[address-policy-wg] 2007-08: response to ETNO position

> Just browsing through your response one item immediately 
> sticks out: is there a commitment from ETNO in here that 
> their members would immediately return unused IPv4 space ? 

ETNO can't make that kind of commitment. If RIPE wanted to ask
its LIRs to make such a commitment, then that would be interesting.
However, my comment is an attempt to clarify that the current
framework for IP address block transfers does include returning
blocks to RIPE for reallocation.

> That'd be great - if IPv6 were to be deployed fully by all 
> ETNO members in the next 2 years, which you think is easily 
> achievable, we'd never run out of space.

I never said anything about full deployment of IPv6. All we need
in order for IPv4 address blocks to be returned is for IPv6 deployment
to be slightly more than normal network growth. If you assume that IPv4
deployment has been going on for about 10 years, then normal growth
would not be more than one tenth of full deployment.

Also note that even less IPv6 deployment than that, will be enough
to reduce the consumption of IPv4 address blocks and thus, extend
the lifetime of IPv4 well beyone 2 years. In fact, we may never run
out of IPv4 addresses if IPv6 deployment happens fast enough. Since
new product development status is generally considered highly
confidential,
we really don't know how much any companies have done to prepare for
this
so we really cannot reasonably estimate how long it will take. I'm not
sure
if anyone has paid the research companies like Gartner, Forrester, Ovum,
etc
to go around and check on the status of IPv6. It would be interesting to
know if anyone has any fact-based estimates of how long it would take
the
IP network industry to deploy enough IPv6 service to cut their IPv4
consumption
in half, and therefore push the end-date for IPv4 out in the future, 5
to 6 years
from now.

> I'm asking because it is exactly the opposite of what 
> representatives of a lot of ETNO members have been telling me 
> in private.

I'm not sure that most of the ETNO representatives would be in a
position to
know this within their companies. And if they did know, I expect most of
them
would not be allowed to say anything definite. And of course, if you ask
the wrong
questions, then any answers are worthless. 

I don't think that any major ISP in any country would be able
(technically and 
commercially) to deploy IPv6 FULLY before 5 years from now. That's based
on the
history of IPv4 deployment and how long it took for various networking
issues to
be solved to the point where most people receive a fast and reliable
Internet
access service. Or IP-VPN service. Or private IP internetwork service.

But we don't need full deployment in order to address the problem of
IPv4 exhaustion.
We just need enough deployment to slow down IPv4 consumption, and we
need that
deployment to be continuous with a slightly increasing rate so that it
becomes
business-as-usual for most IP network operators. There will be a period
where
vendors of routers, firewalls, access gateways, and software work
through a long list
of minor (and occasionally major issues) which block deployment in one
way or another.
That process is what will take about 5 years to get through at which
point some network
operators (not all of them) will be able to fully deply IPv6 to all of
their PoPs
and across all of their acess technologies.

It doesn't help anything when people demand that network operators
accomplish the
impossible. This is a shared journey that requires cooperative work from
a lot
of organizations in order to make IPv6 fully usable. There is no doubt
that we
will all take that journey, but not everybody travels at the same speed.

--Michael Dillon

P.S. here's a quote from a message that I posted to ARIN's policy
mailing
list about a year ago.

I expect that we will see 3-4 years of IPv6 deployment, followed by 10
years or so in which IPv4 usage steadily reduces and IPv6 steadily
rises. Then in about 14-15 years we will begin a period of consolidation
in which there is an effort to retire IPv4 on the public Internet and in
corporate/enterprise networks. Give this another 10 years, which means
that in about 25 years, IPv4 will be considered end-of-life. At that
point, general purpose networking gear will cease to support IPv4,
however it is possible that new IPv4 devices will continue to be built
for special uses. Even today, it is not hard for an undergraduate
student to build their own IPv4 router using off-the-shelf parts and
open-source software. Even ASICs are available off-the-shelf in the form
of FPGAs and one can expect that in 25 years this type of thing becomes
even easier and cheaper. So IPv4 may linger on for a few generations
hidden inside MP3 player headsets and heel computers (inside your
running shoes) and concert posters.