it, to be sure, but we’re only recently seeing the two largest RIRs start working through their second /12s even though it’s been years since I pushed for (and achieved) nibble-boundary round-ups as the norm in the ARIN region. I think that we’re still OK on allocation policies. What I’d like to see is an end to the IPv4-think in large ISPs, such as Comcast’s continued micro allocations to their customers. Owen