[Chapter-delegates] scarcity of IPv4 addresses

[Sivasubramanian Muthusamy]

On Sat, Oct 25, 2008 at 4:06 PM, Franck Martin <franck at sopac.org> wrote:

> What would you and others suggest ISOC should do to save the titanic?

Hello Frank Martin, John Schnizlein,

1. Focus on promoting migration to IPV6 rather than worry to much
about the IPV4 Legacy? The more ICANN and the RIRs fret over the hard,
unpleasant decisions that need to be taken on IPV4, greater would be
the time taken to transition to IPV6.  Some breathing space is indeed
required, but the extent of importance given to managing IPV4
resources appear to be in the order of extending the life span of the
IPV4 Legacy. What ISOC could do is to encourage hard, tough decisions
and make it swift. The address spaces were allocated almost for free,
at a throwaway price, and now they are dear. Any thing scarce brings
in a lot of value. The businesses are bound to resist the idea of
letting them all go exactly at this opportunistic moment.  So, remind
everyone that these are relatively 'free" assets and make all the
tough decisions that are necessary on the issues of recalling unused
addresses or on allowing/ disallowing transfers.  ( At the same time,
some consideration needs to given to the inexplicable aspects in
business - these "assets" might have been acquired at a negligible
cost, but around these allocations businesses are bound to have
invested a considerably, so the "accumulated" cost of these assets
would in reality be a lot more than initially paid for.  If ICANN as
many cents as collected on allocation, it might square up ICANN's
books, but might not be the same case with businesses. )

2. Declare War. It requires war like measures to cause IPV6 adopted
before it is too late.


On Sun, Oct 26, 2008 at 1:27 AM, John Schnizlein <schnizlein at isoc.org> wrote:

> Yes, price speculation is possible in an unregulated market for IPv4 address
> blocks. This speculation could, as your doubt suggests, increase volatility in such
> a market.

Should we be complacent at this threat of speculative trade in the
names and numbers space?  Speculation has done enough harm to the
World Economy, shouldn't the Internet be kept away from such trade
practices ?

Perhaps ICANN could make it mandatory that transfers are routed through RIRs.

Sivasubramanian Muthusamy
ISOC India Chennai.