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Re: /8 end user assignment?

  • From: David Conrad
  • Date: Thu Aug 04 15:20:46 2005 
Steve,

On Aug 4, 2005, at 11:35 AM, Stephen J. Wilcox wrote:
1. Softbank BB is not on my radar of likely /8 candidates (of course, geography
may be the reason for that)
They are one of the largest ISPs in Japan and Japan (at least certain parts, like Tokyo and Osaka) is _significantly_ more advanced in terms of broadband penetration than the US.

2. We know cable companies, dsl providers and mobile companies can use this many
IPs, but they generally seem to make use of NAT and IPv6. If everyone in this
category who could justify a /8 applied and received them we might be in real
trouble with our IPv4 space.
This is, of course, why IPv6 has the traction it has. I used to be much more sanguine about IPv4 address space availability. That was long ago. Given growth patterns, the only way IPv4 will continue to be usable is by the use of NAT. For various reasons (some good, some not), NAT is seen as the spawn of the Devil. As such, IPv4 with more bits becomes less non-attractive.

I had said elsewhere this was unprecedented but was then pointed at 73.0.0.0/9,
73.128.0.0/10 which is Comcast assigned in April. I'm surprised none of these
assignemtns have shown up on mailing lists..
Well, there has been a flurry of /8s being allocated by the IANA to the RIRs which are announced to the various operational mailing lists. I think it safe to assume those /8 allocations are not being done to redistribute the remaining free pool to the RIRs...

[In case anyone is wondering, no, I do not have any inside knowledge of this as an ARIN Board of Trustees Member -- the Board is explicitly segregated from the day-to-day operational aspects of ARIN]

Rgds,
-drc