On Jul 20, 2009, at 1:49 PM, David Conrad wrote:

Tom,

On Jul 20, 2009, at 4:28 AM, tvest@eyeconomics.com wrote:

...

To illustrate, I've never heard anyone claim that the *only* reason why it was a good idea to move from NCP addressing to classful IP was to enable competition.

I would be quite surprised if any of the participants in that transition even considered competition as a reason.

...

Ditto, the move from classful IP to CIDR; then as before, the prospect of continuous competition (including competition by emerging new entrants) was just one of many reasons to support the preservation of addressing and routing system openness.

Err, a bit too much revisionism here.

I don't recall anyone suggesting "continuous competition" as a reason for moving from classfull to CIDR. In fact, CIDR was often and loudly criticized for constraining competition due to the implied provider lock in. As far as I remember, people pushing the transition were primarily interested in keeping their routers from falling over. CIDR was merely a short term hack to deal with the proliferation of class Cs being allocated since class Bs were running out. After all, IPng was going to be the savior of all things routing.

I suppose you could argue that keeping the Internet working meant there could be competition, but that's stretching things a bit far IMHO.

Hi David, Thanks for the response. I actually agree -- probably should have written that competition was never more than one of many reasons that someone (anyone) *might have* supported those earlier transitions. That said, if you look back at my original response you'll note that I was actually arguing *against* transition rationales based narrowly on "competition" questions. The alternative that I proposed was transition to preserve the "openness of the internet addressing and routing system," especially to new entrants. I think that the majority of reasons for supporting the previous transitions (i.e., previous impositions of new technical requirements on incumbent network operators), as well as for supporting IPv6, would fit neatly under this rubric. And while your own description of the past circumstances didn't use those specific terms, I believe that the phenomena of "proliferation of class Cs being allocated" and "class Bs running out" that you referred to were both driven in part by demand from initial allocation seekers, a.k.a. "new entrants" -- i.e., we agree on this point. Of course, during any given duration the majority of newly allocated/ assigned IP addresses are probably going to "incumbents" (subsequent allocation seekers), but that's consistent with patterns of growth in every other industry, i.e., it's basically a demographic of statistical artifact of cumulative growth processes (granted, one that can be influenced by various policies). The important distinction, at least until now, is that the growth/IP addressing demand of incumbents was not incompatible with the continued openness of the addressing and routing system to non-incumbents/new entrants. And of course, I wouldn't have expected these sorts of arguments to figure prominently in IETF et al. meetings and discussion back in the 1980s-1990s. In the main, we're not a bunch of economists and policy makers by profession -- and even those of us who are generally know better than to phrase our technology and policy advocacy in such alien and unsympathetic terms... most of us anyway. However, even if "openness of the internet addressing and routing system" was never the most popular/resonant rallying cry for specific technology changes, that doesn't mean that this general idea wasn't an important motivator or an influential part of the unspoken context. And even if that sounds implausible too, it still doesn't mean that the *fact* that such openness was preserved, intentionally or otherwise, didn't play an important role in the success of the system to date. Although the verdict of history is never truly final, to me industry openness looks a lot like a universal correlate (i.e., a necessary if not sufficient cause) behind the durability of industry self-governance. If that turns out to be true, then there could be a lot more at stake in the current transition tussle than just the fate of the IP address registries. Regards, TV

On Jul 21, 2009, at 5:04 AM, Eliot Lear wrote:

Hi Tom,

...

Thanks for the response. I actually agree -- probably should have written that competition was never more than one of many reasons that someone (anyone) *might have* supported those earlier transitions. That said, if you look back at my original response you'll note that I was actually arguing *against* transition rationales based narrowly on "competition" questions. The alternative that I proposed was transition to preserve the "openness of the internet addressing and routing system," especially to new entrants.

Sure! I particularly like the idea, for instance, of using LISP or other similar technology to enable end systems to move within the topology without having to pollute the global BGP table. But I do feel a Hal Varien moment coming on: are incentives aligned for the right things to happen?

Hi Eliot, [note well: what follows represents personal opinion** only] Thanks for (re) injecting these questions. On the "Hal question," I interpret the current state of affairs as as a weak indicator that incentives are on balance (i.e., far from perfectly) aligned. That said, I would never have allowed myself to get stuck in this rather uncomfortable position if I believed that that balance of incentives were actually aligned toward a sustainable outcome.

If not, can they be so aligned? Our earlier work pointed out that there is a limit to the efficacy of RIR policies. So what tools do we really have?

Incentive alignment might qualify as a "normal" engineering challenge under other circumstances. In this case the task is abnormally complicated by (a) the apparent absence of strong internal consensus** or other means of identifying the common goal, and also by (b) the absence of half of the engineering tool box (i.e., all carrots, no sticks -- and while our carrots may be very nutritious, no one has ever accused them of being irresistibly delicious). Ideally, our unique community decision making (aka consensus-seeking) mechanism would provide a means for overcoming these challenges, by providing a forum where contending views on both policy means and policy ends are exposed to cross-examination. However, in this case, I have a feeling** that only one side of the debate is actually being presented openly. If we were to take the decreasing frequency of open, public objections to IPv6 transition/integration as a de facto indication of support for such a move (which seems to be a common feature of the consensus-seeking process, at least toward the end stages of policy development), my guess is that we'd probably expect the transition to be much further long, and to be happening at a much faster, and at a more rapidly accelerating pace than available evidence would seem to suggest. So, am I just fundamentally wrong on some point of fact or interpretation, or it is possible that some unknown share of the apparently widespread non-objection (i.e., the proverbial "dogs that don't bark") actually reflect some (equally unknown) number of unannounced decisions in favor of non-transition? I don't even pretend to know the answer. But my doubts have prompted me to take what seems to be the most institutionally appropriate action -- to capitalize on the one good (and perhaps unique) "tool" that we do possess, i.e., to use our community deliberative mechanisms to try to present a positive case *for* a timely and orderly transition. Though I may be lacking in the skills required to wield them effectively, for now they remain the best (maybe only) tools that I have at my disposal.

Again, returning to the LISP example, it's a technology advance that is a potential Over-The-Top play that could align interests (not that I've done the analysis, but that's my off-the-cuff thought, something to be wary about).

I think that this possibility merits much more thorough and systematic consideration. My (quite possibly under-informed) impression is that widespread adoption of LISP might improve matters substantially in several ways, e.g., (1) by providing the majority of origin-only/self- service routing providers with an opportunity to economize by vacating the DFZ, (2) by reducing the likely ongoing demand for DFZ participation (and al that that implies in terms of RIB/FIB scalability) by permanently eliminating such participation as an involuntary requirement for self-service routing providers, and (3) by reducing the impediments to renumbering, which hypothetically might contribute to the absolute volume of transferable IPv4 resources available to aspiring new entrants in the post-IPv4 exhaustion era. If this is not too far off, then (assuming LISP succeeds on all of the above counts) I might still be curious about the (extent of the) dynamic aspects of LISP's scalability advantages (e.g., how much of the expected DFZ gains derive from the one-time payoff arising from the voluntarily exit of non-transit providers, and how much/ for how long would the remaining uncommitted DNZ capacity be likely to remain "open" to future new entrants?). Also, even if LISP ultimately succeeds in making 99% of current IPv4 assignments technically unnecessary, I would not expect that fact to automatically/inevitably or dramatically alter the "scarcity premium" that IPv4 will likely command in any future in which IPv4 remains non- substitutable for any critical industry functions or roles, and protocol resource numbers are (re)distributed exclusively through market mechanisms. Recall that back in the late 1990s, very few people actually new that 99+% of even the initial lit capacity across all of the segments of all of the recently deployed optical systems was completely idle. Prices didn't start to take their substantial (!) downward turn, and corresponding "productive capacity utilization" rates didn't start to really explode until the actual facts surrounding those supply condition were inadvertently revealed a few years later, in the course of a few unanticipated distressed asset sales, legal investigations, etc. In general I think that the assumption that there is any automatic or inevitable or guaranteed relationship of any meaningful and reliable kind between supply and demand has been largely discredited by history. Markets often work quite well, and (perhaps) well-designed and competently tended markets tend to work even more-better-more-often (?). But I think that the era when anyone can assume that the mere coincidence of some supply and some associated demand automatically guarantees the emergence of the best of possible worlds over any timeframe relevant to human beings has now passed into the history books. More specifically, in this context I think that the tendency to assume that market mechanisms would infallibly convert the fact/existence/ supply of additional loose (de-assignable, transferable, etc.) IPv4 into the enduring condition of greater openness to aspiring new entrants is based on the widespread (mis)perception of individual IPv4 addresses and prefixes as "things" (assets, commodities, etc.), when in fact they actually represent something more like discrete instances of a "generalized privilege" or "license" (as in "creative license" even more than "driver's license"). If/when future technology advances provide a /32 owner the same kind of "generalized privilege" that today is limited to those holding a /24 or more, then I would fully expect the "privilege adjusted" cost to remain constant, if not appreciate. As long as IPv4 remains non-substitutable for any critical and/or commercially attractive aspect of content or routing service provision, that "privilege adjusted" price is only likely to continue appreciating ad infinitum.

...

I think that the majority of reasons for supporting the previous transitions (i.e., previous impositions of new technical requirements on incumbent network operators), as well as for supporting IPv6, would fit neatly under this rubric. And while your own description of the past circumstances didn't use those specific terms, I believe that the phenomena of "proliferation of class Cs being allocated" and "class Bs running out" that you referred to were both driven in part by demand from initial allocation seekers, a.k.a. "new entrants" -- i.e., we agree on this point.

Of course, during any given duration the majority of newly allocated/assigned IP addresses are probably going to "incumbents" (subsequent allocation seekers), but that's consistent with patterns of growth in every other industry, i.e., it's basically a demographic of statistical artifact of cumulative growth processes (granted, one that can be influenced by various policies). The important distinction, at least until now, is that the growth/IP addressing demand of incumbents was not incompatible with the continued openness of the addressing and routing system to non-incumbents/new entrants.

And of course, I wouldn't have expected these sorts of arguments to figure prominently in IETF et al. meetings and discussion back in the 1980s-1990s. In the main, we're not a bunch of economists and policy makers by profession -- and even those of us who are generally know better than to phrase our technology and policy advocacy in such alien and unsympathetic terms... most of us anyway.

Well but as you know there were some discussions along these lines in the CIDRD/BGPD working groups. However, there are limits as to how far those discussions can reasonably go in that forum.

Of course you are right. But as noted above, I know of no better options at the moment.

One thing I would draw your attention to was a paper in this year's WEIS conference by Richard Clayton that contains an economic analysis of SHIM6. His parting question from his presentation was whether RFCs should contain Economics Considerations sections.

This sounds very interesting, although I'm not sure that it would be easy (or even possible) to subject an Economics Considerations section to IETF-style quality and relevance-preserving mechanisms -- and I'm even more uncertain whether an Economics Considerations section that lacked such vetting processes would be likely to net out positive in terms of fog lifted, questions answered, etc. As the ongoing TV-MM dialogue should make abundantly clear, achieving consensus on economic fundamentals, or the validity of different methodologies, or the relative value of different knowledge bases or experiential inputs, etc. makes IETF or RIR decision making look like the ultimate paragons of both decorum and efficiency. That said, I do think it would be well worth exploring.

...

However, even if "openness of the internet addressing and routing system" was never the most popular/resonant rallying cry for specific technology changes, that doesn't mean that this general idea wasn't an important motivator or an influential part of the unspoken context. And even if that sounds implausible too, it still doesn't mean that the *fact* that such openness was preserved, intentionally or otherwise, didn't play an important role in the success of the system to date. Although the verdict of history is never truly final, to me industry openness looks a lot like a universal correlate (i.e., a necessary if not sufficient cause) behind the durability of industry self-governance. If that turns out to be true, then there could be a lot more at stake in the current transition tussle than just the fate of the IP address registries.

I don't think anyone can deny that openness was an important motivator for Internet technologies. We merely need to look at all of the OTHER protocols that have gone by the wayside to see that it is so. But I think what we saw was that Opennness was something to be capitalized upon by one group of vendors, to entice customers, and to disrupt certain market players. It certainly was not regulated.

I agree entirely -- which is why I've been trying to articulate an *evolutionary* understanding of the relationship so far between industry self-governance and rapid Internet adoption, growth, and development. I have never claimed, nor do I subscribe to the view that the ongoing, conscious, active pursuit of openness as a top priority among industry direct stakeholders is responsible for the Internet's great success. Rather, I'm suggesting that the generally welcome but largely accidental/unintentional preservation of industry openness throughout previous system-wide technology transitions and continuous rapid growth probably represents a major (i.e., almost certainly necessary if not entirely sufficient) reason why this world-spanning critical infrastructure continues to be entrusted to (mostly civilian, mostly private sector) full-time technologists who occasionally take a few days off to serve as volunteer lay economists and policy makers. IMO**, those present at various critical moments accidentally succeeded (perhaps with the occasional assistance of a unusual conjunction of "selective incentives and joint products"*) in creating a very durable, relatively adaptable, effectively self-maintaining industry coordination mechanism. So far those who came along thereafter seem to have done a reasonably good job of keeping it running, and headed in what seems to be a generally benign direction. (Needles to say, there's always room for improvement) I don't think that anyone has the power to recreate the kind of circumstances that give rise to this incredibly fortunate albeit accidental/unintentional evolutionary outcome. But one could argue that, for every system/organism or whatever that survives long enough, there inevitably comes a time when self-awareness coupled with the freedom to act replaces (or at least substantially complements) the blind mechanism of evolution in determining what happens next. Becoming aware (or being reminded) of the fact of evolution and its possible impacts will not relieve anyone of the important choices that will be made, one way or another, in the very near future. But I do believe that it might contribute (even if very marginally and indirectly) to better decisions.

And indeed if we look at security and authentication technology, the desire to play King of the Mountain has IMHO long stalled improvements in consumer authentication.

Even though I'm not clear on the specific context, your frustration comes through loud and clear. I think that the quest to develop a perfectly open, self-encapsulated/externally unencumbered, and self- maintaining identification/reputation technology has been with us for a long time. Maybe when (if) we come up with one, it won't create any new complications that are equivalent to the current sources of frustration with external authority-based authentication systems (which have also been with us forever). I can already think of a couple of plausible candidates, but I always love surprises ;-) Regards, TV

On 22 Jul 2009, at 16:18, <michael.dillon@bt.com> <michael.dillon@bt.com> wrote:

Where is the industry going to find 1.2 billion dollars to sustain growth of the network after IPv4 runout? And where is a new entrant going to find $100,000 to buy their first allocation, assuming that the price doesn't rise even higher when the free alternative no longer exists?

I'm reminded of the late 90's .com joke/business model about how to becomea multi-billionaire: Set up a company with 100Bn shares. Sell one share to yourself for $5. Congratulations! Your company is now worth $500Bn. So exchange your company's paper for a medium-sized country. To be serious, I think it's unwise to extrapolate from your anecdote about someone offering a six figure sum for a /20. Or to use that as the basis for a valuation of the allocated and/or yet-to-be-allocated IPv4 address space. For one thing, who could possibly know for sure if the figure you quoted that was offered recently will be the going rate for a /20 after the IPv4 run-out? If someone can do that, please provide me with the winning numbers for next week's lottery.... :-) If we assume there will be a market in IPv4 after the run-out, we should expect the usual laws of supply and demand will mean there's some sort of price equilibrium in the market. The market price will be what someone's prepared to pay and what someone is willing to sell for. That price will flunctuate and depend on too many imponderables and variables that can't easily be controlled or predicted today. Just like any predictions for the prices of shares or exchange rates or commoditiies N years in the future. If IPv4 costs too much -- say because demand exceeds supply -- other solutions will emerge and be adopted. For instance more use of NAT and ALG (if these turn out to be cheaper than buying a /20 or whatever). Or, radical thought, there is more uptake of IPv6 because these addresses cost next to nothing at the RIR. The point I'm making is that it doesn't seem sensible or even possible to predict what these prices might be post run-out. Or worry too much about that. Or to invent policies which somehow influence or control those prices. [That might well have the look and feel of a cartel.] It would be an interesting academic exercise for economists to model the impact of various pricing scenarios though I'm not sure how useful that would be in practice. That said, it would be nice to have some sort of idea of the price points where the trade-offs between buying IPv4 or using more NAT/ALG or deploying IPv6 start to get fuzzy. Any market that develops should be self-correcting. So if the going rate for IPv4 address space is too expensive, there will be other options. This has obvious parallels with everyday activity. For instance, if the cost of heating my home gets too costly, I can look for a better paying job; or find a cheaper supplier; or turn down the thermostat; or wear warmer clothing; or improve the insulation; or install a more efficient boiler; or reduce the hours that the heating is on; or some combination of these. Is there some reason to assume comparable dynamics won't apply to IPv4 post run-out?

Michael, On Jul 22, 2009, at 2:50 PM, <michael.dillon@bt.com> <michael.dillon@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

David Conrad wrote:

As the cost of IPv4 goes up, there will be increasing incentives to make more efficient use of the address space.

Technically speaking , so true. Today, it is not neccesary to deploy IPv6 at all.

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.

Not at all. Unless NICs reduce supply to a demand, enforcing the deployment of "more efficient use of the address space", LIRs will keep consuming the same amount of addresses, because, there is no economical drive for them to do otherwise and big economical drive to do so. That is, "more efficient use of the address space" may cost more and because "more efficient use of the address space" may be deployed after IPv4 addresses are exhausted, which means the LIRs can sell part of its address space, now not necessary for them, at very high price.

And you don't believe the anticipation of IPv6 deployment would have a depressive effect on an IPv4 market?

There would have been an effect, if most people had believed that IPv6 transition would have been completed long before IPv4 address exhaustion. Masataka Ohta

trejrco@gmail.com wrote:

I continue to be amazed at statements like: "Today, it is not necessary to deploy IPv6 at all."

So, you firmly believe that everyone deploying (or preparing to deploy) IPv6 today is ... What, wasting time? Wrong? Stupid?

As I said:

Technically speaking , so true. Today, it is not neccesary to deploy IPv6 at all.

valid counter arguments to me should have technical content. Masataka Ohta

Perhaps I am taking a longer view - but any business should be following some sort of 3|5|7 year planning model ... And I just don't see a model where, within those time-frames, an Internet based business - or one with any real web-centric operations (online presence, consuming or providing services - or have clients/business partners who do) - can afford to ignore IPv6. So, does anyone NEED IPv6 deployed in their network TODAY ... Perhaps not. But if they haven't started the process (or at the very least evaluated the impacts of doing|not doing so!), and fall into the above category(ies), they are being short-sighted and perhaps even negligent. ((Still IMHO)) /TJ Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry -----Original Message----- From: Nick Hilliard <nick@inex.ie> Date: Thu, 23 Jul 2009 23:28:44 To: <address-policy-wg@ripe.net> Subject: Re: [address-policy-wg] RE: The price of address space On 23/07/2009 23:09, trejrco@gmail.com wrote:

I continue to be amazed at statements like: "Today, it is not necessary to deploy IPv6 at all."

You shouldn't be. To understand why, you need to look at how much money businesses currently make on provisioning ipv4 services and compare that against how much money they make from provisioning ipv6 services. Or to turn the question around, can you build a useful internet business right now which is entirely ipv6 free? We need to appreciate that outside hobbyists and usenet news, deliberate ipv6 data transport is still tiny. This may change in a scenario of ipv4 address scarcity, but as most companies have not given any consideration whatever to how their business models will cope with ipv4 address scarcity, the question of ipv6 is still largely irrelevant to them. Nick

...

Perhaps I am taking a longer view - but any business should be following some sort of 3|5|7 year planning model ...

You should have a longer retrospective view on what has been happening since 7*2 years ago when IPv6 was standardized.

I do ... and have seen many "This is the year of IPv6" style statements, which is not what I am saying. And again, I am not saying IPv6 was perfect. Are you saying you don't think anything relevant has changed in the last decade? Sorry, but I wholeheartedly disagree - I see that quite a bit has changed WRT IPv6. The protocol itself has been tweaked, the implementations of the protocol have evolved, the deployment guidelines for both and the understanding of all three of those things has been escalating rapidly over the last ~couple-few years ...

...

So, does anyone NEED IPv6 deployed in their network TODAY ... Perhaps not. But if they haven't started the process (or at the very least evaluated the impacts of doing|not doing so!), and fall into the above category(ies), they are being short-sighted and perhaps even negligent. ((Still IMHO))

Why, do you think, that arguments similar to yours were popular 15 years ago but not now?

(Asnwering what I think you meant to ask ...) Things hadn't progressed on some fronts (and degraded in others) to the point they are at now. As with any other fundamental change, it takes time to reach a threshold (a "tipping point", if you will). Are there still certain failures in how this whole deployment (or some would say, lack thereof) has transpired? Sure. Are there a few things that could have been done different (some would say, better)? Sure. Are any of those deal-breakers? IMHO, nope. In fact, "the perfect is the enemy of the good" - inaction due to certain failings is often worse than the alternative.

What, do you think, have happened to those who followed the arguments 15 years ago?

I believe that is something of a strawman. Naturally, if they were banking solely on an all_IPv6_only_IPv6 world they are most likely no longer around. I am not arguing for anyone to punt IPv4 completely, for quite some time anyway. BUT there are quite a few organizations that have been preparing for, and some actually running native IPv6, for several+ years ... and I firmly believe they will find themselves far more prepared for the time when we reach that "tipping point", and thus in a strategically beneficial position. /TJ PS - I ask again, what is your opinion of all of these organizations that are actively pursuing IPv6 deployments, encouraging environments to do so, etc. ... ?

TJ and all, I for one see IPv6 as an essential. But it remains to be well received as was originally hoped for reasons already stated even if those reasons are short sighted. But, IPv6 IMO is only one step in progression that can be sidestepped with IPv8, which we have been steadily rolling out for several years now ever so slowly but deliberately. And of course IPv8 is much easier to implement, requires no application modification, and far cheaper than IPv6. Yet we continue to believe and support IPv6's eventual implementation even if for only to point up that it's expense makes IPv8 far more attractive. trejrco@gmail.com wrote:

I continue to be amazed at statements like: "Today, it is not necessary to deploy IPv6 at all."

So, you firmly believe that everyone deploying (or preparing to deploy) IPv6 today is ... What, wasting time? Wrong? Stupid?

Or, perhaps just (way?) ahead of the curve? As In not necessary now - but will be some day?

Obviously, I continue to respectfully disagree it isn't needed - and am doing what I can to help environments get IPv6 deployed :).

/TJ Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

-----Original Message----- From: Masataka Ohta <mohta@necom830.hpcl.titech.ac.jp>

Date: Fri, 24 Jul 2009 06:33:32 To: David Conrad<drc@virtualized.org> Cc: <michael.dillon@bt.com><michael.dillon@bt.com>; <address-policy-wg@ripe.net> Subject: Re: [address-policy-wg] RE: The price of address space

David Conrad wrote:

...

As the cost of IPv4 goes up, there will be increasing incentives to make more efficient use of the address space.

Technically speaking , so true.

Today, it is not neccesary to deploy IPv6 at all.

...

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.

Not at all.

Unless NICs reduce supply to a demand, enforcing the deployment of "more efficient use of the address space", LIRs will keep consuming the same amount of addresses, because, there is no economical drive for them to do otherwise and big economical drive to do so.

That is, "more efficient use of the address space" may cost more and because "more efficient use of the address space" may be deployed after IPv4 addresses are exhausted, which means the LIRs can sell part of its address space, now not necessary for them, at very high price.

...

And you don't believe the anticipation of IPv6 deployment would have a depressive effect on an IPv4 market?

There would have been an effect, if most people had believed that IPv6 transition would have been completed long before IPv4 address exhaustion.

Masataka Ohta

Regards, Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 284k members/stakeholders strong!) "Obedience of the law is the greatest freedom" - Abraham Lincoln "YES WE CAN!" Barack ( Berry ) Obama "Credit should go with the performance of duty and not with what is very often the accident of glory" - Theodore Roosevelt "If the probability be called P; the injury, L; and the burden, B; liability depends upon whether B is less than L multiplied by P: i.e., whether B is less than PL." United States v. Carroll Towing (159 F.2d 169 [2d Cir. 1947] =============================================================== Updated 1/26/04 CSO/DIR. Internet Network Eng. SR. Eng. Network data security IDNS. div. of Information Network Eng. INEG. INC. ABA member in good standing member ID 01257402 E-Mail jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com My Phone: 214-244-4827

On 22 Jul 2009, at 22:50, <michael.dillon@bt.com> <michael.dillon@bt.com> wrote:

I think that we all realise that in a real market, prices go up and down with every transaction. So, given that someone is willing to offer 100,000 USD for a /20 today, when there are free alternatives at the RIR, what do you think the going rate will be after the free alternative is gone?

I have no idea. And neither does anyone else. As I said earlier there are too many unknowns and assumptions to make any meaningful predictions here. If all other parameters remained unchanged from today, it would be reasonable to expect the going rate for that /20 will be higher in a post run-out world. But the parameters will almost certainly be different by then. Any market in IPv4 could have a glut of ERX space depressing prices, IPv6 may be more attractive because the world's CPE and routers implement it, NAT is cheaper/better then than it is today, X.25 makes a comeback, the Internet's Next Big Thing is IPv6-only, RIR transfer policies change, ISPs and telcos dispose of zillions of unwanted IPv4 space because they've switched to IPv6, etc, etc. And if/when there is a mass uptake of IPv6, IPv4 space will become as valuable as VHS tape: impossible to even give away. All I'd be prepared to predict is that /20 in a post run-out world could be worth somewhere between zero and a few billion dollars. I'm not even sure what the margin of error on that estimate might be.

...

If we assume there will be a market in IPv4 after the run-out, we should expect the usual laws of supply and demand will mean there's some sort of price equilibrium in the market.

Equilibrium? When I learned basic economics, scarcity caused prices to rise.

IIUC "equilibrium" has a specific meaning in economics: when buyers and sellers agree on a price. This is independent of the availability of what's being traded. If there's a glut of some commodity and nobody's buying, the price is too high. The same holds if the commodity is scarce and no-one's buying. Buyers are of course usually prepared to pay more for something that's in short supply. That doesn't mean they will pay the seller's asking price regardless. Or that the price of a scarce resource can only increase: how much is a LaserDisc player worth today?

You may not be able to predict exact prices, but you can do pretty good at predicting minimum and maximum prices relative to a hard currency, i.e. ounces of gold or barrels of crude, or Big Macs.

That might hold for some conditions in a mature market. I'm doubtful it applies to something as immature and unstable as today's barely established trading in IPv4 space. If we can even call this "trading". That activity doesn't (yet) have the same roles, characteristics and legal frameworks found in (say) a commodities exchange or futures market.

How cheap do IPv4 addresses need to be to make it worthwhile for an equipment vendor to buy up addresses today to drive up the price and make it worthwhile for the market to buy carrier grade NAT boxes?

I don't accept your starting premise, but let's play along. Apart from the attention of competition authorities, it would be a very, very risky business strategy to try and corner the world's IPv4 space. For one thing that empire could be eliminated overnight by the availability of "free" IPv6 addresses, particularly if the cost of deploying IPv6 was less than buying IPv4 from the monopolist who gobbled up the v4 space. And if the price of this vendor's NAT solutions were artificially high to capitalise on the distorted expense of IPv4, that leaves plenty of room for their competitors to undercut them.

We have a cartel today and the price is zero. It's been like that for many years now and nobody is complaining or investigating the RIRs.

It would be unwise to assume that will always be the case. Especially when the availability of IPv4 gets the attention of regulators and politicians. Or if the RIRs have some sort of involvement in a market in address space: a clearing house for transactions or whatever. Once an open market develops, the concept of IP addresses as property will follow and that will surely attract attention from governments and competition authorities.

I agree on that. Where are all the economics grad students?

Given the current state of the financial sector, I expect most of them will have McJobs in somwhere like a coffee shop or fast food outlet. :-)

P.S. My position is that IPv6 is the answer

I agree wholeheartedly. My personal opinion is to leave the IPv4 policies as they are. Any changes will be like re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. And will look bad to the outside world when they finally wake up to the imminent exhaustion of IPv4 space. We should stop worrying about IPv4 or speculating about what a future market in IPv4 might look like. [Though an open question is what the role of the RIRs might be in that market.] IMO, it's best to concentrate on IPv6 deployment and getting on with that migration.

Bill and all, FWIW, I agree that IPv4 is going to be around for at least 5 years longer. I love 8Tracks BTW. >;) So if you need a good 8Track player, or recorder for that matter, I have several of each still new in the box! I also have three 8Track dubbers... I'll consider a trade for a /24 IPv4 for either one of the new in the box 8track player or even one of the 8track dubbers. Seems a fair trade to me. Antiques in new condition ain't cheap! >:) bmanning@vacation.karoshi.com wrote:

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etc. And if/when there is a mass uptake of IPv6, IPv4 space will become as valuable as VHS tape: impossible to even give away.

and one of my 80's bands just released their latest on 8track... no MP3, no LP, no CD... an 8track. I hate them.

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that the price of a scarce resource can only increase: how much is a LaserDisc player worth today?

depends on how badly I need to watch the ChuckJones pre-estate fight, can't get anywhere else but the laser-disk version of BugsBunny.

...

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at predicting minimum and maximum prices relative to a hard currency, i.e. ounces of gold or barrels of crude, or Big Macs.

BigMacs are only hard if left out for 6years.. takes that long for the bun to toughen up.

...

...

P.S. My position is that IPv6 is the answer

I agree wholeheartedly. My personal opinion is to leave the IPv4 policies as they are. Any changes will be like re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. And will look bad to the outside world when they finally wake up to the imminent exhaustion of IPv4 space. We should stop worrying about IPv4 or speculating about what a future market in IPv4 might look like. [Though an open question is what the role of the RIRs might be in that market.] IMO, it's best to concentrate on IPv6 deployment and getting on with that migration.

pragmatically, there is a genuine need to retain IPv4 for the forseeable future - at least until significant software replacement is done. Too much depends on an IPv4 like thing (AAA, radius, SYSLOG, SNMP, etc) to expect wholesale abandonment of v4 in the next - say - 5-10 years.

v4 just won't be wasted on endsystems :)

(and Jim, you use of technologies that have been OBE'd in the commodity space was a joyful trip down memory lane.... )

--bill

Regards, Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 284k members/stakeholders strong!) "Obedience of the law is the greatest freedom" - Abraham Lincoln "YES WE CAN!" Barack ( Berry ) Obama "Credit should go with the performance of duty and not with what is very often the accident of glory" - Theodore Roosevelt "If the probability be called P; the injury, L; and the burden, B; liability depends upon whether B is less than L multiplied by P: i.e., whether B is less than PL." United States v. Carroll Towing (159 F.2d 169 [2d Cir. 1947] =============================================================== Updated 1/26/04 CSO/DIR. Internet Network Eng. SR. Eng. Network data security IDNS. div. of Information Network Eng. INEG. INC. ABA member in good standing member ID 01257402 E-Mail jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com My Phone: 214-244-4827

Eliot Lear wrote:

On 7/22/09 11:50 PM, michael.dillon@bt.com wrote:

...

How cheap do IPv4 addresses need to be to make it worthwhile for an equipment vendor to buy up addresses today to drive up the price and make it worthwhile for the market to buy carrier grade NAT boxes?

If you attend next week's IETF in Sweden, you will see quite a number of Cisco employees involved in nearly every aspect of IPv6, including transition technologies. We are there because we continue to believe that there is no Plan B(*), that IPv6 is the best way for the Internet to grow.

Tell your coworkers that until Linksys-owned-by-Cisco gear gets IPv6 buttons in it, IPv6 ain't a real thing to any org under 50 employees. The RVS4000 is a good first step - now, let's extend that code to the rest of the Linksys product line. You don't want to be embarrassed by DD-WRT, after all, do you? Ted

There's already factual data and a derived host value that has been published and presented at various RIR meetings. That price was determined by an actual for cash transaction. We also have hard evidence of ip addr leasing in the form of media. This is old news at best. Search engines are your friends. Yes, maybe it comes crashing down. Maybe. Too soon to tell. On 7/22/09, michael.dillon@bt.com <michael.dillon@bt.com> wrote:

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To be serious, I think it's unwise to extrapolate from your anecdote about someone offering a six figure sum for a /20.

Not at all. In several years of discussion of IP address markets, this is the first time that I have seen someone put an actual dollar value on an address block. Granted, it was an offered amount that did not result in a sale, but it is the best data point that I have seen so far.

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For one thing, who could possibly know for sure if the figure you quoted that was offered recently will be the going rate for a /20 after the IPv4 run-out?

I think that we all realise that in a real market, prices go up and down with every transaction. So, given that someone is willing to offer 100,000 USD for a /20 today, when there are free alternatives at the RIR, what do you think the going rate will be after the free alternative is gone?

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If we assume there will be a market in IPv4 after the run-out, we should expect the usual laws of supply and demand will mean there's some sort of price equilibrium in the market.

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. I would expect that to be a stairstep increase because everyone knows that addresses are scarcer and scarcer as time goes on.

Then the whole thing comes crashing down when IPv6 gathers enough momentum and people start releasing large amounts of IPv4 addresses.

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Just like any predictions for the prices of shares or exchange rates or commodities N years in the future.

You may not be able to predict exact prices, but you can do pretty good at predicting minimum and maximum prices relative to a hard currency, i.e. ounces of gold or barrels of crude, or Big Macs.

...

For instance more use of NAT and ALG (if these turn out to be cheaper than buying a /20 or whatever).

How cheap do IPv4 addresses need to be to make it worthwhile for an equipment vendor to buy up addresses today to drive up the price and make it worthwhile for the market to buy carrier grade NAT boxes?

...

The point I'm making is that it doesn't seem sensible or even possible to predict what these prices might be post run-out.

We could prohibit 3rd part transfers and only allow returns to the RIR in which case we can confidently predict that the price will be zero. In any case, it is very sensible to do these types of scenario analysis as part of the policymaking process.

...

Or to invent policies which somehow influence or control those prices. [That might well have the look and feel of a cartel.]

We have a cartel today and the price is zero. It's been like that for many years now and nobody is complaining or investigating the RIRs.

...

It would be an interesting academic exercise for economists to model the impact of various pricing scenarios though I'm not sure how useful that would be in practice. That said, it would be nice to have some sort of idea of the price points where the trade-offs between buying IPv4 or using more NAT/ALG or deploying IPv6 start to get fuzzy.

I agree on that. Where are all the economics grad students?

--Michael Dillon

P.S. My position is that IPv6 is the answer and post runout, most larger ISPs should be able to satisfy growth of IPv4 in one area of their business by migrating lower margin services onto pure IPv6 in order to free the IPv4 addresses for the sluggish corporates who are willing to pay a higher margin for service using legacy technology. Note that an economist might well consider this to be a market alternative because money is exchanged in return for IPv4 network services with IPv4 addresses bundled in.

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On Jul 22, 2009, at 12:32 PM, Jim Reid wrote:

On 22 Jul 2009, at 16:18, <michael.dillon@bt.com> <michael.dillon@bt.com

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wrote:

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Where is the industry going to find 1.2 billion dollars to sustain growth of the network after IPv4 runout? And where is a new entrant going to find $100,000 to buy their first allocation, assuming that the price doesn't rise even higher when the free alternative no longer exists?

I'm reminded of the late 90's .com joke/business model about how to becomea multi-billionaire: Set up a company with 100Bn shares. Sell one share to yourself for $5. Congratulations! Your company is now worth $500Bn. So exchange your company's paper for a medium-sized country.

To be serious, I think it's unwise to extrapolate from your anecdote about someone offering a six figure sum for a /20. Or to use that as the basis for a valuation of the allocated and/or yet-to-be- allocated IPv4 address space. For one thing, who could possibly know for sure if the figure you quoted that was offered recently will be the going rate for a /20 after the IPv4 run-out? If someone can do that, please provide me with the winning numbers for next week's lottery.... :-)

If we assume there will be a market in IPv4 after the run-out, we should expect the usual laws of supply and demand will mean there's some sort of price equilibrium in the market.

Hi Jim, I'd have to say that that depends a lot on what you mean by "equilibrium." In principle, in an IPv4 transfer market that has some aspiring buyers and some aspiring sellers sellers, some transfer transactions may occur, and any average of the sum of prices paid that you find meaningful (e.g., price per /32, or any other prefix size of interest) could be described as the equilibrium price at that point in time. In practice, however, that's a entirely "academic," if not utterly meaningless statement. In the absence of a mandatory central clearing house for all transfer transactions, the only "information" on prevailing prices that will be available to anyone -- buyers or sellers -- will be whatever whispered rumors you can pick up in the halls of the next ops or IETF or policy meeting. Of course all transfer transactions will inevitably be covered under NDA, and so the only parties who might hypothetically have an incentive to share information (i.e., shell-shocked buyers) will be officially unable to do so. So there will be an equilibrium price, but it will be about as accessible to you and I -- or to any aspiring buyer or seller -- as the last digit of pi (or about as knowable as it is today, in the shadow market that some have alleged already exists). But even setting aside the problem of pervasive information asymmetries, there are several reasons to assume that the likely equilibrium price might be higher than you expect. First of all, know that at almost every point in time (until something very dramatic changes), most if not all potential IPv4 sellers are very likely to maintain a steep "reservation price" for IPv4; those that don't absolutely require a high minimum will be cleaned out as quickly as they enter the market -- by buyers who will act this way, if they're willing to sell at all. Second, any sign of substantial ongoing demand for IPv4 transfers among established, IPv4-based operators is likely to have a perverse effect on the minimum reservation prices of any remaining potential IPv4 sellers. Consider: today some operators express confidence in an imminent future of relatively transparent IPv6-based inter-domain routing -- i.e., one in which they will not suffer commercially if they can only offer IPv6 to their new and still-growing customers. That confidence is (necessarily) founded on the assumption that most if not all other operators will either be making their customers and resources accessible via IPv6 (one way or another), or else will be exiting the market. What will happen to that confidence if/when those IPv6- oriented pioneers observe that some of their peers are willing to pay a high price for any surplus IPv4 that they'd be willing to sell? How many of then will assume that the aspiring buyers are all suckers who are doomed to failure because of their apparent unwilling to incorporate IPv6 promptly? Alternately, how many will begin to wonder whether they should raise their reservation prices even higher -- either because the demand is there, or because their certainty in that IPv6-based future is marginally undermined? How many would decide to withhold their salable IPv4 altogether, at least until the future becomes a little less cloudy...? And of course, if there are even a small number of speculators in the market, these doubts are likely to be greatly amplified. A speculator doesn't care about which addressing format is better for customers, because they don't have any. For a speculator, the relative merits of IPv6 actually represent a threat, because the more compelling those merits are, the less profitable / less durable their IPv4 brokerage business is likely to be. If enough speculators are able to participate in the market, their preferences could have a big impact on which addressing standard(s) -- if any -- will be operationally or commercially viable in the future. And there is no barrier to deter speculators from entering the market, other than the willingness of service-operating IPv4 buyers and sellers to altruistically refuse to deal with them (i.e., even when they make the best offers). Granted, these observations reflect the kind of situation we're facing today, when very few resources are attached to the Internet with any form of IPv6, and very very few (if any) of those that are IPv6- attached are reachable from any other routing domain via any means that is not absolutely dependent on IPv4. People often point to this caveat by way of implying how different it will be when IPv6 is more widely deployed -- seemingly without noticing that such statements are tautological. Things will be different when they are different, no doubt -- but how will we get from here to there? Who's going to lead that charge so that others can make such statements with semantic content > 0 ? I have heard quite a few current operators -- by definition, all IPv4 holders -- suggest that post-IPv4 allocation-era new entrants will be the primary drivers for this transition. But from what we know from the allocation records and the routing table, etc., a nontrivial share of people saying (thinking?) this today must be among the vast majority of operators that do not currently offering native IPv6 routing services. Perhaps there is no contradiction, and people are saying/thinking such things because, today, they fully expect to offer some form of IPv6 as soon as that must-have-IPv6 demand grows. However, when that time does arrive, will prospective upstream providers have an incentive to offer native IPv6 routing -- i.e., the kind that would provide the IPv6-only newbie with the same kind of status that they themselves enjoy (where the lines between customer vs. peer vs. provider status are dictated by size and contract, not by inheritance or privileged access to a closed, proprietary technology)? Or, will the incumbent incentives favor offering the kind of IPv6 routing service that makes it substantially more difficult, if not structurally impossible, for the new entrant to organically transition into inter-domain peer or routing service provider roles as growth and other circumstances permit today? If private commercial incentives favor the latter in many/most cases, is competition from other, more IPv6-friendly routing services providers likely to be sufficient to ultimately tip the balance in favor of substitutability of IPv4 and IPv6 in inter-domain routing? It's anyone's guess, but I think some insight might be gleaned by talking to, for example, tier-two and smaller providers in Latin America and Africa that were operating before the establishment of LACNIC and AfriNIC -- i.e., in a times/places when new entrants had little or no choice but to obtain address resources as well as routing services from an incumbent commercial operator.

The point I'm making is that it doesn't seem sensible or even possible to predict what these prices might be post run-out. Or worry too much about that. Or to invent policies which somehow influence or control those prices. [That might well have the look and feel of a cartel.] It would be an interesting academic exercise for economists to model the impact of various pricing scenarios though I'm not sure how useful that would be in practice. That said, it would be nice to have some sort of idea of the price points where the trade-offs between buying IPv4 or using more NAT/ALG or deploying IPv6 start to get fuzzy.

I agree wholeheartedly that quantitative models that seek to predict point-specific IPv4 transfers prices are not constructive -- if only because no one who really could use such information is likely to trust them, no matter how accurate they might actually be. That said, I think that the application of a little common sense plus industry experience/know-how to the basic question can take one a long way toward understanding what kinds of outcomes are marginally more vs. less likely, and perhaps which are quite unlikely.

Any market that develops should be self-correcting.

That is axiomatically true, but then there are some self-corrections that may not be appealing to all stakeholders. For those who are indifferent to the question of whether or not the inevitable correction will result in a future in which the IPv4/IPv6 distinction disappears, and how (e.g., because IPv6 becomes a viable substitute for IPv4, or because IPv4 lock-in makes it a permanent mandatory requirement for any aspiring routing services provider), there is a lot less to worry about. Others might want to give it some thought. TV

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Someone recently offered an American ISP 6 figures for a /20 block that was acquired as part of a corporate acquisition. The ISP declined the offer and returned the block to ARIN.

This could mean that the value of a /20 on the open market is 100,000 USD. Since a /20 has 16 /24 equivalents in it, that would place the value of a /24 at 6250 USD.

http://xkcd.com/605/

Not terribly relevant to IPv4 addresses.

...

According to <https://www.arin.net/knowledge/statistics/> in the first 6 months of 2009, ARIN issued 99,285 /24 equivalents to ISPs. That means that ARIN issued 620,531,250 USD worth of IP addresses. Over the course of 2009 we can expect some 1.2 billion dollars worth of IPv4 addresses to be allocated to ISPs, or $103 million per month.

Where is the industry going to find 1.2 billion dollars to sustain growth of the network after IPv4 runout? And where is a new entrant going to find $100,000 to buy their first allocation, assuming that the price doesn't rise even higher when the free alternative no longer exists?

I just learned that 6 figures actually referred to 185,000 USD so multiply all my above figures by 1.85. That brings the value of ARIN's annual ISP allocations to 2.2 billion USD. Another organization made an offer to use the address range for spamming, without transfering ownership, and their offer amounts to about 1/25th of the above one which would make ARIN's annual ISP allocations worth only 48 million USD and a /20 would cost approximately 4000 USD. So there you have two actual price offers showing a substantial range of values. Someone with actual economical statistics experience may be able to suggest a likely distribution of prices over this price range and come up with a more likely value of ARIN's annual ISP allocations. --Michael Dillon

Chris and all, Well in respect to your "Funny" link. Thank god I won't have a similar number of wives anytime soon! >;) Chris Grundemann wrote:

On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 09:18, <michael.dillon@bt.com> wrote:

...

...

More specifically, in this context I think that the tendency to assume that market mechanisms would infallibly convert the fact/existence/ supply of additional loose (de-assignable, transferable, etc.) IPv4 into the enduring condition of greater openness to aspiring new entrants is based on the widespread (mis)perception of individual IPv4 addresses and prefixes as "things" (assets, commodities, etc.), when in fact they actually represent something more like discrete instances of a "generalized privilege" or "license" (as in "creative license" even more than "driver's license").

The minimum ARIN allocation to a new ISP is currently a /20. Someone recently offered an American ISP 6 figures for a /20 block that was acquired as part of a corporate acquisition. The ISP declined the offer and returned the block to ARIN.

This could mean that the value of a /20 on the open market is 100,000 USD. Since a /20 has 16 /24 equivalents in it, that would place the value of a /24 at 6250 USD.

http://xkcd.com/605/

...

According to <https://www.arin.net/knowledge/statistics/> in the first 6 months of 2009, ARIN issued 99,285 /24 equivalents to ISPs. That means that ARIN issued 620,531,250 USD worth of IP addresses. Over the course of 2009 we can expect some 1.2 billion dollars worth of IPv4 addresses to be allocated to ISPs, or $103 million per month.

Where is the industry going to find 1.2 billion dollars to sustain growth of the network after IPv4 runout? And where is a new entrant going to find $100,000 to buy their first allocation, assuming that the price doesn't rise even higher when the free alternative no longer exists?

Will the prices in Europe be any different than in America? Why?

--Michael Dillon

P.S. note that there are more predictable costs to an ISP in deploying either carrier-grade NAT or transitioning to IPv6. How will this impact IP address block prices and why? _______________________________________________ PPML You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the ARIN Public Policy Mailing List (ARIN-PPML@arin.net). Unsubscribe or manage your mailing list subscription at: http://lists.arin.net/mailman/listinfo/arin-ppml Please contact info@arin.net if you experience any issues.

-- Chris Grundemann weblog.chrisgrundemann.com www.twitter.com/chrisgrundemann www.coisoc.org

Regards, Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 284k members/stakeholders strong!) "Obedience of the law is the greatest freedom" - Abraham Lincoln "YES WE CAN!" Barack ( Berry ) Obama "Credit should go with the performance of duty and not with what is very often the accident of glory" - Theodore Roosevelt "If the probability be called P; the injury, L; and the burden, B; liability depends upon whether B is less than L multiplied by P: i.e., whether B is less than PL." United States v. Carroll Towing (159 F.2d 169 [2d Cir. 1947] =============================================================== Updated 1/26/04 CSO/DIR. Internet Network Eng. SR. Eng. Network data security IDNS. div. of Information Network Eng. INEG. INC. ABA member in good standing member ID 01257402 E-Mail jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com My Phone: 214-244-4827