Re: accusations of cluelessness

On zaterdag, okt 11, 2003, at 23:46 Europe/Amsterdam, 
Valdis(_dot_)Kletnieks(_at_)vt(_dot_)edu wrote:
> > it's clear that for IPv4 we're out of addresses
> IANA gave out 61/8 in April 97. 69/8 was August 2002. Except for 3 /8s 
> given to
> RIPE, there's NOTHING all the way to 126/8.  56 /8s at a burn rate of 
> 2 /8s per
> year gives us some 28 more years.  There's also a big chunk up around 
> 173-190/8
> for another few years worth...
Have a look at Geoff Huston's latest work in this area: 
http://www.potaroo.net/papers.html
> There's also reason to suspect that for at least 10-15 years, we've 
> reached
> somewhat of a plateau in address consumption - the dot-bomb bubble 
> bursting
> released a lot of address space allocated to since-departed end users,
I don't buy this.

> and the
> relatively flat performance by both Microsoft and PC manufacturers 
> indicates
> that in the US/Europe area and most of the more advanced parts of the 
> Pacific
> Rim, the majority of people who want to be online already are.
Maybe there is something to this, but there is also a significant 
possibility that there isn't. There is still a large move from dial-up 
to "always on" types of access (cable, DSL) going on. It's likely the 
same will happen for mobile: today you dial in and use an address for a 
few minutes, in the future you're going to occupy an address 24/7 with 
your IP-enabled cell phone.
It looks like the growth in address usage is linear. Since there are 
significant factors driving this growth down (use of private addressing 
with or without NAT, addressless virtual servers, denser packing of 
subnets) the actual need for addresses must still be going up pretty 
fast.
But at some point the subnets are as dense as they're going to get, and 
everything that can be virtualized or NATed is. At this point life is 
going to become much more interesting.
I guess it all depends on how you look at it: either the glass is half 
empty (still 1.5 billion addresses still free) or it's 97% full (31 
bits down, one to go).
Iljitsch van Beijnum