The proposal to make more IPv4 addresses available through a buy-and-sell exchange is dumb and won't work. We've fiddled on this issue long enough; it's time to just make the switch to IPv6 and be done with it!
Getting IPv6 addresses is definitely easier, Paul. The problem is doing something useful with them in the near term. Truth be told, nobody really needs IPv6 addresses within their company; they can use the public RFC 1918 space (the Class A address 10.0.0.0) and it will cover pretty much everyone. The problem is when you try to communicate outside the company, on the Internet. We're not going to get the Internet to IPv6 in 2012 or even 2013, though we darn sure should be trying to!
So with all that you have said in mind, I am wondering why would an established company like NSFT forked out $7.5 million to buy Nortel's IPv4 addresses. From a cost and long term perpspective, which one is more easier: getting new IPv6 addresses or involve in this IPv4 trade?
If I can interprete your last statement very well it sounds like we are in between the sea and the hard rock. While big guys like MSFT are allowed to buy IPv4 addresses, smaller players are been forced to make the hasty transition to IPv6.
I think that there are too many commerical pressures on various Internet bodies these days. On the one hand I agree that unless there is a firm policy against address trading you can't force people not to do it, but I disagree that any body is performing a good service to its community by facilitating something that hurts that very community in the not-so-long run. You can argue in favor of gun-running and drug trading on free market principles but they're still bad public policy, I think. Same for address trading. We need to face reality here, and to allow those with money to avoid doing that while forcing the rest to accept an eventual starvation of addresses or a quick and ugly forced conversion to IPv6 seems to me to be the height of bad taste.
"My view is that if the goal is to promote IPv6 adoption, then anything that perpetuates IPv4 is bad."
This was the same view I had before I came across that article. So is that emerging IPv4 market going to be regulated?
But American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) positon really does make sense:
"ARIN is encouraging the nascent market for IPv4 address trading.
"Our job is to make sure there is good utilization of address space," Curran says. "If there's a market for IPv4 addresses, people who have some unused addresses and might have to work to get it freed up will have an incentive to do so. That means the address space will be better utilized.ARIN adopted this IPv4 address transfer policy 18 months ago because it was worried about the development of a black market for IPv4 addresses."
So in other words they are powerless to stop a "black market" for IPv4 addresses emerging.
Hi, Paul; I think there's never any shortage of people who take any side of any given story in this online age! Myh view is that if the goal is to promote IPv6 adoption, then anything that perpetuates IPv4 is bad. If there's a resale market for IPv4 addresses, that market must depend on the supposition that IPv4 will continue to be used, and thus any such market supports that presumption. Thus, it's a bad thing!
"Proponents of IPv6 are hoping that the upcoming World IPv6 Day, a 24-hour trial of IPv6 that is scheduled for June 8, will speed up IPv6 adoption and in turn prime the market for IPv4 address resale."
""Microsoft's acquisition of Nortel's IPv4 address space: That's a fascinating milestone,'' says Craig Labovitz, chief scientist at Arbor Networks, which studies Internet traffic trends. "Now there's a price on [IPv4 addresses]. It's really the beginning of an economic incentive to support IPv6 over IPv4."
I came across the above statements from this article and I was wondering to myslef how can it possible be. My understanding from your vblog is that an IPv4 amrket can actually delay the full adoption of IPv6. But these statements seem to be suggesting likewise.
Well said, Tom. ISPs have been testing IPv6 for ages. What good will their work be if they can't educate users about the protocol and the necessity for adopting it. Seems to me providers would be well to sink some funds into promotional/informational programs.
It's frustrating that we have stalled on this migration for so long and that we're prepared to get a bit kinky in terms of approach to stall even longer, Nicole. The basic problem is that users are not demanding their ISPs offer IPv6, and that is likely in large part because they don't know how to set up their own stuff internally. One issue that ISPs offer me regularly is that they don't know if the internal gateways and stuff in homes have IPv6 capability. Well, gosh, it's time to find out and offer options for those who don't.
Thanks for your take on this Tom. To buy and sell IPv4 addresses just seems like a way of stalling the inevitable. Industry leaders should be looking for the way forward, not for a way to stay where we are. I agree with your points and I hope this idea doesn't end up a reality!
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
Subsidized handsets, rather than locked handsets, should be the focus of regulators. We're not getting good deals, not fostering innovation, and weakening our power as buyers.
50 billion household devices will be on the Internet by 2020, according to Cisco. And we're hearing foreign governments are hacking our infrastructure. Surely our refrigerators are next!
YouTube's move to a partial pay-for-view model could help relieve a dearth of good new content but it could also complicate debates in many parts of the world over payment by content providers for delivery of their material to customers.
That's what Larry Page said on Google's earnings call, referring to the conjunction of mobile and the cloud. Well, let's chart it then! We need to be thinking about an Internet where 90% of our traffic goes to 70 destinations within 40 miles of us.
Facebook's Graph Search may face some profound challenges and risks, first, because Facebook users haven't been thinking of their posts as product reviews; and second, because Facebook will now have to contend with the social-network equivalent of SEO "gaming" of results.
EU operators are considering joining up to create a pan-European network to reduce competitive overbuild and cost. This might lower costs and focus operators on higher-level, more interesting services.
Marissa Mayer at Yahoo has come out with her strategy on turning the company around: culture, company, calibration, and compensation. But Yahoo needs to have a technical approach to the mobile cloud opportunity, not a management theory lesson.
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