[menog] Asia-Pacific IPv4 address depletion, Middle East next

Sat Apr 16 18:40:22 GMT 2011

A few observations,

a. RIPE is next, but the date is currently unpredictable as we are in a unique situation where both IANA and APNIC pools are depleted, an unprecedented event, and the effect of this is unknown. It could be as early as June 2011 or as late as Q1 2012.  

b. RIPE's pool of available IPv4 addresses is shown below, but note that practical depletion happens once RIPE reaches 16.7 million addresses as this means they hit the last /8 block which has extremely restricted allocation policies (like APNIC):
http://www.ripe.net/internet-coordination/ipv4-exhaustion/ipv4-available-pool-graph

c. IPv6 deployment at the ISP needs to be done a phased approach. First the core & connectivity, then provide access over tunneling to end users, then work on the rest of the network to get it dual-stack end-to-end. In the meantime if IPv4s are in short supply (depends on the ISP) then a parallel project is needed to phase out dependency on public IPv4s consumption by end users.

d. Migrating from IPv4 to IPv6 and running both IP stacks in parallel, while having an upcoming shortage of IPv4 and a lot of IPv4 content and websites, is not the same as implementing pure IPv6. It is a more complex job which needs careful planning by the ISP. 

Depletion is real and is happening all around us. ISPs need to start v6 migration now, dedicate staff and funding, and implement a phased approach. 

Regards,
-Ahmed

From: Lu Heng 
Sent: Saturday, April 16, 2011 6:40 PM
To: Owen DeLong 
Cc: Ahmed Abu-Abed ; menog at menog. net 
Subject: Re: [menog] Asia-Pacific IPv4 address depletion, Middle East next

Hi...."we" means RIPE community.http://inetcore.com/project/ipv4ec/index_en.html. It shows RIPE still have 4 /8 at this moment. While it still has second most amount RIRs. 

IPv6 was not that easy, pure IPv6 environment is still not practical at this time, as small ISP, we tested just few days ago with pure IPv6 with few customers, but the thing is, it just not practical in the real world now.  Many discussion around how and when IPv4 will become history, most of my college would agree later 2015 as earliest.

On Sat, Apr 16, 2011 at 4:18 PM, Owen DeLong <owend at he.net> wrote:

  I don't think that is accurate at all. 

  1. As soon as anyone is out and forced to start deploying customers without
  native IPv4 (if said customers have IPv4 at all, it's through LSN/DS-Lite/NAT64)
  you have a situation where the user experience for your customers trying to
  reach those customers is degraded if you aren't providing IPv6.

  2. It will take most network operators at least 6 months and probably more like
  18 months to get from starting to deploy IPv6 on their backbones to being
  able to roll it out to the majority of their customers. Arguably if there's 6
  months until you have to have IPv6 to your customers, you needed to start
  12 months ago just to be on schedule.

  3. I expect RIPE will be the next RIR to run out. I expect they will run out
  probably around June or July. That's not 6 months and that's where
  most of the middle east gets their addresses.

  4. I'm not sure what you mean by "we are the last". I'm not familiar enough
  with your network to apply the proper context, so, perhaps in some way
  you may have 6 months before you face it in your own environment, but,
  what about your user's ability to reach other environments and/or the
  ability for users in other environments to have a good experience
  reaching yours?

  5. The organization who gets the last allocation in each RIR has a slight advantage
  over all the organizations who were in line behind them because they have
  enough IPv4 addresses to meet their needs for some (limited) amount
  of time whereas the others have no supply of addresses available to them.
  Using that advantage as an excuse to delay your IPv6 deployment is,
  IMHO, both short-sighted and self-destructive.

  Owen

  On Apr 16, 2011, at 6:53 AM, Lu Heng wrote:

    well, we are the last, we still have another 6 month to go before face it, correct me if I was wrong.

    On Sat, Apr 16, 2011 at 2:56 PM, Owen DeLong <owend at he.net> wrote:

      Well said. 

      Owen

      On Apr 16, 2011, at 2:06 AM, Ahmed Abu-Abed wrote:

        Dear colleagues,

        APNIC, the IP address registry for the region stretching from Pakistan to Japan and down to Australia/NZ, announced yesterday it has reached the final /8 IPv4 address block, which is practical IPv4 depletion for most ISPs.

        From now on APNIC will highly restrict the amounts of IPv4 addresses it issues, with ONLY one block 1024 addresses per ISP, and this will be the last IPv4 address block given to each ISP.

        Expect IPv6 only services to start come up, so even if you have enough IPv4 addresses or thinking of implementing an IPv4 Carrier Grade NAT in your network, you will still need to start IPv6 migration all the way to the subscribers.

        The Middle East's address registry, RIPE NCC, is expected to reach a similar situation soon when RIPE reaches its final /8.

        Best Regards,
        -Ahmed

        Ahmed Abu-Abed, P.Eng.
        VP, IPv6 Forum Jordan
        GSM +962 777 669 100
        www.ipv6forum.org 

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    Kind regards.

    Lu

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Kind regards.

Lu

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