Subject: RE: Stepping down as IETF chair in March - & - RE: A personal take on WG's priorities..

From: "Tony Hain" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 12:38:21 -0800

Harald,

I would like to congratulate you on your successes, and suggest you have the
opportunity to be the last chair to preside over active work related to
version 4 of the IP protocol suite. With the publication of the tunneling
drafts that v6ops has been sitting on, there is no further need to discuss
32 bit address objects. At the same time, there is really no further
justification for any other IETF working group to be discussing 32 bit
addresses in current work. With all due respect to Geoff's efforts to
document the address growth rate in the routing system, even he acknowledges
that measure lags the allocation timeframe and assumes the RIRs will recover
all space currently considered lost. Given that IANA allocated 9 /8's over a
6 month period this year, coupled with the fact that only 78 /8's remain in
the useful part of the pool (ie: 52 month burn out), it should be clear to
everyone that products that rely on current standards activities will appear
in the market place after the central pool of 32 bit values has run dry. As
such I would recommend your legacy include an active review of all working
group discussions next week for items related to IPv4, followed by closure
of all 32 bit address related work items before your departure in March. 

Tony

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of
> Harald Tveit Alvestrand
> Sent: Friday, November 05, 2004 1:20 AM
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: Stepping down as IETF chair in March
> 
> Thomas' note reminded me that there are probably some people who haven't
> heard this yet....
> 
> I'm stepping down as IETF chair in March, and I am not a candidate for
> reappointment.
> 
> It's been a great four years, containing lots of learning experience, lots
> of hard work and lots of joy - but after four years as IETF chair, and ten
> years total on the IESG/IAB, March seems an appropriate time for me to
> leave this stage of my life behind.
> 
> The IETF is a great organization. I will enjoy watching it continue to
> grow
> and prosper under new leadership.
> 
> Thank you!
> 
>                   Harald
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Ietf mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 05 Nov 2004 16:31:46 -0500

On Fri, 05 Nov 2004 12:38:21 PST, Tony Hain said:

> the useful part of the pool (ie: 52 month burn out),

They said that just before CIDR happened, too.

>From the routing-table summary posted to the NANOG list this morning:

Number of addresses announced to Internet:                   1348239976
     Equivalent to 80 /8s, 92 /16s and 130 /24s
     Percentage of available address space announced:               36.4
     Percentage of allocated address space announced:               58.8
     Percentage of available address space allocated:               61.9

So 40% isn't even *allocated* yet (saying that we're probably burning /8's
faster than needed, but only 36% of the available space is actually routed.

Sounds to me like we've got more time than 52 months, if we start doing
stuff now to increase the usage efficiencies....

---

From: Gert Doering <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 22:48:16 +0100

Hi,

> stuff now to increase the usage efficiencies....

Do we really *want* that?

I'd rather go for "legacy-free networks".  Ditch v4, build proper v6
networks.

Gert Doering
        -- NetMaster
-- 
Total number of prefixes smaller than registry allocations:  66629  (65398)

SpaceNet AG                 Mail: [email-masked]
Joseph-Dollinger-Bogen 14   Tel : +49-89-32356-0
80807 Muenchen              Fax : +49-89-32356-299

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 05 Nov 2004 16:56:56 -0500

> I'd rather go for "legacy-free networks".  Ditch v4, build proper v6

Well.. that *would* be a preferable solution.  I was merely pointing out
that we're not quite as "up against the wall" as a projection of the burn
rate of /8's would indicate.

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 05 Nov 2004 14:05:28 -0800

Guys - please...

maybe it's just me, but it seems like this thread should be something about 
Harald. Coopting it to the continued wars between various competing 
technology religions seems just a tad disrespectful.

Could you at least change the subject line if we're going to go into this 
rathole again?

---

From: "Tony Hain" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 16:42:04 -0800

> They said that just before CIDR happened, too.

and CIDR bought us time to get a replacement ready. 

> stuff now to increase the usage efficiencies....

Despite the desire to look for indicators that preclude having to learn
something new, it really doesn't matter how much of the space is routed.
What matters is the day someone new shows up to acquire space they intend to
route, only to find the reservoir dry. The number of routing entries is an
interesting operational measure, but what counts from a protocol viability
standpoint is the remaining useful space in the IANA pool.

We can always extend the lifetime of IPv4 by restricting the allocation
policies. The point is it is long past time to wake up and face the reality
that stricter conservation is directly contrary to expanding the reach and
capabilities of the global Internet. The IETF needs to be about developing a
growing and vibrant Internet, so resisting the inevitable change is counter
productive. In that light, it is time to remove the special status of
separate working groups for IPv6, and make it the default IP protocol for
all IETF work. 

Tony

---

From: "Glen Zorn \(gwz\)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 14:39:29 -0800

Fred Baker <> wrote:
> Guys - please...
>
> maybe it's just me, but it seems like this thread should be
something
> about Harald. Coopting it to the continued wars between various
> competing technology religions seems just a tad disrespectful.
>
> Could you at least change the subject line if we're going to go
into
> this rathole again?

Well said.

>>> So 40% isn't even *allocated* yet (saying that we're probably
>>> burning /8's faster than needed, but only 36% of the available
>>> space is actually routed.
>>>
>>> Sounds to me like we've got more time than 52 months, if we
start
>>> doing stuff now to increase the usage efficiencies....
>>
>> Total number of prefixes smaller than registry allocations:
66629
>> (65398)

Hope this helps,

~gwz

Why is it that most of the world's problems can't be solved by
simply
   listening to John Coltrane? -- Henry Gabriel

---

From: "Tony Hain" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 7 Nov 2004 12:36:53 -0800

Geoff Huston wrote:
> I would like to correct a few numbers in Tony's comments based on my work
> in this area that Tony has referred to.
> 
> The least squares best fit of advertised address space in the IPv4 domain
> over the past 5 years is a consumption rate of 4 /8s per year, slightly
> less than half of Tony's number

To continue the refinement; as you frequently point out as well, there is a
lag between request/assignment from the RIR and advertisement. Given that,
the advertisement growth you are quoting does not account for the recent
slope change in the IANA pool depletion I am referencing, and won't even
start to do so for another 6-12 months. 

> 
> Even over the past 10 months the least squares best fit of data is a
> consumption rate of 5.5/8's per year

Let's be clear, consumption rate from the pool is not the same as
advertisement rate you are basing your measurements on. The size of the
advertised pool has absolutely no bearing on the size of the remaining stock
held by IANA or the RIR's. The slopes may be on a time delayed track, but
there is always the opportunity for addresses to be pulled from the pool yet
never advertised. As my I-D on 1918bis points out there are organizations
that have outgrown the available private space, so there only current option
is to acquire public space they never intend to route.

> 
> At this rate the central pool will exhaust in 2018, some 14 years hence.

No, by your measure this is the date the advertised pool will be receiving
all possible prefixes. As we have discussed before, there are two problems
with these numbers, the first is that it assumes all currently reserved /8
prefixes can and will be used (by my count there were really only 78 useful
ones left in August), and second that it assumes that someone will find and
reclaim the ~13% of the space currently 'lost in the system' (the difference
between the IANA reserved and RIR-assigned).

> i.e. some 168 months hence. Allowing for an accelerating consumption rate
> at an exponential rate brings this forward to 10 years, or 120 months.
> (details of the analysis are at http://bgp.potaroo.net/ipv4/)
> 
> (Of course you should consult your favourite oracle, mystic, soothsayer or
> whatever for your own preferred version of the future.)

We can probably all agree that the 'last IPv4 address' will never be
acquired. Policies will become stricter until the price is so high that
nobody can afford it; or nobody will care once the replacement is deployed.

Tony 

> 
> regards,
> 
>     Geoff
> 
> 
> At 07:38 AM 6/11/2004, Tony Hain wrote:
> >Harald,
> >

---

From: Geoff Huston <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 07 Nov 2004 06:59:57 +1100

regards,

     Geoff

---

From: "Perry E. Metzger" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 06 Nov 2004 21:31:37 -0500

> They said that just before CIDR happened, too.

We are already out of addresses. I cannot easily connect from my
laptop in my apartment (behind a NAT) with a friend's laptop in his
apartment (because it is also behind a NAT). This makes quickly
transferring pictures or documents from my machine to a friend's
machine a pain in the neck.

We ran out of addresses for practical purposes years ago. Anyone who
is running a NAT is doing so because it was easier to do that than to
try to get address space.

Perry

---

From: "JFC (Jefsey) Morfin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 07 Nov 2004 04:39:53 +0100

The need you describe is the true need of the users. What they discuss is
IPv6 as an IPv4 patch better than NATs. You discuss tier to tier exchanges.
This is almost a different vision of the network.

A vision IPv6 is properly design to support. The problem acknowledged by
Michel Py and Steve Crocker, and others, mainly comes from the "a la IPv4"
management of the IPv6 addressing plan. Innovation is blocked there. This
is to do with ICANN's IANA and numbering plan organization and
intergovernance, not with IPv6.

Please read Mr. Zhao's contribution drafts for ITU on the matter if you
find one (I understand that he plans releasing his position by
mid-November?). You document THE main need for IPv6: to permit a flexible
management of tier and tier universal relations. For a while NAT helped a
lot - and will continue and improve - at intranet level. But end-users need
much more: a full control, that only IPv6 can deliver, as you show it. When
an adequate IPv6 addressing plan is offered and used by end-users, NATs
will disappear as useless, costly and obsolete constraints.

You cannot change things on the internet, you can only improve them and
make them obsolete.
jfc