Oliver and all, Excellent comments and remarks here, IMHO. Another problem with transiting to IPv6 is the security and privacy aspect that has of late not been widely discussed. As a security professional I know from many discussions that this aspect is both controversial but yet very real as well and it worries providers especially due to the legal cost aspect. Again as you rightly say the *money* aspect. Businesses of whatever type are inherently risk averse, IPv6 presents a high risk factor that has no known or broadly excepted mitigation factors to date, killer apps not withstanding. But there are alternatives, IPv8 or fixing IPv6 as well as making IPv6 more affordable to transit to. This will require public money, which is scarce at present, the US is broke and in debt and as a nation the biggest patsy of the world for the past 50+ years. Maybe China can not fill that role? Than again maybe not, they prefer IPv9. Lets face it folks, the Internet is going to change in ways that no longer is grounded in the status quo, be that self regulation or nationalization and a throw back to independent private networks that may or may not be interconnected or only very selectively so. Whichever is the case, self regulation is dead after arrival, and whatever emerges, will not be what we all have known the Internet to be these past 10 years or so... Technology and social evolution is inevitable... Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond wrote:
All:
Although I am not representing any registry and although this is my first post here, I have been reading through the archives of address-policy-wg and found a lot of the "usual suspects". This is not criticism, on the contrary, I think it's great that people are taking part in the discussions in each part of the world, but I do apologise to those who have already read my proposal below. I am sending here, in the hope that there might be some who haven't read it yet & who might wish to comment. Indeed, I am consulting each RIR discussion list separately, because I feel there might be local & cultural issues specific to each region. I might be wrong. Please don't shoot me. For one, I see the discussion about Millions of IP addresses lying idle having made it here as well & similar feedback wrt to it being flawed. However, I have also seen a lot about IPv4 address re-allocation but very little about IPv6 migration. So...
Through discussions I've had with dozens of people (some of whom are reading this message), I have noticed the following:
- currently, neither IPv4 nor IPv6 address delegation are directly linked to any kind of significant recurent *annual* fee; - some ISPs are considering introducing IPv6 connectivity to customers *for a premium* rather than IPv4 (yes, sadly, it's true); - we've had 10+ years of slogan "we are running out of IPv4 addresses" and this has not "hit the spot" to get a transitional process going; - sadly, there is a lack of IPv6 "killer ap" to promote the use of IPv6 over IPv4; - availability of several IPv6 "islands" exist on the Internet, with very poor "trans-island" connectivity (although I am told that this is s-l-o-w-l-y improving - and that's good news); - a lot of stigmas are associated with IPv6 (our customers do not request it; there is no demand; etc.)
Clearly, we could all go on talking for another 10 years about IPv6. But we don't have 10 years. So what's the hurdle?
Let's be fair, folks, it all boils down to a question of *money*.
v4 to v6 transition is seen as an expensive exercise. Darn, with hardware, software & training, transition is expensive! Had it been cheap, we wouldn't be in the *utter mess* that we are in today because it would have been a natural thing to do.
So we are going to run out of "greenfield IPv4" addresses by, say, 25 Dec 2010. Or earlier. Or later. Whatever. What we know is that we'll run out. <Boom>.
IPv4 addresses will become a limited commodity. Speculators are going to step in, and they are likely to do it at a shockingly fast speed. (eg. Cantel & Siegel's Green Card Lottery announced mass spamming; the sex.com case announced the worth of domain names).
My suggestion (and others have already touched on the idea) is therefore to engage a study of the following "positive discrimination" proposal:
1. Introducing a *recurrent annual* cost-element to IPv4 addresses, the reason behind it being: making v6 cheaper to run than v4. This could be a small cost to start with, increasing significantly but steadily along a scale for the next few years. This should act more as a *deterrent* for the use of IPv4 in the future than as a "tax" to be paid now. Heck, it might even start cleaning up IPv4 space and giving us more time to transit to v6 through the release of more IPv4 space! Those effects are hard to predict.
2. Building a v4 to v6 neutral & non-for-profit transition fund from the IPv4 revenue. This fund could finance/subsidise the following: a. the initial bridging of the IPv6 islands until those would be able to fly commercially b. IPv6 tech training c. any other project that would trigger/help v4 to v6 transition
If we do not make IPv6 more interesting financially, we risk failure to transit smoothly. This will cause a *much greater problem* than Domain speculation since IP addressing constitutes the very fabric of the Internet:
1. Panic in operators who might then try and grab as much v4 space as possible, thus compounding the problem; 2. Panic transition from v4 to v6 which will completely forego the transition testing period which Peter Kirstein (UCL London) has mentioned many times, thus introducing instability in the Internet; 3. A lack of fully qualified technicians & engineers to run IPv6 networks; 4. A "free" market for IPv4 addresses where prices quickly spiral out of control.
I am trying to look for a solution which will ease the shock by instead smoothly raising prices. A totally unregulated increase is to be feared. The rate of increase might have a greater impact than the price itself - see oil prices if you're not convinced: we can "survive" with oil at $140 a barrel, but we are hurt by the price going quickly from $70 a barrel to $140. It messes the world's economy up because it changes the balance at once in all of our business models.
I don't believe in self-regulation by the market - it opens itself to serious abuse, in the same way Wall Street bankers abused the system and look where this led us?
IPv4 is a *serious* show-stopper wrt the Internet's future development. The Internet we are seeing today is still primarily accessed by computers but tomorrow, and tomorrow isn't far away, we're going to see increased use by mobile devices. There are also now several commercial products out there to access your home PC remotely. Next on the tab is the concept of having a home multimedia server that can be accessed remotely. And then we fall into consumer electronics - new TVs are now all digital-enabled & the rest of the "home entertainment" system is quickly becoming all digital. The "young generations" do not know CDs - their music travels on digital music players & laptops. And then comes the "Network of things" where sensors will talk to each other. This is just about to hit us, and our dinosaur IPv4 will be as suited to this as the steam engine is to the modern hydrid car. IPv6 will enable us to have cheap devices all connected to the Internet.
With instability creeping in the system, we risk several high profile technical failures with repercussions not dissimilar to the current failures in the banking sector. Do we really want this?
I shall be going to the ICANN Cairo conference and would be happy to discuss these matters in person. Come on, let's do something about this impending doom. I've lived the DOTCOM boom years and met with teenagers who told me they were going to conquer the world - *and they did*. IPv6 has the ability to infuse a breath of life in Internetting & the Internet Economy worldwide - on every continent. Seize the day. Don't wait until someone tells you that you've failed.
Sorry for the length of the message & thanks for reading,
Olivier
-- Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond, Ph.D. E-mail:<ocl@gih.com> | http://www.gih.com/ocl.html
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