[address-policy-wg] A comment on 2008-03 & 2007-09

David Conrad wrote:
> Suppose we fast forward to ~2011 and you've just been rejected by 
> RIPE-NCC because they have no more address space to hand out whereas 
> AfriNIC and LACNIC both have (at least) a full /8.
> 
> I'm curious: what do you think is going to happen?

As you note, the concept of "fairness" is a rather difficult notion. 
Neither 2008-03 nor 2007-09 are going to stop the inevitable squabbling 
that's going to happen: "It's not fair - they have a /8 and we don't 
have any.  Waah!", or "I'm not going to share my /8 with you.  No, you 
CAN'T HAVE IT!  Waah!  I'm going to tell on you!!  Daaaaaddddyyyyyyy!"

Of course, I don't want to trivialise the problem - it is rather a 
serious one. But fair is generally perceived as fair for someone when 
they benefit more from the arrangement than anyone else.  Otherwise 
"fair" is not remotely fair.  Perhaps "fair" just means what we want it 
to mean at a particular point in time, and from the point of view of 
deciding on a end-game v4 address pool distribution strategy, what we 
define as "fair" now may not be perceived as fair when one's local RIR 
runs out of addresses.

I have a preference for 2007-09 over 2008-03 - at least the former has 
the advantage that the RIR exhaustion dates are more-or-less 
simultaneous worldwide, which is equally (in)equitable to all.  RIR 
exhaustion will happen quickly and it will cause a shock, and then we'll 
just have to move on.  As regards 2008-03, I'm not going to object to 
it, but I suspect it is more likely to cause protracted disgruntlement 
in the future until every last block of address space has been allocated 
from all RIRs, and this could be a matter of a year or two.  But there 
you go: the proposal is popular in all other regions and each RIR 
community is fully within its remit to hoist itself on its own petard.

As a side issue, it will be interesting to see in a couple of years time 
whether the loudest complainers (whether end-user or LIR) in the v4 
exhausted world will be those who have made the most preparations for 
depletion.

Nick