[AusNOG] My Predictions for the ISP Industry

[Mark Newton]

On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 01:03:55AM +1100, Skeeve Stevens wrote:

 > There is NO killer app for IPv6 yet and there is unlikely to be
 > one for quite sometime.

Hmm.

As standards-breaking, expensive, end-user-hating CGN garbage gets
more and more entrenched into IPv4 networks, the killer app for 
IPv6 will be, "Not needing to deal with the mess that is IPv4."

There are a couple of other predictions I'll add to your scenario
which might make it a bit less gloomy.

I've done a couple of conference presentations where I've described
the post-exhaustion IPv4 market as similar to the market we'd have
if the last oil well had totally dried up, but we still had a 
few million barrels floating around the oceans undelivered in
tankers.

Growing demand, zero additional supply...  sounds a lot like IPv4,
right?

Things I'd expect to see:

  1 The price of oil would go through the roof.  It'd still be 
    available, but at prices that only insane people would be able
    to afford.

  2 The high price would stimulate new innovative techniques for
    doing what we need to do without oil, or with less oil.  So
    as the price rose, more efficient use of the resource would
    see the retail prices for products that use oil grow at a slower
    rate.

  3 As prices grow, alternatives which are currently uneconomic would
    start to look pretty good.  e.g., All those people raving on about
    how electric cars have no future because they're such an expensive
    mode of transport would look pretty silly when petrol costs $100
    per litre, and you can recharge your expensive-to-purchase electric
    car from flat for less than ten bucks, making opex dominate capex.

  4 The maturing of suddenly-cheaper alternatives would moderate demand
    for the exhausted resource.  Towards the end of the transition,
    I'd expect is price to be pretty low, because we'd be in a state
    where society didn't actually feel like they wanted/needed it anymore.

So, my predictive trends:

IPv4 price will spike, drive towards a peak, then plateau as CGN
technologies reach the market.

CGN will be more of a pain in the arse than anyone is capable of
predicting now, and will add opex to networks in the form of support,
rebuilding applications to work reliably, and all kinds of other 
"fringe" artefacts that nobody has considered.

As opex increases, eventually CFO's will start to look towards IPv6
migration as a way of getting out of the IPv4 hellhole.  "You mean 
that if we start migrating our customers to v6 now, and do it 
fast enough, we'll never need to buy another upgrade for our CGN
appliances?  Get to it, your deliverable is due next Friday."

IPv4 demand will then start to slacken, as IPv6 becomes mainstream.

Corollary:  If you're selling IPv4 address space, there'll be a 
pretty narrow window when you'll fetch the best price.  It isn't now;
but it sure as hell isn't ten years from now either.

  - mark