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

Thus spake "Iljitsch van Beijnum" <iljitsch(_at_)muada(_dot_)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.
SCO had "deep" pockets too.  IBM, Novell, etc. had much, much deeper 
pockets.  Do you really think ARIN or ICANN could take on titans such as GE, 
IBM, AT&T, Xerox, HP, Apple, Ford, Halliburton, Eli Lilly, Prudential, and 
Merck?  Even _one_ of them?  ARIN would be squashed like a bug.  Not to 
mention the entire weight of the USG if ARIN tries to mess with _their_ 13 
/8s.
I'm confident that the RIRs' membership would oust any leaders that 
knowingly got them engaged in significant litigation of this sort.
> 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.
I have proposed policy for ARIN to head in that direction.  We'll see if it 
passes next month.
> 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.
We don't know what the US DoD is doing with their addresses since that's 
classified; besides, it was their network to begin with so they do have some 
special priviledges.  The remainder of the USG's address space appears 
reasonable given the number of hosts/employees/etc.
> > 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...
Those /8s are held by orgs with significant financial resources and are all 
at least partially still in use.  There are thousands of /16s and tens of 
thousands of /24s that can be reclaimed with less effort, time, and cost 
than a single /8 could be, because those smaller blocks aren't in use 
anymore.  There's also a fair amount of squatting on LIR-issued blocks that 
were justified at the time but aren't anymore.
> > 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.
ARIN gets a _maximum_ of $0.034 per address from the "Xtra Large" ISPs that 
are consuming 80% of ARIN's address space.  In reality, they would get $0 
per address because those ISPs have already topped out on the fees they pay; 
once you pass a /14, you pay _nothing_ for additional addresses.
My pleas to correct the fee schedule's indirect encouragement of massive 
waste have apparently fallen on deaf ears.
> > 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.
The single biggest thing we need now are consumer CPE boxes that understand 
v6 and have 6to4 on by default.  The host issue will take care of itself 
over the next couple of years as non-Vista machines wear out and are 
replaced.
We also need specialty boxes like load balancers, firewalls, NMS, etc. to 
gain v6 support, but that problem is a few orders of magnitude smaller in 
scope and could be solved within 2 years by operators beating on their 
respective sales droids _today_.
> (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.)
No offense to the ISPs, but fixing the DFZ is a relatively small problem _to 
deploy_ compared to upgrading a billion end-user sites.  It's a much harder 
problem to come up with a solution for, though -- and the sort of problem 
the IRTF and IETF seem to be best at.
> > > 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.
v6 _could_ have been in NT4, Win98, WinMe, Win2k, WinXP, or Win2k3.  It 
wasn't; it was first implemented and on by default in Vista.  Until I see 
evidence to the contrary, I will assert that any fundamental change to host 
TCP/IP stacks will take a decade to see in Windows, because that's the 
example we have to work with.
> > > 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.
ARIN's counsel -- who is a lawyer -- has not stated that it would be a 
problem for non-legacy space.  Since he's discussed at length the problems 
with trying to revoke legacy space, and he's responsible for the language in 
the RSA that says ARIN can revoke any non-legacy number resource that 
doesn't meet current policy, that implies he doesn't see a significant 
problem with revoking non-legacy space.
Either way, we will have an official statement before the meeting next 
month, so laymen arguing the point now is a waste of bits.
> > 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.
So far, ARIN has only been revoking blocks that were originally obtained by 
fraud.  It is believed that most of that fraud has been committed by 
spammers; AFAIK there are no official stats on what percentage isn't, 
though.
> > > 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.)
Lawyers are paid to argue cases their clients tell them to, regardless of 
whether they think they're going to win or lose -- or right or wrong.  Do 
you really think SCO's lawyers thought they were going to win against IBM 
and Novell, or do you think they were laughing at their client while they 
collected massive legal fees?  Lots of lawsuits are initiated _knowing_ the 
plaintiff will lose just so they can bleed the defendant dry; in many cases, 
the plaintiff (or prosecutor) prevails even though they're clearly wrong 
simply because the defendant can't afford to fight them.
S

Stephen Sprunk         "God does not play dice."  --Albert Einstein
CCIE #3723         "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the
K5SSS        dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking 


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