Re: [sig-policy] Timeline for implementing the transfer proposal
Maemura-san,
I thank you for your contribution informing us of the perspective of
JPNIC, a NIR member of APNIC, on the current status of the transfer
policy proposal being considered by this community.
Firstly, I must observe that I personally have been very impressed by
the care and attention that has been exercised by the entire JP
community in the consideration of this policy topic. I had the honor
to attend in person a JP Open Policy Meeting in November last year as
a guest, and the thoughtful, considered and thorough manner in which
this topic was considered by the JPOPM participants impressed me
greatly.
I understand this communication from JPNIC has been communicated in
the same considered and thoughtful manner, and my response here is
certainly one that has been made with, I trust, due care and
thoughtful consideration and deep respect.
My personal interpretation is that this position is along the lines of
one of the closing statements in the posting, and I quote "JPNIC
cannot support this proposal until it is clear that there is a
concrete plan that remaining issues will be addressed in an
appropriate manner. " My interpretation of that message is "Please, we
need more time and more information."
I would like to specifically response to the plea for more time, as it
is one I heard in APNIC 26 when this topic was considered in August
2008, and previously in APNIC 25, a year ago.
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.
My apologies for the length of this message, and, again, I am
impressed by the care and thought of the community and the JP
community in particular in these important matters, and I hope that
this contribution can be of some assistance to the overall process we
are engaged in here.
regards,
Geoff
Disclaimer: Obviously this is a contribution made in a purely
personal capacity as an individual member of this community.
