[address-policy-wg] 2007-8 discussions

> Suppose you are wrong. Then, the need for IPv4 is 
> heightened and prolonged, and we will be very sorry we didn't 
> create a smooth and above-board mechanism for transfers. 

If you believe that then you should be lobbying government
because the RIRs do not have the power to create a smooth and
above-board mechanism for transfers. The RIRs are not much more
than registries which manage and publish a database. The database
and the RIR processes are already above-board.

> Umm, why not? And how do you _know_ that it is a "few"? 

Because the RIRs don't have the mandate or the resources
to cater to a few companies who have gotten themselves
into a fix. I know that it will only be a "few" because the
IPv4 supply is shrinking dramatically down to zero. Soon
there will be very few IPv4 blocks available to be transfered
therefore the companies (sellers and buyers) who would benefit
from a transfer policy are very few.

Also, how do we know that sellers and buyers would actually
benefit, in a real sense, from a transfer policy? All the
buyers will be companies in a desperate situation, and as soon
as the transfer becomes known in the RIPE database, their
customers could begin to flee.


> I'm afraid this is a completely bogus prediction about the 
> action of courts, made by a non-lawyer, with no specification 
> of which legal system/courts he is talking about, nor the 
> legal grounds upon which such a decision would be based, or 
> what kind of litigation would put the issue into the courts 
> to begin with.

This applies equally to your comments and to those of
almost everybody who is involved in RIRs and transfer
policy discussions. This is a good reason for us to
reject these transfer policies so that RIPE can focus
on its competencies, not try to take on the legislative
and economic functions of government departments.

> The auctioning of mobile spectrum in the U.S. has not forced 
> broadcasters, who got their spectrum for free, to account for 
> their spectrum holdings according to a projected market value. 

Thanks for making my point clear. Governments, and their regulatory
agencies, have the power to do things which RIPE cannot do.

> This is just weird. If v4 addresses are sold in a competitive 
> market, you call them "unpredictable." But you call the price 
> of v6 service "predictable" because....it is sold in a 
> competitive market.

A small market with few buyers and sellers, is very unpredictable.
You need a certain amount of trading volume for the law of large 
numbers to kick in and begin to get some level of predicability.
IPv6 network service is a variation of IPv4 network service,
so there is a market with enough volume of sales to give some
level of predictability. If an IPv4 address shortage causes pain
to ISPs then they will price their IPv6 service a bit lower than
the comparable IPv4 service in order to encourage uptake.

> Sure, they'll sell access to 1/10th of the internet for less 
> than the price of 100% access. What you may not be taking 
> into account is the universal connectivity associated with v4. 

I'm afraid you don't understand the technology that underlies 
all of this. There is no good reason why IPv6 network access
could not provide reachability to 100% of the Internet. The
IPv6 transition has been going on for 10 years or so and most
of the technical issues have been worked out. Things like 6to4
and Teredo are well understood and widely used today. NAT-PT 
is also in use, and the IETF is working on resolving the last
design issues with their work on NAT64. 

I am assuming that ISPs will sort out the remaining technical 
issues and deploy them within the next two to three years so
that they can indeed provide IPv6 network access that allows
communication with 100% of the Internet.

--Michael Dillon