[97637] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: The Choice: IPv4 Exhaustion or Transition to IPv6
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Lynda True (aka Etaoin Shrdlu))
Thu Jun 28 15:22:44 2007
Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 12:07:48 -0700
From: "Lynda True (aka Etaoin Shrdlu)" <shrdlu@deaddrop.org>
To: Nanog <nanog@nanog.org>
In-Reply-To: <20070628171528.5308145055@ptavv.es.net>
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
Kevin Oberman wrote:
>>From: Stephen Wilcox <steve.wilcox@packetrade.com>
>>
>>
>> I wasnt specifically thinking of reclamation of space, I was noting a
>> couple of things:
>>
>>- that less than 50% of the v4 space is currently routed. scarcity will presumably cause these non-routed blocks to be:
>> :- used and routes
>> :- reclaimed and reassigned
>> :- sold on
>>
>>
>Some of it, but a large part of the "missing" space belongs to the US
>Government, mostly the military. It is very much in use and is routed
>carefully such that it does not show up in the public Internet.
>
>
There's another set of missing space, here. It seems to be the elephant
in the room. While I can't (or won't) speak to the routing issues
mentioned in the thread, I wonder that no one has brought up all the
legacy space that is held by a few large conglomerates. No, I'm not
talking about AT&T, here. I refer to the early days, when class B
networks were handed out like penny candy, and when organizations could
get class C space equivalent to a class B. When Company A has, say, 5 or
6 of those, and then acquires Company B, and then C and D, and all of
them have that same allotment, it becomes a non-trivial amount of space.
If there's really only 5 or 6 big companies, where there used to be 50
or so, we are suddenly talking about a non-trivial amount of space.
Unfortunately, there's no good way to make them give it up. When you can
see that they could easily make do with a single /8 (or less), it's
rather sad that we don't have a mechanism in place that punishes for
greed, and rewards for surrender of unused (or at least completely
unnecessary) space. I only know about the industry I came from, of
course, and I suspect that the lion's share of over-allocation is in it.
I rather doubt that such things as banking, which came late to the
table, have that characteristic. I know it's not a permanent answer, but
it seems that (unlike the black space over on milnet et al) there's a
temporary reprieve to exhaustion in there somewhere.
--
The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life,
the clearer we should see through it.
Niccolo Machiavelli
