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Hi, Philip,
For time issue, I really didn't expect that long, thank you and Sam for clarifying the time of implentation. But given from http://www.potaroo.net, Projected IANA Unallocated Address Pool Exhaustion: 06-May-2011, Projected RIR Unallocated Address Pool Exhaustion: 01-Sep-2012 , I still feel it's not neccessary for the proposal to take effect 'as soon as the APNIC Secretariat can implement the mechanisms of the policy'.
Firstly, I think the numbers of transfer aren't significant yet, secondly, I think the later we have a transfer policy, the longer those dealers would have to wait to formally transfer, or they would have to tranfer in a black market, which increase their investment and the risk, and their return will be more likely impacted by the implementation of IPv6, there for make the investment less attractive,which will encourage address request from regular allocation channel. So, I will be more comfortable if transfer policy will take effect some time near the final /8.
I listed our member's views just to answer your question, those are summary of the discussions, doesn't suggest those are all we discussed about transfer and doesn't suggest whether I support those ideas or not. And we have already shared our views in the past 3 APNIC meeting.
FYI, there are very few transfer requests in CNNIC yet, except for mergers and acquisitions, we did let them return those addresses to APNIC.
Regards
Terence
----- Original Message ----- From: "Philip Smith" pfs@cisco.com To: "Terence Zhang Yinghao" zhangyinghao@cnnic.cn Cc: sig-policy@apnic.net Sent: Friday, March 20, 2009 2:19 PM Subject: Re: [sig-policy] Prop 050(072) comments
Hi Terence,
Terence Zhang Yinghao said the following on 20/3/09 11:26:
My concern about prop-050 is mainly on the process and the time of implement, I feel now that we still have free pool to allocate, better not to implement a policy which may encourage the address market;
But there is a difference between preparing a policy for implementation, and actually implementing it. That's why I was asking how long you think we need to discuss the policy proposal so that it would be ready to be implemented. Sam has just replied saying that implementation might need 6 months after EC endorsement. So that's a minimum of 6 months after reaching consensus, which means consensus has to be achieved at least 6 months before we need to implement the policy.
What I thought we were discussing right now is a policy that we can implement when it is required.
Are you suggesting that we don't even discuss what we should implement until we no longer have a free pool to allocate from?
To answer some of your questions regarding CNNIC, our members do have some discussion on the transfer proposal, and their views are summurized as following:
Are these recent views, following the APNIC meeting in Manila? If they were accumulated over the last two years, it's a great pity they couldn't have been shared with the entire community from when Geoff first brought the transfer issue to our attention.
Arguments favor the transfer:
--Once the fresh IPv4 allocations pool run out, and IPv6 deployment is not ready, a mechanism is needed to re-use of the allocated but unused IPv4 resources.
Did they have suggestions as to what this mechanism might be? Mechanisms for reclaiming unused but allocated or assigned address space have been tested ever since the Internet moved from classful to classless routing, and I wouldn't say they were that successful. Saying a mechanism is needed is fine, but what is it?
What we do know, from the real world out there, is that when there is a shortage of a resource, people will do anything to obtain some more. It might not have been the case in China, but when the price of oil was around US$150 per barrel, the price of petrol and diesel reflected that extreme price. There were shortages at fuel filling stations, large queues, and very high prices in many countries around the world.
Arguments against the transfer:
--Address transfer contradict to the current need based allocation policy
I think we are all in agreement here, and have been probably for the last 2 years this has been discussed. But it doesn't help us with dealing with the issue that people out there are actually transferring addresses already...
--It attaches a potential 'value' to IP addresses, and may attract some businesses to apply for more IP addresses than their actual need, there for speed up the IPv4 addresses consumption.
IPv4 addresses have had a "value" for a long time. Companies that collapsed in the dotcom bust in 2000/1 had their assets taken over by other companies. These assets included the IPv4 address allocations used for existing networks which were taken over by the purchaser.
Is there a problem with a speed up of IPv4 address consumption? We only need to shout "petrol shortage" on the radio or television and people will queue up at filling stations to fill up - even though they probably don't need to and there is no real shortage. We more than likely will see a speed up of IPv4 address consumption anyway, whether there is a transfer policy or not.
--It is discriminatory to LIRs in developing countries who have fewer IPv4 resources than other countries, as they have to pay more to get the addresses they need.
As long as there is a free pool of IPv4 addresses, everyone can go to their RIR and get address space. When there is no longer any free IPv4 addresses around, people will be swapping addresses for money, whether APNIC has a transfer policy or not. And when they pay for address space, it discriminates against those who cannot afford the huge rates that will be charged. And that won't be just developing countries either! ;-)
--It implicitly recognize the market of transfer and may encourage the tranfer market and may change the way IPv4 addresses currently managed.
That's very possible, I agree. What would the CNNIC members suggest would be a better alternative? Transfers are happening right now, like it or not, so we need to find a responsible way of handling the situation. Hence the discussion that's been ongoing for the last 2 years or so. :-)
--It may deaggregate the address block and lead to rapid growth of the routing table.
Of course it will. But given that many ISPs are wilfully deaggregating anyway, with impunity, this is just more noise in an already noisy routing system. Take a look at www.cidr-report.org for some stunning examples of existing badness.
Generally speaking, we all agree that keep a accurate record is important, but most of our members don't insist on we must have a transfer policy or we should not have a transfer policy. They pay more attention to if there are negative impacts and if those impacts can be mitigated to an acceptable level.
Any suggestions on how to keep an accurate record while dealing with the situation where some organisations are transferring address space to each other? And how to avoid abusing the system?
Because that's what's been keeping us quite busy for a long time now.
It's fine to propose conditions, but they do need to be backed up with what the details might be, so I would definitely welcome suggestions.
We have very few case of IPv4 address transfer in China though, till end of 2008, there are about 298 million internet user in China main land, annual growth rate is about 41%, we only have about 181 million IPv4 addresses, annual growth rate is about 34%, so I think there are very few unused address blocks for transfer.
Very few cases is not the same as zero cases. Given that transfers currently are not allowed under APNIC policy, I assume that CNNIC went to these organisations and successfully retrieved the transferred addresses for reuse? If CNNIC didn't do this, what did you do, and how can you justify that action when there is no policy to cover it?
Serveral of the tier-1 ISP in China own large portion of the IPv4 allocation, when customer no longer use their services, they just get the addresses back and assign to new custmer when needed, if we can call this 'transfer',that's the way it happen.
No, that's not a transfer. That's the proper operation of PA space.
If one of the CNNIC members received address space from you, decided they didn't need it and "gave" it to someone else to use rather than give it back to you, that's the type of transfer we are talking about here.
philip
On 23/03/2009, at 10:28 PM, Terence Zhang Yinghao wrote:
Hi, Philip,
For time issue, I really didn't expect that long, thank you and Sam for clarifying the time of implentation. But given from http://www.potaroo.net , Projected IANA Unallocated Address Pool Exhaustion: 06-May-2011, Projected RIR Unallocated Address Pool Exhaustion: 01-Sep-2012 , I still feel it's not neccessary for the proposal to take effect 'as soon as the APNIC Secretariat can implement the mechanisms of the policy'.
Hi Terence
Thanks for your postings - I'd like to respond to this particular issue, as I've seen it in a number of recent postings on this topic, and the argument goes along the lines of "there is no need for transfers until the unallocated space is exhausted so we should not do it until then".
The analogy that comes to my mind in this case is the statement that "there is no need to fly until we are already falling off the cliff, so we should not do it until then."
My concern is that if we leave everything until the last second then it will be too late for the Internet.
I'm going to repeat a response I posted on the 25th February here to explain what I mean in more detail. I would appreciate it you could carefully consider this, as I believe that it would be the wrong thing to do if we plan to make dramatic changes in terms of transfers right at the last second of the current IPv4 allocation regime, and do nothing until then. Anyway, here's the relevant excerpt from that posting....
Would that we all had more time to consider these issues. This situation is one that is entirely surprising, unplanned and certainly unintended. By the time the IPv4 address pool was in its final stages we were all meant to be well on the way with deployment of IPv6, and there was never intended to be any such concept of "the last IPv4 address". Well before the unallocated IPv4 address pool was at risk of complete exhaustion we were meant to have completed this transition to IPv6 and consigned the by then unwanted last IPv4 address to a digital museum. That script is not being followed. And the imposition of the intense global economic downswing on top of this circumstance has negated even the remote prospect of any last minute scramble to avert the impact of IPv4 address exhaustion.
So we now must face a rather sombre new reality: firstly, collectively, we, the global internet community, have indeed failed to avoid encountering IPv4 exhaustion, and, secondly, we are on a trajectory and a timeframe that is no longer negotiable, in that the processes that are driving us towards direct confrontation with IPv4 address exhaustion are now at a scale and momentum that the process is now inexorable and certain. There is now a new reality that we simply have to adjust to, that in the next 2 - 3 years the current address distribution framework that is used by this global internet and its now billions of users is going to reach its conclusion, while the process that are driving its continued expansion appear to want to continue unabated, and will continue to express demand for further IPv4 addresses, as the parallel process of adoption of IPv6 is now incapable to meeting the timetable posed by this rundown condition. Whatever we used to understand and believe in this area of address infrastructure administration now requires reassessment and, potentially, realignment.
2 - 3 years is not a lot of time for an industry that has over a relatively short period of time accumulated billions of end users, hundreds of millions of devices, millions of edge networks and service operators, thousands of services operators and hundreds of individual economies. This remaining time is now a precious commodity and we need to spend it wisely.
Everyone, policy makers here in the APNIC community, registries that manage address distribution and registration functions, ISPs, enterprise networks, vendors, service integrators, network operators, regulators, public policy folk, experts of various forms would all like to claim all of this this short remaining time for themselves in order to undertake their plans and preparations. And if all of this activity could proceed in parallel then this would be a wonderful solution within the limitations of out current circumstances.
But perhaps the next aspect of this new reality that we now find ourselves in is that this cannot proceed in parallel. Operators need time to prepare, but cannot do so until they have some idea as to what form of address environment they will be operating in. But once they have that information they will need time to implement the appropriate internal mechanisms and procedures to sustain their operations following IPv4 address exhaustion. The same consideration applies to each and every member of this set of parties - we all need some exclusive amount to time to prepare for what we need to do based on the outcomes of the preparations of others. So the next aspect of this new reality that we find ourselves now is is that the one really precious finite commodity we have left, the remaining time, cannot be used exclusively by any single entity, must must be shared sequentially. None of us has the luxury of the ability to say "please allow us more time" without impacting negatively on the needs of other who also need time to prepare based on the outcomes of others. Our world is tightly interdependent and delay by one becomes imposed delay on all.
So how should we use this precious remaining time to maximize the beneficial outcomes for the Internet? And, hopefully, using the time to minimize the chances of entering into further unplanned adventures of infrastructure chaos and network collapse? Should we take more time as a policy group to fully understand all possible courses of actions and the complete range of potential implications in the short and far term? As useful as such information may be, such a study would encompass months if not further years of study, and in the meantime would necessarily impede the needs of others who need to make their plans based on the understanding or what forms of consequent address re-distribution mechanisms will be provided through tomorrow's registry system. This does not seem to me to be an outcome that meets the objective of maximizing beneficial outcomes. Should we notionally adopt a redistribution mechanism now, but "turn it on" only when the disruptive exhaustion event occurs? Again the seems to me to be suboptimal, as it attempts to maximize disruption at the time when the existing distribution arrangements come to their logical conclusion, rather than mitigate it and works against the needs of others who could benefit in their preparation efforts in early exposure to the forthcoming re-distribution arrangements, whatever they may be, before the current distribution comes to an abrupt termination.
So the question I ask myself in this context of policy formulation is "given the limited time left to us all in the current framework, how can we spend what time remains as wisely as we can?" And the conclusion I am personally drawn towards is one that is perhaps somewhat uncomfortable for some. The conclusion that I am drawn towards is the observation that we would be selfish and we would increase the prospects of complete failure and collapse of the Internet as we know it if we were to take more time now to decide in a policy formulation framework as what the registry function should do and how it should behave in a post-exhaustion world. Others need their time to plan too, and their plans rely, in no small part, on the planned registry framework in this new environment. Its time to clearly decide what we can achieve as a framework for the registry function in the new reality and then allow others to use what time remains to work through their consequent preparatory procedures and work out how they can maximize their prospects of an outcome for the Internet that, if not entirely comfortable, avoids being destructively harmful.
I think that we really do not have the luxury of claiming exclusively more time for our processes to further deliberate and ponder these issues. Others are waiting for our outputs in order to start working on their necessary agendas. And time is short, and what time is left needs to be shared carefully and wisely.
regards,
Geoff
Disclaimer - posting as a concerned individual here.
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