The Planet Blog

ARIN Issues Statements About Future Allocation Policies - SEO to blame?

A few weeks ago I blogged about ARIN’s IPv6 notice. Interestingly — and I don’t take credit for this, by the way –ARIN has now decided to attempt to proactively address the threat of an evolving secondary market for IP space. As IPv4 addresses are a limited resource, it only makes sense that individuals and groups will try to capitalize on the coming number crunch as an opportunity to create a black or grey market for unused IP space. ARIN has issued a statement (read here) that reinforces their intention to adhere to the spirit of the original policies and basically lays down the gauntlet for other registries to do the same. The paragraph that best sums it up for me is:

The purpose of this memorandum is to assure the community that the democratic principles of Internet governance will be adhered to by ARIN, the Regional Internet Registry serving Canada, many Caribbean and North Atlantic islands, and the United States.(7) The resource-allocation policy under which ARIN operates has been produced through an open, transparent, and democratic process over more than a decade. ARIN is fully dedicated to preserving universal access and stable functionality of the Internet, and our policies do not encourage profit-driven speculation in the Internet addresses.

Because the system relies on a certain amount of self-governance, we have to rely on the people running these registries and their willingness to resist market temptations and continue to enforce the current policies that are set forth. We also have to rely on the honesty of the people requesting IP allocations from the registries.

As the situation tightens, it will be interesting to see how the various registries respond. Ultimately, the market will demand that we shift away from the IPv4 space altogether and into the IPv6 space. At The Planet, part of our strategic planning is centered around being ready for this shift.

We see more and more requests for IP space for non-traditional reasons — SEO being a primary culprit. There is a lot of confusion out there about what variables are used in assigning rankings on the various search engines, and it appears to be driving more and more people to grab as much IP space as possible to try and improve their rankings. Higher ranking = more $$$$.

If the search engine companies really care about the Internet and its usability, it would behoove them to issue a statement clarifying the importance — or lack thereof — of IP addresses in the ranking of search engines. So that we have a definitive answer on whether or not it really matters. Until then, my fear is that the problem is only going to get worse, and we’ll be running out of IP addresses sooner rather than later.

In the meantime, I would encourage end users to really research the topic themselves before asking for that extra IP allocation. You might find out that you’re paying for something you don’t really need.

- Will

The organization responsible for allocating IPv4 space in the US (ARIN) issued a resolution on May 7 that has managed to stay way below the radar of most. It reads:

WHEREAS, community access to Internet Protocol (IP) numbering Resources has proved essential to the successful growth of the Internet; and,

WHEREAS, ongoing community access to Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) numbering resources can not be assured indefinitely; and,

WHEREAS, Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) numbering resources are available and suitable for many Internet applications,

BE IT RESOLVED, that this Board of Trustees hereby advises the Internet community that migration to IPv6 numbering resources is necessary for any applications which require ongoing availability from ARIN of contiguous IP numbering resources; and,

BE IT ORDERED, that this Board of Trustees hereby directs ARIN staff to take any and all measures necessary to assure veracity of applications to ARIN for IPv4 numbering resources; and,

BE IT RESOLVED, that this Board of Trustees hereby requests the ARIN Advisory Council to consider Internet Numbering Resource Policy changes advisable to encourage migration to IPv6 numbering resources where possible.

I know - it looks like a lot of legal mumbo-jumbo. I’m no lawyer, but allow me to attempt to summarize these point by point:

The success of the Internet has been dependent on the community’s access to IP addresses.

The total number of available addresses are finite (4,294,967,296 to be exact) and there is no guarantee that they will last indefinitely.

IPv6 addresses are available (generally) and work (again - generally).

It’s time to plan migrating to IPv6 if you’re planning to continue to get address space from ARIN.

ARIN’s staff is being instructed to *REALLY* scrutinize all new applications for IPv4 space from service providers.

ARIN’s Board of Trustees is requesting that the ARIN Advisory Council consider policy changes that will “encourage” migration to IPv6 where possible.

So is the day finally upon us where we no longer have the luxury of postponing our IPv6 deployment until the market demands it? Perhaps.

Consider the chart (from CAIDA) below:

What this tells us is that in the next year or so, we’ll start eating into the space that was set aside for “future” use. Soon after that, we’ll be into the reserved “multicast” space, and shortly after that - the “special” use space.

Does this mean doomsday for IP service providers? Probably not. It’s likely that the next wave of action you’ll start seeing from your providers is new guidelines for allocating IP addresses and increased pricing for said IP addresses. Additionally, providers may come back to users with large amounts of IP space and demand that they justify having them or return them. That may extend the need for migration out another 2-3 years. But the short answer is that sooner or later we will be faced with migration to IPv6 (and it will probably be sooner rather than later).

The good news is that of late adoption of IPv6 has accelerated as the graph below indicates:

We’ve already secured an IPv6 Allocation (for you propeller-heads, we got a /32 which represents 79,228,162,514,264,337,593,543,950,336 unique IP addresses) and have enabled IPv6 in our Dallas core network (try pinging 2610:40::3:1:2 to verify if you don’t believe me). My hope is to extend IPv6 to the rest of our network in the coming months, and shortly after that into our customer network, eventually allocating IPv6 space alongside IPv4 space automatically.

Is there huge demand for this? Not yet. But this is one of those times where being ahead of the demand curve isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and perhaps you need to make sure that whichever provider you decide to work with has a plan to get there.

- Will