Re: [address-policy-wg] Fwd: selling ip:s? (kf)

>IP addresses are clearly quite valuable, especially PI ones, not to 
mention
>the "allocated unspecified" ones, for obvious reasons.  However, the 
community
>should definately do everything in it's power to make sure IP addresses 
are
>not, under any circumstances, sold.

We should also note that any value which may be attached to IPv4
addresses today will likely be significantly diluted as IPv6 is
more widely deployed. Anyone who thinks that they will gain some
advantage by paying for IPv4 addresses will be greatly disappointed
when that advantage evaporates because of IPv6.

Scarcity often increases the value of something so we should be
quite clear that IPv6 addresses will be so abundant that any
intrinsic scarcity value in IP addresses will disappear. I think
that this point is important enough to be incorporated in a
document regarding IPv4 addresses as a warning.

There are already commercial IPv6 services available in Europe
as well as several production networks used internally by
research and development consortia. There is no doubt that IPv6
has matured and that the growth in the deployment of IPv6 will
continue. All of this tends to reduce the pressure on the IPv4
address space and therefore reduces any intrinsic value of an
IPv4 address.

--Michael Dillon