[address-policy-wg] RE: The price of address space

David and all,

  Good comments and thoughts here.  Indeed the RIR were created
in a time of abundance and even than much discussion was ongoing
about too liberal of a allocation policy.  Those arguments and proposals
for being conservative than were not well received very well.  Now
the price is being paid and pain felt accordingly.  Still, recovery of
IPv4 excess allocations or unused allocations is possible all be it
perhaps difficult, buy the RIR's.  Seems though that motivation in
doing so by the RIR's is very low if such exists at all any more.
Such is a shame.  If this is not done or resumed, a black market
for IPv4 address space will/is likely to flourish.  That would/is
not a healthy thing IMHO...

David Conrad wrote:

> Michael,
>
> On Jul 22, 2009, at 2:50 PM, <michael.dillon at bt.com> <michael.dillon at bt.com
>  > wrote:
> > Equilibrium? When I learned basic economics, scarcity caused
> > prices to rise. After IPv4 runout, every block sold just makes
> > IPv4 addresses scarcer which means that there will be no equilibrium,
>
> > just increases until nobody can afford to pay the price.
>
> Which is an equilibrium.  Not that this would occur, of course.  You
> seem to believe there is no constraint on the price of IPv4
> addresses.  This is silly.
>
> If you are an enterprise, how many public IPv4 addresses do you really
> need?  How many of your machines could be renumbered at some cost into
> RFC 1918 space and put behind a NAT?  If you are an ISP, how many
> addresses do you give your customers by default?  How many do they
> really need?  How much internal infrastructure is numbered in public
> IPv4 that could be renumbered into RFC 1918 space (or better yet,
> renumbered into IPv6) if you could somehow find someone to pay for it?
>
> As the cost of IPv4 goes up, there will be increasing incentives to
> make more efficient use of the address space.  People will consolidate
> their address holdings, putting their allocated-but-unused IPv4
> address onto the market.  Since this is increasing the supply of
> usable IPv4 addresses, this will tend to drive the price down.
>
> > Then the whole thing comes crashing down when IPv6 gathers enough
> > momentum and people start releasing large amounts of IPv4 addresses.
>
> And you don't believe the anticipation of IPv6 deployment would have a
> depressive effect on an IPv4 market?
>
> > We could prohibit 3rd part transfers
>
> How? Given a choice between turning customers away or paying (say)
> $100,000 for a legacy /16, what do you think most ISPs would choose?
>
> > We have a cartel today and the price is zero.
>
> No it isn't. RIR membership is not free and the real costs are hidden
> in bureaucracy.  The whole reason a black market exists is because
> some people believe those costs are too high.
>
> > It's been like
> > that for many years now and nobody is complaining or investigating
> > the RIRs.
>
> People do complain, but that's not really relevant.  We're dealing
> with a fundamental shift in the environment.  The RIRs were created
> during a period of resource abundance.  It should be obvious by now
> that the policies created in that environment aren't particular
> applicable to an environment of resource scarcity.  As for
> investigations, they may come later, depending on what the RIRs do in
> the future.  Hint: some folks don't look highly on cartels that block
> free competitive markets (for good or ill).
>
> Regards,
> -drc

Regards,

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