On 7/12/13 12:34 , William Herrin wrote:
On Thu, Jul 11, 2013 at 7:58 PM, David Farmer <far...@umn.edu> wrote:
We still have IPv6 and ASNs to worry about, and while both
resource pools are GARGANTUAN by comparison, they are not infinite.

Hi David,

While not technically infinite, the 32 bit ASN pool is functionally
infinite. There is no foreseeable course of events which would exhaust
that pool. Ever.

As ASNs are currently used, 1 or a very small number of ASNs per organization, they might seem functionally infinite. However, the IETF is about to allocate 94,967,295 Private Use ASNs[1] (AS4,200,000,000 - AS4,294,967,294) which is more than 1400 times the ASNs currently in use. This is intended to facilitate other BGP applications like large scale enterprise use of BGP based MPLS VPNs, or some new data center uses of BGP[2]. Think of an ASN per top of rack or end or row switch in your favorite monster scale Data Center.

[1] http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-idr-as-private-reservation-05
[2] http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-lapukhov-bgp-routing-large-dc-04

In the discussion of expanding Private Use ASNs it was suggested it might be better if blocks (maybe large blocks) of unique public ASNs were assigned to organizations, instead of going the private use route. So, if large blocks of ASNs were to be assigned per organization, then ASNs might not seem so functionally infinite anymore.

This is all hypothetical right now, except the nearly 100M Private Use ASNs, that has been approved by the IESG and is in the RFC Editor Queue now. But, if in the future we start using ASNs in different ways than now, and our rate of use changes significantly, then ASNs may not seem so functionally infinite any more. In the mid-80s 4B IP addresses seemed functionally infinite. But, by the mid-90s it was obvious 4B IPs wasn't functionally infinite at all. Is 4B ASNs still going to seem functionally infinite in 2025? I think it will probably still seem functionally infinite, but all I know is things change.

1. Can everyone concede that going forward, conservation is much less
important, but that the need for some concept of conservation doesn't
completely go away either.

I'd like to, but no. This document applies it to "number resources"
not "addresses." Previous documents on the subject (e.g. RFC 2050)
correctly limited conservation statements to "addresses."

Also, conservation of IPv6 addresses moving forward is neither "much
less" important nor even "less" important. It's merely different.

"Much less" is in comparison to other issues for IPv6, conservation is much less important than routability for IPv6 in my opinion.

We'd like to not burn through that free pool in the next decade or
two. It wasn't that long ago that some folks in this forum quite
seriously suggested allocating /16's and /15's to ISPs in support of
6rd efforts.

People say lots of things, I don't think anyone really thought a /16 for 6rd per ISP was reasonable. One reason was conservation.

Unlike the ASN pool, the IPv6 pool is not functionally
infinite.

I believe some form of conservation is applicable for all "number resources", even ASNs. Again, are ASNs going to seem functionally infinite in 2025? Also, similar to Matthew requesting a /8 of IPv6 earlier today; If we don't need conservation for ASNs then I'll take a million ASNs please.

I've provided what I think is a plausible situation where conservation applied to ASNs could be beneficial. Can you provide a plausible situation where conservation applied to ASNs could be harmful?

Finally, IPv4 conservation beyond the free pool is moot. One cannot
conserve what has already been consumed. Redistribution, in whatever
form it takes, is not properly described as conservation.

The definitions I'm thinking of;
Conservation - Noun - The action of conserving something, in particular.
Conserving - Verb - Prevent the wasteful or harmful overuse of (a resource).

A Hypothetical; Is it in the interest of Internet for a bankruptcy trustee to sell IPv4 addresses to a snow shoe spammer? How is something like this prevented without a concept of conservation for IPv4? Personally, I don't have to use the "C" word, but the interconnected meaning of a lot of the concepts we are talking about boil down to the same or only subtly different things.

...

--
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David Farmer               Email: far...@umn.edu
Office of Information Technology
University of Minnesota
2218 University Ave SE     Phone: 1-612-626-0815
Minneapolis, MN 55414-3029  Cell: 1-612-812-9952
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