Re: [nznog] IPv4 Exhaustion

It'd be good if Geoff were able to revise his findings with updated numbers.

Geoff no longer subscribes to NZNOG, so he can't post directly. He asked me to forward his response:

Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 16:05:36 +1100 To: nznog(a)list.waikato.ac.nz From: Geoff Huston Subject: Re: [nznog] IPv4 Exhaustion

I perform a daily analysis of the consumption rates of IPv4 addresses - they are updated on a daily basis at http://ipv4.potaroo.net

If tomorrow continues much like today, and this trend continues uniformly then a reasonable estimate of the date at which the first RIR will be unable to meet a request for IPv4 addresses is 4th August 2012, or slight under 6 years from now.

Frankly, its a VERY rubbery date, and while the statistical calculation is probably reasonable, the underlying assumptions are very flawed. The major assumption behind this projection is theat industry players will not panic, and there will be no last minute run on the remaining resource pool at any point prior to exhaustion. Given the relative paucity of Ipv6 deployment today and the continued reliance on IPv4 in many mainstream product deployments it would seem that this assumption is highly unlikely. A rush is more likely, but the exact timing of any such rush and the volume of such a rush is something I've been unable to model with any level of satisfaction. Tony Hain could be right - it could be in a 2 - 3 year time frame. Or maybe not. It is just not possible to tell from conventional statistical techniques, and at this stage you can get out any of your favourite forms of divination and have a play for yourself - within some bounds any guess is perhaps equally likely as any other!

Now if this was an agile industry with large pools of available capital to make infrastructure investments in advance of need then I suspect that this would not be a very interesting problem - we'd all head into a dual stack world and then phase out IPv4 and there would be no drama. But thats not this industry. Ipv6 today represents a considerable investment, an investment that does not raise any additional revenue and does not produce any additional efficiencies in supply. In short, in the short term business ledgers any such investment is all loss. And in a cutthroat world of mass deployment of low margin broadband access services life is tough enough without adding one more cost element to the business.

So instead we live in a world that appears to be largely in a state of denial, where we'd prefer to spend more time wondering precisely when the falling brick will hit the pavement rather than figuring out what to do afterwards, and then understanding what needs to happen now.

regards,

Geoff

-- Robert Loomans Email: robertl(a)apnic.net Programmer/Analyst, APNIC Phone: +61 7 3858 3100 http://www.apnic.net Fax: +61 7 3858 3199