[Chapter-delegates] scarcity of IPv4 addresses

[William Favre Slater, III]

Chris, John, and other ISOC Colleagues,

I too am concerned about this looming issue of exhausting the IPv4 address
space.  So today, almost 7.5 years after I wrote it, I am sharing my IPv4
address generator written in PERL.

Visit http://billslater.com/ipv4

If any types this code in and runs it, please send me the time required to
complete it.  The last estimate I had for the Pentium II that I wrote it
for was about 12 days.  Since that time, I have acquired more powerful
computers, but I haven't been able to find the time to run the program to
its final completion.

Nevertheless, share this page with your friends.  There are some
interesting facts, and it does promote the Internet Society.

Enjoy!

Best regards,

Bill
William Favre Slater, III, PMP, CISSP, CDCP, MCSE
Program Manager / Data Center Manager
1337 N. Ashland Ave. No. 2
Chicago, IL 60622
United States of America

slater at billslater.com
datacentermanager at live.com
chicagodatacenter at live.com
http://billslater.com/career
773 - 235 - 3080 - Home
312 - 758 - 0307 - Mobile
312 - 275 - 5757 - FAX & Voicemail



On Fri, October 24, 2008 1:35 pm, Chris Grundemann wrote:
> I am not sure how I missed the conversation over the last six weeks and I
> apologize for jumping into this "late" but I think that you may want to
> conduct further evaluation before making a public stand.  I have been
> intimately involved in this discussion here in the ARIN region for over
> six
> months now and I am definitely not convinced that creating a market is the
> answer to IPv4 scarcity.  In fact there are several very intelligent and
> cluefull individuals who believe exactly the opposite, that an address
> market will cause the collapse of the current RIR infrastructure due to
> government intervention in many countries which could in turn splinter the
> Internet with regionalized or nationalized government regulations that may
> not be compatible across borders.  This is not an issue that I believe you
> have a high likelihood of being on the correct side of after 6 weeks of
> light conversation, IMHO.
>
> If members of this list are interested, I can compile a fairly long list
> of
> reference material and documentation of the views of folks on both sides
> of
> this issue.  To start with, this decision tree may be helpful to some who
> have not spent as much time thinking about this issue yet as others
> have:
> http://odin.chrisgrundemann.com/files/Do_I_Support_A_Liberalized_Transfer_Policy.jpg.
> <http://odin.chrisgrundemann.com/files/Do_I_Support_A_Liberalized_Transfer_Policy.jpg>
>
> For now I have added some quick comments to the points below.
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 23, 2008 at 8:59 AM, John Schnizlein
> <schnizlein at isoc.org>wrote:
>
>> 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.
>
>
> A) The argument that "it is going to happen anyway" is a very week one
> imho.  Under this logic there should be no regulation at all because there
> are sure to be those who will circumvent it.
>
> B) Your brief mention of dissenters is somewhat inaccurate.  I have spoken
> to many people who oppose IP address transfer markets and none of them
> have
> explained there reasoning to be that making a profit is unfair.  I think I
> can fairly safely generalize most of these folks sentiment thus:  An IP
> address transfer market is a radically different approach which brings
> with
> it many new challenges and risks and it has not been shown that the
> potential benefits will surely outweigh those dangers.
>
>
>>
>> 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.
>
>
> I fully agree that WHOIS and other registry data must be accurate.  This
> starts with cleaning up the current data and then goes on to maintaining
> it.  This is a needed and noble cause that I am helping to champion in the
> ARIN region currently.  It has little to do with the decision to create an
> IP market or not though.  If the data is accurate, illegitimate transfers
> will be harder to perpetrate.  In order to hijack a route, you must
> advertise it from your AS, this makes it very clear to everyone who
> participates in Internet routing who is using what IPs, therefor, the
> solution to the problem you raise is much more of a technical one than a
> policy related one.  Take a look at the RPKI and SIDR work going on now in
> the IETF for the real answer.
>
>
>>
>> 3) ISOC opposes a central formal managed market that clears trades and
>> prices,
>> for IPv4 addresses, but does not advocate barriers to transactions
>> between
>> parties.
>>
>> While there is potential value to operating a central clearing for
>> transactions, like a stock or commodity market, especially open and
>> transparent pricing, such a Market Maker would be exposed to risks of a
>> variety of charges of unfairness.  It is possible (but we do not
>> consider it
>> likely) that demand for such a market will induce private market makers.
>>
>> What might have justified RIRs taking on those risks would be the need
>> to
>> assign addresses to fit routing hierarchy.  In such a market, prices for
>> address blocks would depend on the block size, but which actual address
>> was
>> allocated would depend on the implications for the global route table as
>> well as the offered price. Instead of evidence that this is necessary,
>> what
>> we have found is that the global route table is scrambled to accommodate
>> traffic engineering and multihoming already, and arbitrary transfers
>> would
>> not matter.
>
>
> A) While the RIRs have not done a _perfect_ job of stopping aggregation,
> they have assigned addresses in a hierarchical fashion quite well.  This
> has
> done two things; one is that they have kept routing table growth within
> the
> ability of routing hardware over time (iow, good enough) and secondly,
> they
> have maintained the option of aggregation.  Even though many ISPs
> advertise
> smaller blocks for traffic engineering or other purposes (avoiding
> hijacking, etc)  they  _could_  advertise much less if the need arose and
> I
> believe there is value in this  as we approach  IPv4 greenfield
> exhaustion.
> B) There is a second piece to the hierarchical way RIRs have assigned and
> allocated addresses, and that is the needs based component.  This is not
> only to help prevent explosive de-aggregation but also to preserve
> openness
> to new entrants.  Transfers done without the RIR supervision that we have
> seen during the IPv4 allocation period have a high likely hood of allowing
> large incumbents to bar entry by purchasing all available IPv4 early on
> and
> then not releasing it to new entrants or growing but smaller competitors.
>
>
>>
>> 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 many estimates, allowing transfers would only extend IPv4 availability
> by
> a few months if at all.  Most of the large allocations given out by the
> RIRs
> are to ISPs.  It is not safe to assume that ISPs will sell IPv4 space at
> any
> price because it is very likely that the buyer will be a competing ISP or
> a
> potential customer.  Why would I sell you IPv4 space when I can rent it to
> you instead?
>
>
> I would like to close by stating that I am not necessarily opposed to the
> current ISOC position, I just want to make certain that all the
> ramifications have been taken into consideration and that the specific
> agendas of any individuals involved are made clear.  The opinions I have
> expressed here do not represent those of any other entity and may not even
> be mine by the time you read them.
> ~Chris
>
>
>
>>
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>
>
>
>
> --
> Chris Grundemann
> www.chrisgrundemann.com
> www.linkedin.com/in/cgrundemann
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>


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