[AusNOG] IPv4

[Bevan Slattery]

James,

Thanks for the excellent and detailed response.  I'll respond inline.

From: James Spenceley <james at iroute.org<mailto:james at iroute.org>>
Date: Saturday, 2 March 2013 5:55 PM

"Think about this, some countries have more IPv4 addresses than the number of people and other countries don't have nearly enough for even those that are currently online. Did you know in China many subscribers have to keep trying to connecting to their fixed broadband provider to attempt to get an IP address, it's just like the old days when your ISP oversold their dialup ports. "

And we wonder why there is a real risk that the ITU want to take over ICANN?  Read below

"Is it fair that the more developed countries that had access to de-reguatlion, technology and capital earlier managed to get almost all the address space ? "

Possibly it was a resource to allocate – however it was a resource allocated with no financial consequence.  The developed countries had our snout in the trough with some unfortunate initial allocation decisions where Government Agencies and US companies such as AT&T, Ditigal/HP and others were allocated more address space than entire continents and then the remaining space has been allocated on a first come-first served basis with no appreciation of the value of the resource, nor the fact it has little ability to be re-assigned or recalled easily.  Pay an extra $x,000 per year and you can own your own /9 doesn't.  Early adopters made applications to their registries for more space than they needed knowing this was coming.  This is "good planning" on their part, but poor allocation management and frankly a fundamental and negligent failure on the part of the registries.

"Should we now price this scarce resource prohibitively high for those countries that are in the process of turning on vast numbers of new subscribers, or price it prohibitively high for all but the biggest ISPs/Telco in developing countries ? What  exactly will competition and thus broader access and lower pricing enabling more people equal access to the wonders, education and opportunities (sound like rhetoric but it is actually true) the Internet brings."

I didn't say you should price it prohibitively high.  Where did I say that?  How is $1 per IPv4 per annum address high?  We are talking around $0.08 per month per IP address.

"The APNIC board has to deal with countries that are developed, where the APNIC fees are considered ridiculously small and balance that with a huge part of the region (and vastly more of the population) where the fee converted into local currency is considered a barrier. "

You do realise the countries you are talking about pay around $2,000-$4,000 per month for 1Mbps of IP transit?  They would only pay for the addresses they use and once they go IPv6 then there is no payment at all.  So what about now?  They can't get space for love or money?

"We have to deal with big incumbent providers who have almost limitless resources as well as competitive providers who battle against those larger providers. Bev as you know better than most it is the competitive providers that push the boundaries and innovate products, Do we really want to price such new and/or smaller providers out of their markets, or at the very least make the barrier to resources higher for them ?"

Again $1/annum per IPv4 address.  Are you seriously saying this will create a barrier for entry for anyone?  It might hurt incumbents more, but that only applies while they are using IPv4.  And if they aren't using the address space THEN HAND IT BACK!   What is the alternative – a train crash.

"As the person on the APNIC board mostly responsible for the Resource allocation fee reduction, I'd like to try and explain a little more about it. If your perspective is simply Australia and what Australian new members are doing,  sure it doesn't make a lot of sense but hopefully the above might make you think broader."

Like I said before – if ICANN/APNIC want to have a reasonable argument against the ITU taking over the address space they should be more concerned about getting that IPv4 space out of the hands of those who are hogging space and don't need it.  HP/DEC do the right thing and get yourself into a /18 instead of the 2 x /8 that you have.  Some of the Australian and international Universities how about you do the right thing and stop hogging a ridiculous amount of IPv4 resources.  But the registries seem not interested in doing this possibly out of self interest and this number illustrates the point perfectly:

"USA has 42% of all IPv4 addresses and 5.24 addresses per capita."

Wasteful and disrespectful to the many nations out there that can't.  Like I said, if you don't want the ITU to take this over then the registries better get a better handle on where the angst is coming from.  The inaction and failure of managing the IPv4 resources for the international community.

"But the cupboards are bare. I think the RIRs and the community have been pretty considered in their policies given what we inheirited (remeber InterNIC used to give out /8s to anyone that asked, heck GIH used to give out /16s if you emailed him) - Sorry to drag you in Geoff :). "

They are only bare because the registries are incapable of making the tough decisions to "manage" not just allocate a pool of resources.  And that's the point.  It is a pool of resources that are to be managed.

"The fact we even have address space to allocate to new members is a result of a lot of work over a number of years to hold back the final /8 to allocate to new members (It wasn't always a popular proposal). If this hadn't been done, all the address space that these new members are getting in the 56 economies would simply have gone to a handful of the largest mobile carriers in the region. Bev, NextDC (and thousands of other new businesses and innovative kids in garages etc) wouldn't have their own address space today if the RIR community hadn't planned this far ahead and been responsible with the final crumbs in the cupboard. "

Well 2 years ago NEXTDC was one of the first to get the ration of a /22.  Good fun when you are operating 5 data centres across Australia.  Now I would like to start another business and again I might get my /22.  I don't think I should be thanking the registries for letting me have a /22 I think I should be saying why are we in a position where some organisations have a ridiculous amount of space that's just not being used and yet new organisations are screwed?  How do we change that?  How do we more effectively manage this finite resource?

"I'm all for promoting IPv6, I'm sure you know Vocus offered free 1mbps of IPv6 to any ISP or Telco in Australia for many years but you have to consider the effects of what you are proposing. Absolutely it will promote IPv6 adoption. However making IPv4 mildly or somewhat annoyingly more expensive for Australian members, you would quite likely stop many new members outside Australia getting IPv4 space, you could see many competitive telcos/ISPs in developing countries give their IPv4 space back. "

We might James – but also we might not.

"So the effect would be that those who are least able to afford it, but probably doing the most for their markets would either go out of business or become IPv6 only, the rest of the Internet (AT&T, Telstra, Verizon, Singtel, NTT etc) doesn't really care about them, so they continue on, focused as ever only on IPv4. At an economy level, countries that have the least IP space today and the most of amount of users yet to come online would be the least able to afford the new rates. Potentially you have relegated many people who could benefit the most from access (think life changing, rather than updating their facebook) to a less than useful IPv6 only Internet. "

Well guess what?  Today the incumbents in developed countries have their fill and the emerging telcos at those countries at the bottom of your list do not.  $1/annum/IP is the cost of getting connected to IPv4.  I'd suggest that many large and middle tier providers being handed $200,000 - $16m bills each year for IP address space they aren't using will probably provide some address space to those that have no chance of getting any regardless.  Also the cost of IP and connectivity to these countries is very small.  Who knows, the Asia Development Bank, United Nations or World Bank might even pick up the tab.

"Now you might thinking I'm overstating the case, and I concede might be"

Facts would be helpful.  Weren't you just saying people in Chinese are playing DHCP roulette due to IPv4 rationing?  Do you think they'd pay $1/IP/annum to let users access the internet  and the same applies to those with millions upon millions of IP addresses while IPv6 gets real?

Different thinking and probably too brave.  Best to let the train crash
into the wall and point fingers after the fact.

"The train crashed a long time ago, we are now dealing with the crash in the best possible way while trying to keep things moving for those still at the stations behind the crash. (last analogy) :)"

Sorry but I disagree because (1) firstly the train has not crashed yet (at least here in Australia) and (2) the registries are not dealing with it the best way possible.  They have just allocated all the space to their existing paying members who are on the committee and are conflicted or the organisations  themselves are structurally impotent in trying to actually come forward with a solution for a soft landing.  Again it's been allocated, but it's not being managed.

So can I ask:
(1) what has APNIC/ARIN etc. done to recover massive blocks IPv4 that were over-allocated (in hindsight) years ago to the detriment of the global community?; and
(2) what has APNIC/ARIN   done to manage and encourage responsible use and economic incentive for people to more effectively use this finite resource and migrate to IPv6?  I mean migrate as in leave :)
(3) Does anyone have access to a table/image that shows what amount of address space is actually sitting wastefully idle?

Appreciate your detailed and excellent response James.  I just disagree fundamentally that the registries are managing the IPv4 resource properly.

[b]


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