On the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses... (Kurtis's Blog)

On the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses...

In a private discussion I scribbled some points on the upcoming exhaustion of IPv4 address space. Geoff Huston as always have insightful comments on the modeling of IPv4 address consumption in his latest ISP Column.

My personal views are that

1) Yes we will eventually run into scarcity of v4 addresses. 'run-out' might be a bit loaded and perhaps mis-leading as I believe we will start seeing problems before this.

2) Looking on who is best catered at handling this, the IETF, the RIRs etc, I think the IETF is somewhat fooling itself here - at least maybe. The people who will first start feeling the pain of v4 exhaustion are from parts of the world that are poorly represented in the IETF, while the general IETF participants probably won't start seeing real pain for years to come. This is not an attempt at picking at the IETF - it's merely an attempt at trying to high-light a cultural issue. The discussion on what to do when we run out of IPv4 addresses have been the loudest on the ARIN public policy mailinglist - the RIR region with the least IPv6 uptake and the most IPv4 addresses.

3) The IETF has pointed to IPv6 as it's solution to the address scarcity. As 'just more bit's' doesn't seem to have been enough to sell the technology in initial deployment stages - it was oversold and hyped by some forces/players. This has potentially done more harm than good to the actual usage of IPv6. I think the IETF needs to stick to the story - this is the solution to the address scarcity problem - and no, it doesn't address all other known problems with the Internet architecture. [Yes, I realize if I said this in public I would get bashed to pieces by the people from the 'IPng wars', still looking at it as late comer, it's hard to see more in this]

4) IPv6 in being IPv4 with more addresses, does have the inherit problems of IPv4. We know that, we have worked on potential solutions and continue to address the problem. While far from ideal we can deploy IPv6 'as-is' with known faults. There could be a potential to discuss if there are action that can be taken to mitigate these problems. Allocation policies etc.

5) The IETF does not do allocation policies - that is left to the RIRs. IPv4 and IPv6. What happens when we run out of v4 is a problem to be dealt with by the RIRs. However, if the RIRs needs technology from the IETF to support them in this (SIDR for example) the IETF should work on the protocols and technology.

6) We should certainly look at what opportunities arise from having more addresses, and what other work is being done - like mobile IPv6 and see if there is additional work that could be done in this space.

Now, all we need to do is get to work...

Posted on July 16, 2007 9:41 AM | Permalink

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On the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses...

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