On Oct 8, 2007, at 10:28 PM, David Conrad wrote:
The argument, as I understand it (and those who argue this
direction feel free to correct me if I misstate), is that as the
IPv4 free pool exhausts, there will be a natural pressure to
increase address utilization efficiency. This will likely mean
longer prefixes will begin to be put (back) into use, either from
assignments and allocations that were "rediscovered" or from unused
portions of shorter prefixes. Customers will approach ISPs to get
these long prefixes routed, shopping through ISPs until they find
one that will accept their money and propagate the long prefix.
Now, of course announcing a route doesn't mean anyone will accept
it, but as I understand the theory, larger ISPs will agree to
accept and propagate longer prefixes from other larger ISPs if
those other ISPs will be willing to accept and propagate
transmitted long prefixes ("scratch my back and I'll scratch
yours"), particularly if this encourages the smaller ISPs to 'look
for other employment opportunities' when they can't afford the
router upgrades.
We know this is not the case from history. For instance, look at
Sprint & ACL112.
Also, we know from history that smaller ISPs sometimes are better
able to do router upgrades than large ones.
Personally, I fully expect the first part to happen. Where I'm
having trouble is the second part (the accepting longer prefixes
part). However, a few prominent members of the Internet operations
community whom I respect have argued strongly that this is going to
happen. I thought I'd ask around to see what other folk think...
I'd bet against the first part happening, so the second part is moot.
--
TTFN,
patrick
