Interesting People mailing list archives
Area Codes (was Re: more on China Builds a Better Internet)
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2006 11:12:29 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren () vortex com> Date: September 26, 2006 10:35:00 AM EDT To: dave () farber net Cc: lauren () vortex comSubject: Area Codes (was Re: [IP] more on China Builds a Better Internet)
Dave, There are considerable analogies between IPv4 address space and area codes (formally, Numbering Plan Areas - NPAs). For many years, the FCC mandated that telephone prefixes were allocated in 10K number blocks (entire central office prefix codes), essentially regardless of whether or not previously allocated blocks had been fully used by the entity making the request or were likely to ever be used fully by them. This resulted in an insane flood of disruptive area code splits as NPAs were quickly exhausted of prefixes even if few or none of the existing ones had even been allocated to customers. Once the FCC changed the rules (at the urging of state PUCs, I might add) to allocate in much smaller blocks, require that existing blocks were almost completely used before allocating a new block, that large unused blocks be returned to the pool, etc., the "shortage" of prefixes dropped dramatically, and significant numbers of planned area code splits were delayed or totally cancelled. For any relatively scarce resource, a key factor in allocations should always be need, not just desires. --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein lauren () vortex com or lauren () pfir org Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 http://www.pfir.org/lauren Co-Founder, PFIR - People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org Co-Founder, IOIC - International Open Internet Coalition - http://www.ioic.net Moderator, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com DayThink: http://daythink.vortex.com - - -
Begin forwarded message: From: WWWhatsup <joly () dti net> Date: September 25, 2006 4:31:41 PM EDT To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net> Subject: Re: more on China Builds a Better Internet [I fwded those 'China' posts to the isoc members list gaining the following response] From: Fred Baker <fred () cisco com> Subject: Re: more on China Builds a Better Internet Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2006 10:53:14 -07002) We continue to consume IPv4 addresses at a steady, if not accelerating rate. There are of course continuing debates as to exactly when we will "run out" of IPv4 addresses (and what that means), but instead of being "decades" away, the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel can be seen. Fairly conservative estimates point to only 6 years left.for the record, those estimates measure different things. Hain's estimates suggest that we will allocate the last IPv4 address (eg, IANA will allocate to an RIR who will allocate to an ISP, who will start thinking about how to use it) in the 2009 timeframe, while Huston's estimates measure announcements in BGP from ISPs, and last I heard were in the 2013 timeframe. There is a built-in lag between the events, generally on the order of 1-2 years. So suppose that Tony is a year early and Geoff is a year late - in that case, they pretty much agree. The "last" IPv4 would be allocated in 2010 and announced in 2012. From my perspective there is another scenario that is much more important. That is that the fundamental rules of economics govern IPv4 and IPv6 addresses just like they cover any other finite resource. In such systems, one can expect that in the beginning, when supply far outstrips demand and nobody really cares, we will probably do some fairly stupid things - like assign them in class blocks. When demand approximates supply, we can expect a market to develop and for an improvement in our intelligence to set in, such as happened with RFCs 1518 and 1918. As demand starts to significantly exceed supply, we can expect to see regulation of that market, and I would invite you to take a look at your favorite RIR's rules for allocation of IPv4 address space. Without getting dramatic, I think it is fair to say that you have to have some pretty good proof that you used your previous allocation well and have a strong likelihood of using the new one well. In the final stages, a black market develops, one in which theft occurs (http://www.completewhois.com/hijacked/ hijacked_qa.htm), lawsuits are filed (For those interested, you may read the Kremen vs ARIN lawsuit here: http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache: 44uxmnEmJVkJ:www.internetgovernance.org/pdf/kremen.pdf+Kremen+Vs +ARIN&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1 ), and the commodity is directly traded among participants in the market at higher prices. The "price" of an IP address may not be a monetary cost, but in headaches encountered. In the final analysis, I don't think we will ever allocate the "last" IPv4 address. We will "price" them, for some definition of pricing, so high that nobody will be able to afford them.I do wish people would stop propagating that "MIT has more IP addresses than all of china" meme.To my shame, I'm the guy who originated that. When I showed the slide at ChinaInet 2000 that asserted that (and got the name of the school wrong), it was true. But my point was not that APNIC had committed some form of wrong-doing. That slide was one in a series that argued that China, where I was giving the talk, needed to get serious about Internet deployment, and that specifically to address the needs of a population of 1.5 billion people it would have to move in the direction of an IP address space with that many addresses - as adjusted by the H ratio. They needed to move into IPv6 as IPv4 would not have the address space they needed. I have seen that slide in talks selling my competitor's product, slides selling the ITU as an even broker in the Internet Governance debate (which I will believe after I find +886 in the enum database; geo-politics is keeping a recognized PSTN country code out of the enum database because the relevant communication region's status as a country is disputed and they are not a member of the ITU), and others. In most cases, I wonder whether they even know the origin of the slide. Of course, at this point China has quite a few more addresses than it did then. But the entire unallocated IPv4 address space doesn't have enough addresses to represent the Chinese educational system, much less China as a whole. The original argument is still valid. --------------------------------------------------------------- WWWhatsup NYC http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com ---------------------------------------------------------------
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- Area Codes (was Re: more on China Builds a Better Internet) David Farber (Sep 26)