Re: quietly....

[Geoff Huston <gih () apnic net>]

On 02/02/2011, at 1:11 PM, Owen DeLong wrote:

> On Feb 1, 2011, at 3:54 PM, Lee Howard wrote:
>
> > > "People won't be able to access our site"
> > > sure helps but being unable to put a date on it still reduces incentive
> > > (especially when Management get involved, and especially if there is a
> > > financial outlay involving firewalls etc.).  
> >
> > Geoff generously provided a probabilistic sense for RIR runout:
> > http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4/rir.jpg
> > Pick your RIR and plot its runout date.  If it's ARIN, then the first
> > ISP is out of IPv4 addresses at most three months later (since ARIN 
> > now allocates for three months' need).  Of course, if demand increases,
> > these dates might change.
> >
> > Will users be unable to reach your content on $RIR_runout_date + 3?
> > They might have to get there through large-scale NAT.  That might
> > bother management if you rely on IP geo-location, or need to 
> > initiate connections downstream, or rate limit per IP address, or
> > have anti-DOS techniques measuring hits per source IP address, 
> > or have employees VPN in, or need to report intrusions, or any of
> > the many problems widely documented.
> >
> > Oh, and when I said to pick your RIR, I meant the RIR of users
> > who access your content.
> >
> > Lee
>
> I think there is a key problem with Geoff's graph.
>
> I think it fails to take into account the transitive probability of requests
> among the largest 3 regions. I agree that APNIC will probably run
> just about exactly as he predicts. I think, however, that the runout
> at APNIC will create a higher demand in ARIN and RIPE. Once that
> happens, their runout dates will get moved up much closer to
> the runout date of APNIC. As soon as the second of the three
> runs out, the remaining one will get another burst of acceleration.
>
> It does not appear to me that this probability is accounted for in the
> plots.
>
> Owen
>
> (Including Geoff because it's not fair to criticize his work behind his back)

Yes - a certain (X) percent of demand will shift out from a region once that region's stocks are depleted. What value X 
realistically takes is not something I can factor into these models, nor can I predict where this unmet demand may 
surface in the remaining regions. 

The future of IPv4 contains many uncertainties.

  Geoff