And even there're some economical implications, the proposal itself isn't primary about money and cost of IPv4 address, this is technical proposal. It's about address distribution to new and existing LIRs.
As long as addresses are scarce, there is no such thing as a purely technical allocation proposal. Any allocation mechanism involves a competitive relationship among LIRs for available resources, and any policy distributes costs and benefits among the contending parties.
And we have to care about new LIRs, we need to reserve some address space for them - as lots of internet resources will be accessible only over IPv4 for long period after depletion. It's about survivance of free allocatable IPv4 address space as long as possible.
I agree with this concern, but you seem unaware of the possibilities of strategic behavior by LIRs. Consider: LIR 1, an incumbent, proves it needs a /16 to meet demand caused by growth in the number of its existing customers. LIR 2, a startup, also proves it needs a /16 to start up Your policy privileges any actor in the category LIR 2 and penalizes actors in category LIR 1. Question 1: why are the customers of LIR 2 more important than the customers of LIR 1? Question 2: why wouldn't LIR 1 form a new company and call it a startup to get privileged access to addresses? Or, might LIR 3, LIR 1's long standing competitor, form a new LIR to gain an advantage in the competition for resources? One could argue for your position by noting that LIRs who already have some blocks of ipv4 are in a position to economize on and/or NAT those addresses, whereas an ISP without any can't do that. That provides some answer to Q1. But it doesn't deal with the problems around Q2.
On Fri, 2010-10-29 at 10:17 -0400, Milton L Mueller wrote:
Consider: LIR 1, an incumbent, proves it needs a /16 to meet demand caused by growth in the number of its existing customers. LIR 2, a startup, also proves it needs a /16 to start up
Your policy privileges any actor in the category LIR 2 and penalizes actors in category LIR 1.
Both LIRs would be eligible for address-blocks assigned from the general pool. After depletion this means space that has been reclaimed or in some other way returned to the RIR for reuse.
Question 1: why are the customers of LIR 2 more important than the customers of LIR 1?
They are not. BOTH LIRs are expected to accomodate _growth_ in customer numbers through IPv6. NEITHER will get a large enough adress-block from the reserve to meet their growth needs. At most they'd get a /20 or /22 to establish transition services, no /16. The RIR's intention is to provide your LIR2 with a small block they can use to provide connectivity to existing IPv4 services for their IPv6 customers.
Question 2: why wouldn't LIR 1 form a new company and call it a startup to get privileged access to addresses? Or, might LIR 3, LIR 1's long standing competitor, form a new LIR to gain an advantage in the competition for resources?
One could argue for your position by noting that LIRs who already have some blocks of ipv4 are in a position to economize on and/or NAT those addresses, whereas an ISP without any can't do that. That provides some answer to Q1. But it doesn't deal with the problems around Q2.
Exactly. Most, if not all, networks of significant size have a small chunk of spare addresses they can recycle for transition services. A new LIR OTOH has nothing and could theoretically be blocked from entering the market. //per
Question 2: why wouldn't LIR 1 form a new company and call it a startup to get privileged access to addresses? Or, might LIR 3, LIR 1's long standing competitor, form a new LIR to gain an advantage in the competition for resources?
Most, if not all, networks of significant size have a small chunk of spare addresses they can recycle for transition services. A new LIR OTOH has nothing and could theoretically be blocked from entering the market.
And Question 2?
On Fri, 2010-10-29 at 17:27 -0400, Milton L Mueller wrote:
Question 2: why wouldn't LIR 1 form a new company and call it a startup to get privileged access to addresses? Or, might LIR 3, LIR 1's long standing competitor, form a new LIR to gain an advantage in the competition for resources?
Most, if not all, networks of significant size have a small chunk of spare addresses they can recycle for transition services. A new LIR OTOH has nothing and could theoretically be blocked from entering the market.
And Question 2?
That's best answered with a question. What's the point for an established LIR to go through all that trouble just to get another tiny block? A small hosting-operation might have some use for it, but it makes no sense for your example LIR (regional, national or multi-national network operator). //per
On Oct 29, 2010, at 1:31 PM, Per Heldal wrote:
What's the point for an established LIR to go through all that trouble just to get another tiny block?
Because they want to add more (IPv4-only) customers? Or more specifically, the value they get from potential new customers that will make use of that space outweighs the cost of going through the trouble. However, a similar question can be asked: at this point in the game, what's the point in starting up a new service dependent on IPv4?
A small hosting-operation might have some use for it, but it makes no sense for your example LIR (regional, national or multi-national network operator).
Regional, national, and multi-national network operators are going to want to continue adding customers even after the last /8s get allocated. And they're going to have way more money, lawyers, and political power to ensure that they can do so. This policy appears to assume folks are going to play nice as the lifeboat starts taking on water... Oops. Is my cynicism showing again? :-) Regards, -drc
On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 23:27, Milton L Mueller <mueller@syr.edu> wrote:
And Question 2?
As was pointed out above and as the proposal itself notes, abuse will happen and the RIPE will do its best to curb those attempts. There is not absolutely perfect solution. If you can improve upon the proposal, I am sure everyone would be excited to discuss your thoughts. In any case, I think there is a broad consensus that doing it this way is better than doing nothing. Richard
On Mon, Nov 1, 2010 at 08:28, Richard Hartmann <richih.mailinglist@gmail.com> wrote: <snip>
There is not absolutely perfect solution. If you can improve upon the proposal, I am sure everyone would be excited to discuss your thoughts.
The only true soft-landing solution is to tie IPv6 deployment directly to IPv4 allocation. Organizations which are not deploying IPv6 along with IPv4 in their networks are not efficiently utilizing their IPv4 addresses and should not be allowed to get more. ~Chris
In any case, I think there is a broad consensus that doing it this way is better than doing nothing.
Richard
-- @ChrisGrundemann weblog.chrisgrundemann.com www.burningwiththebush.com www.coisoc.org
On Mon, Nov 1, 2010 at 15:52, Chris Grundemann <cgrundemann@gmail.com> wrote:
The only true soft-landing solution is to tie IPv6 deployment directly to IPv4 allocation. Organizations which are not deploying IPv6 along with IPv4 in their networks are not efficiently utilizing their IPv4 addresses and should not be allowed to get more.
Quoth the proposal: d) Allocations will only be made to LIRs if they have already received an IPv6 allocation from an upstream LIR or the RIPE NCC. Verifying actual deployment in an end-user-accessible form would be a non-trivial task. Richard PS: Personally, I would not mind if no single IPv4 was made any more without people requesting IPv6, as well. But there's not enough time left to get that through and the problem will solve itself, anyway.
On Mon, Nov 1, 2010 at 09:19, Richard Hartmann <richih.mailinglist@gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon, Nov 1, 2010 at 15:52, Chris Grundemann <cgrundemann@gmail.com> wrote:
The only true soft-landing solution is to tie IPv6 deployment directly to IPv4 allocation. Organizations which are not deploying IPv6 along with IPv4 in their networks are not efficiently utilizing their IPv4 addresses and should not be allowed to get more.
Quoth the proposal:
d) Allocations will only be made to LIRs if they have already received an IPv6 allocation from an upstream LIR or the RIPE NCC.
Verifying actual deployment in an end-user-accessible form would be a non-trivial task.
True, but we have found ways of gauging utilization of IPv4 addresses without too much effort. Their are some fairly low-touch requirements that could be applied here for IPv6 addresses as well. Such as; entry's in WHOIS, network diagrams/plans, subnetting plans, an announcement in the BGP table, etc.
Richard
PS: Personally, I would not mind if no single IPv4 was made any more without people requesting IPv6, as well. But there's not enough time left to get that through and the problem will solve itself, anyway.
It's very possible that we are too late to make an appreciable difference to standard allocations, agreed. Hopefully this does solve itself but it may be worth considering such a requirement WRT not only standard allocations but also post-depletion transfers (i.e. a change to section 5.3 would effect transfers under section 5.5). $0.02 ~Chris -- @ChrisGrundemann weblog.chrisgrundemann.com www.burningwiththebush.com www.coisoc.org
On Mon, Nov 1, 2010 at 21:45, Chris Grundemann <cgrundemann@gmail.com> wrote:
True, but we have found ways of gauging utilization of IPv4 addresses without too much effort. Their are some fairly low-touch requirements that could be applied here for IPv6 addresses as well. Such as; entry's in WHOIS, network diagrams/plans, subnetting plans, an announcement in the BGP table, etc.
All those are easy to trivial to fake. That being said, adding them is not a bad thing as long as valid requests are not held up too much.
It's very possible that we are too late to make an appreciable difference to standard allocations, agreed. Hopefully this does solve itself but it may be worth considering such a requirement WRT not only standard allocations but also post-depletion transfers (i.e. a change to section 5.3 would effect transfers under section 5.5).
Not a bad idea. I think I like it :)
$0.02
Itym €0.02 ;) Richard
On Oct 29, 2010, at 4:17 AM, Milton L Mueller wrote:
I agree with this concern, but you seem unaware of the possibilities of strategic behavior by LIRs.
Consider: LIR 1, an incumbent, proves it needs a /16 to meet demand caused by growth in the number of its existing customers. LIR 2, a startup, also proves it needs a /16 to start up
Your policy privileges any actor in the category LIR 2 and penalizes actors in category LIR 1.
Question 1: why are the customers of LIR 2 more important than the customers of LIR 1?
They aren't. LIR 1, being forced to jump through different hoops, is considered less important. Or, to put it in less inflammatory terms, is considered more able to absorb the additional costs.
Question 2: why wouldn't LIR 1 form a new company and call it a startup to get privileged access to addresses?
A question of cost. LIR 1 would likely run the numbers to see which is cheaper: a) create a subsidiary as you describe b) purchase the necessary space off the black/grey market c) sue RIPE for discriminatory business practices aimed at damaging LIR 1's business (well, OK, since it isn't the US, this probably won't happen). d) migrate to IPv6 and hope no customer wants IPv4 access that can't be accommodated via NAT.
Or, might LIR 3, LIR 1's long standing competitor, form a new LIR to gain an advantage in the competition for resources?
You mean LIR 3 might lie? :-)
One could argue for your position by noting that LIRs who already have some blocks of ipv4 are in a position to economize on and/or NAT those addresses, whereas an ISP without any can't do that. That provides some answer to Q1. But it doesn't deal with the problems around Q2.
It all boils down to a question of cost. Even economizing/NATing/etc. has a cost so a rational business will look at the various costs and do the cost/benefit analysis. Regards, -drc
participants (5)
-
Chris Grundemann -
David Conrad -
Milton L Mueller -
Per Heldal -
Richard Hartmann