RE: Only 5x IPv4 /8 remaining at IANA

["George Bonser" <gbonser () seven com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ben Butler [mailto:ben.butler () c2internet net]
> Sent: Friday, October 22, 2010 8:40 AM
> To: NANOG
> Subject: RE: Only 5x IPv4 /8 remaining at IANA
>
> " see a potential result of huge swathes of v4 resources reusable by
> these companies, probably dwarfing the reclaimable resources most any
> other provider without a similar customer profile will have."
>
> See this is at the hub of it as well, is it a reusable resource, or is
> it an obsolete one?  Should it be getting resused for multi-homeing or
> content providers, or should it be retired by the ISP that has migrated
> their subs onto v6?
>
> I think if we continue with a mind set that v4 is a previous resource
> and once I have freed it up by moving to v6 I must hang onto it and of
> course if I have got some free I best deploy it again for a new
> customer - this seems completely circular to me.  I think the question
> is:
>
> 1> Are we attempting to migrate from IPv4 to IPv6 and end up at a place
> ultimately where IPv4 is fully intended to be retired.
>
> Or
>
> 2> Are we simply intending to extend the address space with IPv6 and
> continue to pretty much carry on business as normal with existing IPv4
> deployments in any meaningly foreseeable time frame and run a dual
> stack network.  Further more that it is ok to reutilize any free up
> IPv4 space along the way as we are never planning on retiring it
> anyway.

If, after run out, most new deployments are done in v6 and if end users are being migrated to v6 wholesale by such 
organizations as the Comcasts of the world, who would *want* to deploy a new operation in v4 space?  If the native 
packets of the users need to be translated in some way to v4 in order to reach you, the apparent performance of 
someone's operation is ultimately limited by the performance of whatever is doing that translation, wherever that 
device is (either at your end or the other end).

The migration out of v4 will go pretty quickly once there is a compelling business reason for that to take place such 
as the people buying your product or the people who you want to buy your product are on v6 or your partners with whom 
you need to transact are on v6.  Once a few large groups of users are native v6, once v4 has run out, once enough 
popular destinations are v6 capable, there is no longer a justification for deploying v4 in new operations.  The 
problem changes from having to justify v6 to having to justify v4.  Once THAT takes place, there is no need to issue 
more v4 space as the total v4 traffic across the internet will quickly drop and people who are not v6 capable at that 
point will be scrambling to catch up.