Re: IPv6 will never fly: ARIN continues to kill it

[Iljitsch van Beijnum <iljitsch at muada.com>]

On 20-sep-2007, at 21:10, Stephen Sprunk wrote:

> > First of all, litigation isn't the only way to get something  
> > done,  and second, do don't know that until you try.

> If you try to revoke someone's /8 or /16, you can bet that they're  
> going to sue you.

So? The RIRs and ICANN have deep pockets.

But there are other approaches than simply revoking the address  
space. For instance, setting up a policy that governs who gets to  
keep legacy space that takes into consideration various types of use  
and cost of renumbering makes sense. I'm sure some legacy space is  
used in a way that's fairly reasonable, while other space isn't used  
at all.

Obviously the elephant in the room is the US government that has  
about 5% of all address space, which seems excessive even for legacy  
holders.

> > > And, for the record, there are over 50,000 of them, not less than
> > > 50.

> Clarification: 31,386 in ARIN's region.  I haven't seen stats for  
> the other RIRs.

> > 50000 organizations holding nearly 0.5% of the IPv4 space each?
> > I'm impressed! With that kind of address compression technology
> > we don't need IPv6 after all.

> I'm sure you're aware that different size assignments were made to  
> different organizations.

I was specifically talking about the /8s, where you get a decent bang  
for your reclaiming effort buck. But even that isn't enough anymore  
to bother at this point...

> Even if true, that point is past.  Based on current projections, it  
> is unlikely we'd be able to recover _any_ /8s before exhaustion  
> hits due to the protracted litigation that would ensue, and even if  
> we did manage to get some of them back (which isn't guaranteed, and  
> would cost millions of dollars in any case),

What would that be, $0.25 per address? Big deal.

> IPv6 still won't be deployed and usable in any meaningful way  
> unless we make more progress in the next two years than we have in  
> the last ten.

Progress in various aspects of IPv6 has been slow because it didn't  
need to be faster. I see no solvable issues with IPv6 deployment that  
can't be solved in those 2 years. (No, we still won't have routing  
that will take us to the next century by then, but I suggest we don't  
wait for that.)

> > Same thing for repurposing 240/4, by the way.

> Decade problem.  Come back and discuss that when Windows recognizes  
> that block as normal unicast addresses by default.

If we had done this two years ago it could have been in Vista and in  
an XP update, so the space would have been usable by 2010 or so when  
the older Windows versions and other implementations that don't  
accept these addresses would have had the time to be updated manually  
or replaced.

> > Maybe the RIRs have
> > contracts with all new PI holders, but that doesn't automatically
> > give ARIN the authority to reclaim address space after a policy
> > change.

> Again, I don't know about all RIRs, but that is _explicitly called  
> out_ in ARIN's Registration Services Agreement

RIRs would still have to show that it's a reasonable thing to do. I'm  
still not a lawyer, but I could easily come up with several arguments  
why I should be able to keep my addresses despite any contracts.

> and AFAIK has been since day one.

I have never heard of a case where an otherwise legitimate  
organization (i.e., not a front for a spam outfit or some such) used  
address space in a way that wasn't abusive or criminal, but didn't  
comply with RIR policies and got those revoked.

> > As a non-lawyer, I would judge the chances in court for
> > reclaiming IPv4 /8s higher than those for reclaiming IPv6 PI
> > space: in the first case, it's the benefit the continued operation
> > of the IPv4 internet, in the latter case, it's going to look highly
> > arbitrary.

> I'd suggest you review the comments by ARIN's counsel at the last  
> meeting WRT revoking legacy assignments.  It's more complicated  
> than it appears at first glance, particularly to someone not used  
> to our legal system.

Isn't everything?

The opinions of one lawyer aren't worth much. As a profession, they  
lose 50% of all their cases, so obviously they must be wrong 50% of  
the time. (Not sure if engineers do better, though.)

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