[AfriNIC-rpd] Do we push for more V4 or advocate dual stack ??

[David Conrad]

Hi,

On Aug 30, 2007, at 5:32 AM, Mark J Elkins wrote:
> If we go with JPNIC's proposal - and split evenly the last 5 x /8's

JPNIC has revised their proposal.  It is now 1 x /8s.

> AfriNIC will (looking at current growth) still have unused IPv4 many
> years after the others have run out. This is possibly bad - perhaps we
> should have less space? IPv4 address space will be like selling second
> hand equipment - thats incompatible with the rest of the world.

Actually, I suspect it more likely it will be seen the Internet's  
equivalent of oil fields.  When IPv4 is no longer available via  
"traditional" channels, I imagine you will begin to see folks  
prospecting for 'virgin address pools' that they can exploit  
(regardless of RIR policies regarding appropriateness of this action  
-- desperate people will find loopholes).

> We really need to ignore the IPv4 problem and go for moving into IPv6.

The challenge is getting the rest of the world to join you.  Since  
the majority of content and users are only available on IPv4, the  
migration to IPv6 requires a leap of faith.  It is possible that the  
"best" (for some value of that variable) migration strategy will be  
for ISPs to provide customers with a single IPv4 address as a NAT  
gateway to the customer network and offer a hosting service for  
public facing customer applications.  Ideally, the ISPs will deploy  
their entire infrastructure with IPv6, tunneling IPv4 through their  
infrastructure, thereby not needing any IPv4 addresses for that  
infrastructure.  Unfortunately (as I understand it), network  
management software, customer provisioning tools, etc. that run over  
IPv6 aren't quite there yet.

> We really have enough IPv4 already to outlast the others..

This largely depends on projected consumption rates...

Regards,
-drc