IPv6 - The current reality behind the promise

1. IPv6 - The current reality behind the promise Tony Hain IPv6 Forum Fellow Technology Director – NAv6TF Technical Leader – Cisco Systems ahain@cisco.com

2. Agenda • IPv4 allocation status • E-nations global gap • Cost / benefit trade-off & the IPv4 turnip • Public policy impacts

3. Distribution of IPv4 addresses by /8 31% remaining

4. Ongoing analysis of IPv4 trends • Recent articles suggest an extended lifetime for IPv4, but … …these numbers omit a significant part of the story. Geoff Huston –Mar. 04

5. Completing the picture • The H-D ratio (RFC 3194) is the measure of allocation inefficiency. Adjusting the raw numbers from the RIR’s to compensate for their historical allocation efficiency of 87% matches the published IANA pool. This takes ~ 12 years off the recently projected lifetime. • Adding the rest of the historical data further shortens the projected lifetime, and provides a much closer fit with the most recent trend in the remaining IANA pool. • 1981 - IPv4 protocol published • 1985 ~ 1/8 of total space • 1990 ~ 1/4 of total space • 1995 ~ 1/3 of total space • 2000 ~ 1/2 of total space • 2002.5 ~ 2/3 of total space In any casethese projections assume no changefrom the historical rate.

6. Internet around the worldhttp://www.nav6tf.org/RIR_eNations/RIR_eNations.html

7. Squeezing the last IPv4 address out of the turnip • The allocated private IPv4 address space (RFC 1918) is already inadequate for some • In one example; over 5000 existing facilities with a growth rate around 10%, where the set of new facilities each month consume approximately a /16 • Applications support costs • support calls about NAT cost the carrier even when not at fault • any NAT controlled by someone else stifles the ability to deploy new applications

8. Public policy issues • Open access requirements • cable systems have a zero-sum address utilization across all ISPs for a set number of homes passed • current IPv4 policy debate, either allocate enough space for all providers to serve the entire set of homes on a given plant, or require all the participating ISPs to incur ongoing costs dealing with rebalancing to track subscriber churn

9. Public policy issues • Lawful Intercept for the Internet • tracing nodes and application identification by port are inhibited by NAT translation • global uniqueness of IPv6 addresses facilitates identification • VoIP call preemption • even when complex NAT traversal schemes allow VoIP to work, identifying specific calls for preemption is difficult • IPv6 has no simple solution to the entire preemption issue, but facilitates the identification part of the problem

10. Public policy issues • Administration challenge - broadband for all • requires compelling consumer applications • developing compelling applications requires innovative freedom • the economic engine of leadership in application innovation is a global political target • NAT restricts innovation to the played-out client/server model • Global uniqueness of addresses will impact the model and potential applications in Jordi's upcoming talk

11. Summary • The reserve of IPv4 addresses is dwindling and must be shared globally. • History shows us what IPv4 allocations were like, but the looming demand makes it somewhat irrelevant. • A variety of public policy choices could further increase demand on the global pool. • In short, further IPv4 conservation efforts will not be sufficient to deliver the Internet of tomorrow…