Summary

  • At APNIC 24 in September 2007, Bill Manning objected to calling the end of large IANA IPv4 allocations the “last scoop of rice”: existing IPv4 addresses would still be in use.
  • He raised an idea discussed in another region: taper IANA allocations to RIRs toward blocks as small as roughly /19. Paul Wilson immediately pointed to global-policy, reverse-DNS and operational costs. The meeting reached no consensus on the final-block proposal.

The meeting had a scarcity problem and, briefly, a catering problem. Speakers were comparing the last centrally available IPv4 blocks to rice and bathwater. Bill Manning told APNIC's Policy SIG that the image troubled him: when IANA stopped handing out big blocks, addresses already in service would still exist. The system would move from opening new ground to accounting for what it had. Randy Bush answered that the discussion concerned IANA's free pool. Both distinctions mattered. The central cupboard could be empty while the dinner tables remained full.

Earlier that day, Manning had attacked the flatness of two proposals for distributing the final large blocks. Wearing what he called an ARIN hat, he relayed a suggestion made in another region: as IANA approached its final ten /8s, it could step down from handing RIRs entire /8s to smaller parcels, perhaps around /19. A taper might slow the approach to the edge instead of producing one grand last handout. He offered to send pointers; the transcript records a discussion idea, rather than a proposal he claimed to have authored.

Paul Wilson did the useful thing a meeting needs someone to do: he priced the neat idea. Breaking IANA's usual /8-sized handoffs would require a fundamental operational and global-policy change. Reverse DNS and additional IANA work were among his examples. The smaller the parcel, the larger the coordination bill could become. Manning had made the allocation curve visible; Wilson made the machinery under that curve visible.

The official minutes end without consensus on the final /8 proposal. That is the right ending for this episode. Manning did not win a new rule in New Delhi. He forced two questions into the same room: what exactly runs out, and who has to change their operation when the answer becomes policy? A kitchen metaphor was quick. A reverse-DNS plan would have taken longer.