[AusNOG] IPv4 Exhaustion, APNIC EC, and James is a nice bloke ; -)

[Bevan Slattery]

> There are TV's and Amplifiers and other multimedia devices 
> coming onto the market (or already out) now with Ethernet 
> ports and TCP/IP stacks!

I've had an Integra Amplifier/Tuner etc with an inbuilt Ethernet *and*
RS232 port for over 4 years now.  I have a number of 'internet streams'
on my Radio presets and it just grabs the streams from there.  This was
a $3,000 amplifier.  Pretty cool.  Add this to 4 mod'ed X-Box's, a PVR,
3 laptops, 1 server, 1 PC, 2 Ethernet over Power adaptors, a DLINK
wireless ADSL router etc.  That's pretty much my home network.  Just
bought a couple of TV's today, one is Ethernet aware.  Who knows what
that means (actually it's supposed to be able to stream, but my
expectations are pretty low right now).

Does ANYONE in their right mind actually think I WANT to put some or any
(excluding DSL modem) of these devices on public addresses?  Really?  If
I did then I would have to give a crap and pull out the manual and
figure out how to upgrade the firmware (regularly and manually) and
force password changes regularly too.  This isn't including my kids 3
Nintendo DS and possibly the Nintendo Wii coming for XMAS.

Just stupid.

As for IPv4 exhaustion - can someone please get some sanity and pull
back some of the address space given back in the days when Yoda was
playing soccer with Jesus for Jerusalem?

http://maps.measurement-factory.com/gallery/Routeviews/

Does anyone seriously think certain US corporate and educational
organisations actually EACH need more address space than say, Australia
and NZ combined?  Really?  GE, HP, DEC, Apple, IBM, MIT etc..?  In a
world of over 6 billion people the US with a population 300 million or
5% of same, controls about 25% of the address space. It's pretty crazy.

Perhaps if we assign carbon credits to IP addresses and made it 'cool'
to conserve, then some rationale would enter the discussion and we find
that the finite resource we have would last much, much longer than
anticipated.  But alas IPv6 is now becoming a necessity and it will only
be after a Nintendo DS (4th generation IPv6 capable) botnet is created
that some people will realise the shortcomings of same.

[b]