[Fwd: [members-discuss] [ncc-announce] RIPE NCC Position On The ITU IPv6 Group]

[nick at foobar.org (Nick Hilliard)]

On 26/02/2010 22:13, David Conrad wrote:
> If you want to be really frightened, remember that the IPv4 free pool
> is going to be exhausted in something like 576 days.  Given the lack
> of IPv6 deployment, the subsequent food fights that erupt as markets
> in IPv4 addresses are established are likely going to be
> "interesting".  Politicians very much like to be seen to be "doing
> something" in interesting food fights.

There is no doubt that there will be the most unholy bun-fight.

Journalists will elevate themselves to the highest ivory towers and crow 
about how they foresaw all this happening years in advance, if only 
anyone had bothered to listen to them.  Communications regulators will 
tut-tut loudly and commission long-winded reports on the effect of ipv4 
starvation to the Digital Economy, and set up sub-committees and 
sub-sub-committees to examine potential solutions, all due to report 
within an 18-24 month time-frame, and all recommending migration to ipv6 
over time (woohoo! - what insight!).

The vendors will have a field day selling NATs, carrier grade NATs and 
all sorts of magical upgrades, all designed at milking the last tiny 
amounts of value out of each single ipv4 address - and your wallet. 
Notwithstanding this, their IPv6 support will still be curiously badly 
implemented, tacked on as an afterthought for those stingy service 
provider types rather than the cash-cow corporates and public sector 
customers who'll swallow anything that's given a good review in the 
trade rags.

The WSIS will turn into a shouting match, or even more of a shouting 
match.  Actually, scratch that: it'll turn into a foaming pit of rabid 
evangelists, each preaching their gospel of ill-informed craziness, 
allowing the ITU to step in and demonstrate that their mature and 
seasoned approach to the problem is the only realistic way of dealing 
with ipv4 scarcity, if only the internet and its short-sighted approach 
to proper standards based telco engineering were to come under their 
control.

And the politicians.  Yes, they will erupt in hitherto unseen outbursts 
of self-righteous indignation at the stupid internet engineers who let 
this problem happen in the first place and who made no provision 
whatsoever for viable alternatives, and will then declare the the only 
reasonable way of dealing with the problem is their particular type of 
regulation, mandating this or that but - funnily enough - very little of 
it making any sense whatever and all of it adding to the old maxim that 
there is no problem which exists which can't be made worse by 
regulation.  As you note, anything for a couple of column inches.

Oh, it will be fun.

Nick