[address-policy-wg] 2007-08 review phase comments

michael.dillon at bt.com wrote:
> this includes market regulators. I think that we all want RIPE
> to continue the process of industry self regulation in IP addressing
> because the IPv4 shortage is just a temporary problem that will
> go away when IPv6 is widely deployed.

With respect, there is no guarantee that ipv6 will be taken up as a 
solution to the ipv4 depletion problem.  It is certainly one option, but 
there are others such as provider NAT and LISP.  Who knows, there may be 
multiple solutions deployed?  In fact, it's quite likely that there will be 
many different approaches taken.

> This proposal enables the sale of IP addresses as property, 
> even though it keeps the financial details secret.

This will happen regardless of whether the RIRs get involved or not.

> The only way that this chaotic situation could come to pass would
> be if many ISPs of a significant size, started to buy and sell
> IP addresses. ETNO contains many of the largest ISPs in Europe
> and they say that they will not do this.

Michael, I really don't believe for a moment that ETNO members are going to 
keep away from the IPv4 market when it comes into being, regardless of the 
current ETNO position in these times of plenty.  While you and other people 
like you and me are - to one degree or another - against the whole notion 
of a market, if a shortage of IPv4 address space starts taking its toll on 
a company's financials, the decision to purchase more address space will be 
taken away from the technical departments and assumed by the business 
development departments (and perhaps your boards of management/directors) 
in your companies.

> In addition, we are
> entering a period of IPv4 address shortage which means that most
> ISPs of any size will not have any IP addresses to sell unless
> they can get a price significantly above what they can earn by
> using the IP addresses to sell services. These are very real
> forces and they serve to limit chaos. I would prefer for RIPE
> to wait and see if there is increasing evidence of descent into
> chaos before taking actions like 2007-08.

By the time chaos arrives, it will be too late.  Rescuing oneself 
retroactively from chaos is much more difficult than taking a more 
proactive approach from the beginning.

> Adaptation is good, just not in the directions defined by 
> 2007-08. For instance, 2007-08 allows the addresses to be
> transferred without disclosure of any of the details of the
> transaction, for instance price paid. This lack of transparency
> would lead to addressing cartels and is not consistent with
> the principles of OPEN self regulation.

I would see it as likely that most ipv4 address space will be auctioned 
using either a highest bid (i.e. most fully open auctions) or a perturbed 
second highest bid approach (i.e. the ebay auction method) And again, 
whether or not the prices are disclosed is completely orthogonal to whether 
the RIRs get involved.

>> I don't think that there are very many people who really want 
>> an address space market; however, given the circumstances, it 
>> would seem to me and many others that it is the least bad of 
>> a small number of problematic ways of dealing with a severe 
>> constriction of IPv4 address space supply.
> 
> Seems to me that the least bad way is to deploy IPv6. There are
> at least two or three years left to do this, and it does not require
> replacing very much infrastructure. No need to panic.

This is off-topic for APWG, but IPv6 deployment will almost certainly not 
happen until the latest possible moment. And there are other more important 
and more costly issues associated with deploying an ipv6 internet than just 
rolling out new hardware and coming up with an addressing plan.

Nick
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