> Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote: > The problem is that nothing matches historical growth, because it > contains elements that have proven resistant against modeling. That's the way I see it myself. > Until that time, I'll continue to assume 2010 - 2015 with > 2012 as the most likely moment for IPv4 to run out. In the big scheme of things, I actually don't see what it changes to know the exact date now anyway. > We only get to cry wolf so many times. And we have cried a lot over the last 10 years (including doom predictions over Y2K). As of today I don't see people doing anything until they actually see the wolf. And I think they won't even do anything then until the wolf proves to be a big annoyance, which remains to be seen. > When we run out of IPv4 space obviously very many people will > have IPv4 addresses and they'll want to keep using them. Indeed. And in the case of the US (and to a lesser extent other industrialized countries) 3 to 4 addresses per capita are enough for a very long time. It is possible that the US will remain a v4 deal forever, as many Americans are not interested in what happens elsewhere in the first place. To me, the interesting thing is not WHEN it will happen; it's WHAT happens when it does and what we can do about it. > There is however and interesting policy question: should we > allow IPv4 addresses to be sold? Some people are in favor of > this, but I don't see the upside of formally allowing it. > (People are going to do it to some degree anyway.) I think it's too early to have good decision arguments about what to do about this. The wealthy (meaning: can afford to pay $10/month for an address) will have an address no matter what. The supply is limited but so is the demand, it certainly will be interesting to see what an IP address is really worth. My take on it is that we have to wait a year or so and see how the black market develops and how bad it is. Generally speaking, the addresses already are where the money also is; unless dramatic socio-economic changes happen I don't see much movement there. The demand is not how many people want IP addresses; the demand is how many people want addresses times how much they can spend on one. Also, some governments might actually like the double-NAT idea, as it somehow restricts free flow of information and might appear more controllable. > Noel Chiappa wrote: > Some clever people worked out this ugly hack, which the > marketplace judged - despite its ugliness - to be a superior > solution to the forklift upgrade to IPv6. I don't think the market decided it was "superior". The market decided it was good enough, cheaper, and easier. > Don't be surprised if the world, facing "complete exhaustion of the > IPv4 address space (Version 2)" decides, yet again, that some sort > of Plan B is a better choice than a conversion to IPv6. > I have no idea exactly what it will be (maybe a free market in IPv4 > addresses, plus layered NAT's, to name just one possibility), but > there are a lot of clever people out there, and *once events force > them to turn their attention to this particular alligator*, don't be > surprised if they don't come up with yet another workaround. I agree with Noel here. Michel _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf