[Chapter-delegates] scarcity of IPv4 addresses

[Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond]

John,

as you know, I have taken quite an interest in IPv4 & IPv6 matters.
My answers/comments inline:

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Schnizlein" <schnizlein at isoc.org>
To: "Chapter Delegates" <chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2008 4:59 PM
Subject: [Chapter-delegates] scarcity of IPv4 addresses


> Discussion of this situation and how ISOC should stand on it has  
> continued over the roughly six weeks since I asked for discussion of  
> it here.  Thanks to those who replied.
> 
> Please comment on the following draft ISOC position.
> 
> John
> 
> 1) ISOC believes there is no practical way to prevent address
> transfers - so we advocate registering the transfers.
> 
> Some member of Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) oppose any transfer  
> other than recovery of unused addresses to the RIR for re-allocation.   
> They oppose any opportunity for address holders to profit from  
> transfers as unfair.  Anecdotes that (part of) companies have already  
> been traded in order to acquire address blocks they hold suggest that  
> this opposition is futile.  Scarce resources become valuable, and will  
> be traded, either openly or secretly.

I completely agree. Much discussion has been taking place on the
RIR mailing lists and had as much time/space been used to discuss
IPv6 migration as the time spent to "define" an IPv4 market, we
wouldn't be where we are today.
The dichotomy of the debate is that on one side, RIRs are saying
that they have no mandate to promote one type of addressing over
another since they are unwilling to enforce anything, whilst on the
other hand, they are trying to regulate a market which cannot be
regulated, except if they take a strong stance against speculators,
a position which is incompatible with their mandate...

> 
> 2) The transfers need to be registered to preserve the integrity of
> who can inject routes into the routing infrastructure - for IPv4 and  
> IPv6.
> 
> Ongoing problems with illegitimate routes being injected into the  
> global routing infrastructure (either by accident or due to malicious  
> intent) must be solved.  We cannot envision any way to solve this  
> without knowing the current legitimate holder of address prefixes.

Who will enforce this? Bearing in mind we are already seeing IP address
squatters and nothing is being done about them, who will act as the IP police?

> 4) ISOC believes that transfers will extend the availabilty of IPv4  
> addresses while
> IPv6 gets distributed.  Gradual increases in the cost of acquiring  
> IPv4 addresses
> may incent network operators and developers to deploy IPv6.
> 
> The belief that network operators would deploy IPv6 in parallel (dual  
> stack) with IPv4 while there were sufficient IPv4 addresses, so that  
> new IPv6-only hosts could reach everything, was wrong.  There was no  
> economic incentive for operators to prepare for a future while there  
> were sufficient addresses.  It is conceivable that operators with  
> sufficient contractual leverage on their suppliers and consumers could  
> undertake the costs of conversion to IPv6-only in order to realize the  
> value of IPv4 address space they would transfer.

By "gradual increases" are you suggesting that IPv4 addressing should be
charged by the RIRs? Otherwise we'll see IPv4 address cost speculation and
I doubt that this would be a "gradual increase".
This section, IMHO, is ambiguous.

Warm regards,

Olivier