[AfriNIC-rpd] Re: Proposal: Reclamation of allocated but unrouted IPv4 addresses.

[Owen DeLong]

On Feb 10, 2011, at 7:26 AM, Jackson Muthili wrote:

> Andrew,
> 
> On Thu, Feb 10, 2011 at 11:04 AM, Andrew Alston <aa at tenet.ac.za> wrote:
>> Secondly, I have to wonder if we are not perhaps flogging a dead horse
>> here.  The simple fact is, even if you reclaimed a load of space, would you
>> really be able to make a difference, particularly in the AfriNIC region,
>> where the rest of the world is likely to have run out of IPv4 space and gone
>> IPv6 only for large portions of the Internet at least a year or two before
>> the current AfriNIC allocations are depleted?
> 
> Many contend that it will be a while before IPv6 is accepted. Some say
> it could take decades. They may be right. Policies to extend
> availability of IPv4 can not be taken lightly. If IPv6 were an
> acceptable medium to long term solution, it would have been massively
> deployed by now.
> 
I don't think that is accurate.

IPv6 is being deployed very rapidly now. It has not seen massive deployment
until now because motivation to deploy has been low while cost has been high.
Few, if any businesses will engage in a low-motivation high-cost activity.

Now, motivation is accelerating rapidly, and, so is deployment.

I do not believe it will be decades before IPv6 is nearly ubiquitous.

I think it will be less than a decade before IPv4 is an island protocol not
widely routed on the internet.

Owen