I recently attended RIPE 66 where Tore Anderson presented his suggested policy change 2013-03, “No Need – Post-Depletion Reality Adjustment and Cleanup.” In his presentation, Tore suggested that this policy proposal was primarily aimed at removing the requirement to complete the form(s) used to document need. There was a significant amount of discussion around bureaucracy, convenience, and “liking” (or not) the process of demonstrating need. Laziness has never been a compelling argument for me and this is no exception. The fact is that any responsible network manager must keep track of IP address utilization in order to design and operate their network, regardless of RIR policy. Filling this existing information into a form really does not constitute a major hurdle to network or business operations. So setting aside the laziness decree, let’s move on to the rationale presented.

IPv4 is Dead?

Tore pointed to section 3.0.3 of RIPE-582, the “IPv4 Address Allocation and Assignment Policies for the RIPE NCC Service Region:”

Conservation: Public IPv4 address space must be fairly distributed to the End Users operating networks. To maximise the lifetime of the public IPv4 address space, addresses must be distributed according to need, and stockpiling must be prevented.

According to Mr. Anderson, this is “something that has served us well for quite a long time” but now that IANA and RIPE have essentially exhausted their supply of free/unallocated IPv4 addresses, is obsolete. From the summary of the proposal:

Following the depletion of the IANA free pool on the 3rd of February 2011, and the subsequent depletion of the RIPE NCC free pool on the 14th of September 2012, the “lifetime of the public IPv4 address space” in the RIPE NCC region has reached zero, making the stated goal unattainable and therefore obsolete.

This argument appears to be the result of what I would consider a very narrow and unjustified interpretation of the goal of conservation. Tore seems to interpret “maximise the lifetime of the public IPv4 address space” to mean “maximise the duration that public IPv4 space remains available at the RIPE NCC.” Under this translation, it is possible to believe that a paradigm shift has occurred which calls for a drastic reassessment of the goal of conservation. If, however, we take the goal as written in RIPE NCC policy as a carefully crafted statement meant to convey it’s meaning directly and without interpretation or translation; a different conclusion seems obvious. While Tore is correct in his observation that IANA and RIPE NCC (and APNIC and soon ARIN) have all but depleted their reserves of “free” IPv4 addresses, that does not mean that the lifetime of the public IPv4 address space has come to an end. While I would love for everyone to enable IPv6 and turn off IPv4 tomorrow (or better yet, today), that is simply not going to happen all at once. The migration to IPv6 is underway and gaining momentum but there are many legacy devices and legacy networks which will require the use of IPv4 to continue for years to come. Understanding that the useful life of IPv4 is far from over (raise your hand if you have used IPv4 for a critical communication in the past 24 hours) makes it quite easy to see that we still have a need to “maximise the lifetime of the public IPv4 address space.”

In fact, the IANA and RIR free pools have essentially been a buffer protecting us from those who would seek to abuse the public IPv4 address space. As long as there was a reserve of IPv4 addresses, perturbations caused by bad actors could be absorbed to a large extent by doling out “new” addresses into the system under the care of more responsible folks. Now that almost all of the public IPv4 address space has moved from RIR pools into the “wild,” there is arguably a much greater need to practice conservation. The loss of the RIR free pool buffer does not mark the end of “the lifetime of the public IPv4 address space” as Tore suggests but rather marks our entry into a new phase of that lifetime where stockpiling and hoarding have become even more dangerous.

A Paradox

Tore made two other arguments in his presentation, and I have trouble rectifying the paradox created by believing both of them at once. The two arguments are not new, I have heard them both many times before in similar debates, and they invariably go something like this:

1. Because IPv4 addresses are now a scarce resource, people will only use what they need, so we don’t need to require them to demonstrate need in policy.
2. Because IPv4 addresses are now a scarce resource, people will lie and cheat to get more addresses than they can justify, so we should remove the incentives for them to lie and cheat.

I want to look at these arguments first individually, and then examine the paradox they create when combined.

Early in his presentation, Tore said something to the effect of because the LIR can not return to RIPE NCC for more addresses, they would never give a customer more addresses than they need and that the folks involved will find ways of assessing this need independently. OK, if this is true then why not make it easy for everyone involved by standardizing the information and process required to demonstrate need? Oh, right, we already have that. Removing this standardization opens the door for abuse, large and small. The most obvious example is a wealthy spammer paying an ISP for more addresses then they can technically justify, in order to carry out their illegal bulk mail operation. The reverse is true as well, with no standard for efficient utilization to point to, it is more possible for an ISP to withhold addresses from a down stream customer (perhaps a competitor in some service) who actually does have justifiable technical need for them.

The second argument is more ridiculous. I truly don’t understand how anyone can be convinced by the “people are breaking the rules so removing the rules solves the problem” argument. While I am in favor of removing many of the rules, laws, and regulations that I am currently aware of; I favor removing them not because people break them but because they are unjust rules which provide the wrong incentives to society. If you have a legitimate problem with people stealing bread, for example, then making the theft of bread legal does not in any way solve your problem. While it is possible that bread thieves may be less likely to lie about stealing the bread (since they no longer fear legal repercussions) and it is certainly true that they would no longer be breaking the law, law-breaking and lying are not the problem. The theft of bread is the problem. Legalizing bread theft has only one possible outcome: Encouraging more people to steal bread. So the fact that bad actors currently have an incentive to lie and cheat to get more addresses in no way convinces me that making their bad behavior “legal” would solve the problem. If anything it is likely to exacerbate the issue by essentially condoning the bad behavior, causing others to obtain more addresses then they can technically justify.

Of course it get’s even worse when you try to hold up both of these arguments as true at once. If people can be counted on to take only what they need, why are they lying and cheating to get more? If people are willing to lie and cheat to get around the needs based rules, why would they abide by needs when the rules are removed? I just can’t make these two statements add up in a way that makes any sense.

Conclusions

Since we still need IPv4 to continue working for some time, maximizing the lifetime of the public IPv4 address space through conservation is still a noble and necessary goal of the RIRs, perhaps more important than ever. Filling out some paperwork (with information you already have at hand) is a very low burden for maintaining this goal. At this time, there is no convincing rationale for removing this core tenant of the Internet model which has served us so well.

This article was originally published on CircleID.

Removing Need at RIPE is a post from don't panic - One Network Architect's View of Life, the Internet, and Everything.

ARIN (American Registry of Internet Numbers), the Regional Internet Registry (RIR) for Canada, the US, and parts of the Caribbean recently held it’s 31st Public Policy Meeting (PPM), dubbed ARIN 31. All meeting materials, including handouts, presentations, and video archives are now available on the ARIN website.

There were a total of four draft policies up for discussion at ARIN 31, two recommended draft policies:

• ARIN-2012-2: IPv6 Subsequent Allocations Utilization Requirement
• ARIN-2013-1: Section 8.4 Inter-RIR Transfers of ASNs

And two draft policies:

• ARIN-2013-2: 3GPP Network IP Resource Policy
• ARIN-2013-3: Tiny IPv6 Allocations for ISPs

NOTE: Recommended draft policies have the option of being sent to last call following the meeting and potentially recommended to the ARIN Board of Trustees (BoT) for adoption. Draft policies do not have this option and must be presented at a subsequent meeting as a recommended draft policy before advancing to last call.

There was also a general, if unofficial, update to the estimated ARIN IPv4 free pool exhaustion dates. It now appears that IPv4 free pool exhaustion will occur at ARIN in the Q4 2013 to Q2 2014 time-frame, with a possibility of exhaustion in Q3 2013. Read on for more details:

ARIN-2012-2: IPv6 Subsequent Allocations Utilization Requirement

This policy change would make it easier for ISPs to get more IPv6 space in certain scenarios. Specifically, the problem addressed is when an ISP has allocated almost all of their IPv6 address space to “serving sites” (this could be Headends, COs, PoPs, or whatever that ISP uses for aggregation) but has not assigned much of that space to customers. This policy allows ISPs in that situation to come back to ARIN and get additional space to turn up additional serving sites even though their actual utilization rate (customers actually using the addresses) might be very low.

The ARIN Advisory Council (AC) decided to send this draft policy to last call. The last call ends on 13 May, after which the AC will decide whether to recommend the policy to the BoT for adoption.

ARIN-2013-1: Section 8.4 Inter-RIR Transfers of ASNs

This policy change would allow Autonomous System Numbers (ASNs) to be transferred between organizations in different Regional Internet Registry (RIR) regions. ARIN policy already allows ASN transfers within the ARIN region.

The AC decided to keep this on the AC docket; it will be presented again at the NANOG/ARIN Public Policy Consultation (PPC) in early June.

ARIN-2013-2: 3GPP Network IP Resource Policy

This policy change seeks to lower the utilization threshold for mobile DHCP pools to 50%, as is the currently the case for fixed broadband (non-mobile) residential service providers.

The AC decided to keep this on the AC docket; it will be presented again at the NANOG/ARIN PPC in early June.

ARIN-2013-3: Tiny IPv6 Allocations for ISPs

This policy change would have allowed ISPs to request and receive a /40 initial allocation, as opposed to the current minimum size of a /36. The purpose of this change was to allow extremely small organizations to pay a smaller annual fee to ARIN by dropping them into the xx-small category in the new fee schedule, which is currently not possible with an IPv6 allocation.

The AC decided to abandon this draft policy with the following statement:

Based on the community’s input at ARIN 31 and on PPML the Advisory Council has abandoned ARIN-2013-3: Tiny IPv6 Allocations for ISPs. There was broad community consensus that /40 ISP allocations are technically undesirable, and that any desire for lower fees should be resolved within the fee structure itself, rather than by adapting policy to fit the current fee table.

ARIN IPv4 Free Pool Exhaustion Update

On Day One of ARIN 31, Leslie Nobile presented the “Policy Implementation and Experience Report” in which ARIN staff points out potential issues with policy to the ARIN community. This meeting’s report pointed out (on slide 12) that there are new organizations coming to ARIN for IPv4 addresses that are actually turning up customers in other areas of the world and that these organizations are rapidly increasing the amount of IPv4 address space they consume. When I asked about the scope of this trend, John Curran replied that:

This will probably become the dominant factor in our allocations with ‑‑ if we did a revised drawn‑out estimate based on the last month or two, it would pull it into potentially the first or second quarter of next year, with absolute certainty. It could be the end of this year with certainty. So we’re dealing in the ranges of very large blocks.

Tony Hain had collected this data the week before and created a projection based on the IPv4 address consumption trends of the past nine months. When I presented this data on Day Two of the meeting, John Curran confirmed that it was based on accurate data and that it is now possible that ARIN will likely run out of free IPv4 address space much sooner than recently thought:

At present, the last time we looked at depletion at ARIN, the rough approximations were 12 months to 16 months — 12 to 16 months out and that was two months ago. But we are seeing an enormous increase in demand recently from parties coming back; and as noted, when someone comes back, if they’re moving very quickly, they’ll get one bit larger for their next assignment. So there’s a potential that instead of having 12 to 16 months, we have four months before the free pool depletes if those two estimates are accurate.

Tony’s projection puts the exhaustion date in August of this year. You can find a bit more about this new projected exhaustion trend at ARIN in a recent post here on my blog.

ARIN 31 Policy Report is a post from don't panic - One Network Architect's View of Life, the Internet, and Everything.

Long time IPv4 observer and prognosticator Tony Hain has just published a new report on ARINs IPv4 free pool with a new projection for exhaustion. Titled “Thoughts on the ARIN burn rate projections,” the report looks at a fairly recent rush of what are apparently new (to ARIN) organizations in “slow start” (31 organizations which are almost all doubling or more every couple of months), as well as more established ARIN members who have come to the trough multiple times in the past 9 months (some receiving fairly large allocations), and weights these newer allocations more heavily than historical data. The result is captured in what may be a startling graph to many, at the end of the report:

No, you’re not seeing things, that green projection line hits zero around mid August – of this year!

I asked Tony about how he developed the projection and he was kind enough to fill me in on some more detail:

1/today-first_of_each_month to create a weighting that decays historically
Use that as a modifier to the actual rate of change for each month, then
forecast based on the result.

Just taking the historical data and running the 6th order polynomial
projection:
y = -3E-15x^6 + 8E-10x^5 – 9E-05x^4 + 4.7537x^3 – 146718x^2 + 2E+09x – 2E+13
creates an almost identical curve, that hits zero a few days earlier.

I’m not one to say that the sky is falling, but I think that everyone watching IPv4 exhaustion – everyone who depends on the IPv4 Internet for that matter – should pay attention as this trend starts to play out over the next several weeks. In fact, the ARIN IPv4 counter has dropped from about 2.9 /8s available to just over 2.4 /8s available over the course of this week alone…

IPv4 Free Pool Depletion at ARIN – A New Projection is a post from don't panic - One Network Architect's View of Life, the Internet, and Everything.

Creativity is like a muscle that needs regular exercise to get strong and stay strong, but its also like a muscle in that it needs to be fed to work. Just like you can’t starve yourself and expect to get stronger (no matter how much you work out), your idea muscle needs to be nourished in order to get stronger as well. In my experience, creativity feeds on the new. Meeting new people, learning new things, exploring new places, and trying new activities – the list goes on… Exposing yourself to new people, places, things, and ideas helps you to see the world in new ways. Seeing the world in a new way is the foundation of creativity, it’s both the source and the result of art and invention.

So, whenever you’re stuck creatively, what you probably need is something new. But new doesn’t always have to come from outside. New doesn’t have to be an accident or a coincidence. You don’t have to wait for new. Here are thirteen ideas for summoning new into your life, so that the new can spark your creativity and inspire your imagination.

Clean your work space

Change can be simple. If you’re like me, your work space gets messier and more cluttered over time, especially as you work on a big project. To inject some quick and easy change into your life, clean up, organize, re-start with a clean slate. While this may seem like a minor change, it can work wonders – especially when combined with a strategic break.

Re-arrange your work space

When simply cleaning up your existing creative work space isn’t enough (or its already clean), you can take the next step and re-arrange the space. Even a small space with only a few items can be re-arranged. Big spaces with lots of equipment can obviously be changed even more. Move your desk or easel to the other side of the room, or just face it a different direction. Re-think your supply storage and make it more fun. Hang some inspiring art in your space – and take down the stuff you’ve been staring at for who knows how long. Change can be as big or as small as you need, even in the most constrained of spaces (try painting the room for a quick and fairly major change in any space).

Move to a new work space

This one can take a bit more commitment, time, and effort but it doesn’t have to be extraordinary. In many situations you can swap two rooms in the same building, or two workstations in the same room. Maybe you can take over a room and move out of the living room or kitchen. You can also go bigger and move to a completely new space. Move out of your home to a professional studio or office. Move to a bigger commercial space, or a smaller one. Find something closer to your home or closer to a busy part of town. Find a better view, a better commute, a better building, a better neighborhood, etc.

This doesn’t have to be a permanent move though. In a more corporate setting, you can likely move to a conference room to work for a few hours in a new space. In almost any setting, you can leave – take your laptop down to a coffee shop, bar, or bookstore. Go outside and work from a park. Work from home for a day or two, or from a friends house. Take a trip and work from a new city, state, country, or continent for a while. Stand on your head. The possibilities are limitless.

Re-arrange your living space

Maybe your work space is exactly how and where you want it. Maybe you’ve already changed everything you can with it and you still need more. Maybe something else. In any case, where you live effects your work – even if you don’t work anywhere near where you sleep. So shake things up by re-arranging your living space. Put the couch on the opposite wall. Swap bedrooms with your roommate or your kids. Hang new art, or move your art around to new rooms and walls. Get a new rug. Throw your TV away. Whatever, just shake your life up a bit with some changes to how and where you live. Big or small, these changes will have an effect on your work as well.

Move to a new living space

Yep, living somewhere new is a pretty major change. Especially if you change neighborhoods, cities, or countries. Even just moving across the street is a new experience and will feed your creativity though. New roommate, new environment, new commute, new view, new neighbors, new local shops, the list goes on.

Create a (new) schedule

Change your routine. Switch up what you do each day, and when, and in what order. Go to a new shop for coffee. Stop somewhere on the way home. Start running in the morning. Ride your bike instead of driving. Start going to the market for fresh produce every day. Throw out your microwave and start cooking for every meal. Take longer lunch breaks. Start your day earlier or later. Work more hours. Work less hours. Walk your dog at night instead of the morning. Set a time each day to call an old friend…

Daily rituals are very powerful. Making yourself conscience of yours, and changing it up from time to time, is a great way to introduce both change and stability into your life as needed.

End a relationship

Let’s get drastic! Well, ending a relationship can be a major deal but like many of the other ideas on this list, it doesn’t always need to be. We all have many relationships. While breaking off an engagement is certainly life-changing, I wouldn’t recommend doing it just to break writers block on a blog post. If you are in a massive, soul-crushing creative rut you may want to take a look at these “major” relationships in your life and think about some big changes. If you just need to switch things up a little bit however, there are plenty of other relationships to look at. Maybe you need a new yoga instructor or a new personal trainer. A new therapist or a new pharmacist. Maybe you have a “Facebook friend” who’s constantly posting negative shit and needs to be deleted. Cleaning up who you follow on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and other social media sites can be very refreshing – and may help you see updates from folks you haven’t seen in a while.

Start a new relationship

Just like ending relationships, starting them can be done on any level you need. Start small and work up. Follow some people you admire on Twitter. Email someone you’ve always wanted to meet. Hang out at a local coffee shop or bar and strike up conversations about things that matter to you – see what happens. Go to new places and do new things (check out meetup.com) to meet new people, and then foster relationships with the ones that work.

Many wise people have stated that your success and the quality of your relationships are in direct proportion to each other. Build relationships with people you want to be like, people who have what you want, people who inspire you – serve them and learn from them. It’s always a good time to find a new friend.

Quit your job

Sometimes you just have to shake things up, way up – take the leap! Just make sure you prepare first, and think it through thoroughly.

Get a new job

Depending on what you do, this may require the above step, or it may not. If you’re mainly freelance, it may be easy to add a new job without having to end one. In either case, taking on a new paid gig can be a great change.

Start a new project

Here I am defining a project distinctly from a job such that a project is more on your own. Something you want to do. You may get paid for it eventually or you may not, but it’s your thing – not a request from someone else. Keep a list of projects you want to tackle and every now and then pull that list out and start one. It’s a great way to inject some change into your life, and to take your mind off other work for a while. Some folks have lots of little passion projects, some have one big one that goes on for years. I recommend always having at least two things going whether that’s a job and a side project, two projects, two jobs (that can get stressful though), or any other combination. It is super good for your creative muscle to be pushed in more than a single direction.

Destroy something

Fuck it. Just smash the shit out of something. Please don’t hurt anyone or get arrested though – smash safely.

Finish something

This is one I need to focus on more. At any given time I typically have a dozen or two unfinished projects. Picking one up and actually finishing it is a great feeling, and a huge weight off my mind. Deciding that I’m never going to finish something and getting it off my table is freeing as well. What half (or more or less) finished projects do you have sitting on a shelf or in a closet somewhere? What have you been meaning to do? Go get it done! You’ll feel better and your mindspace (and maybe your physical space too) will be changed – which is a good thing!

Sparking Creativity through Change is a post from don't panic - One Network Architect's View of Life, the Internet, and Everything.

Predictions of our eminent demise have again been exaggerated and although b’ak’tun 13 has ended, life on earth appears to continue. So we’re all stuck here together for a while longer it seems. To make the most of that, I believe that we should all take stock of our achievements and failures, asses our priorities, and start fresh on a regular basis. The changing of the calendar seems like an appropriate time, and thus this post is one of my attempts to do just that.

I’ll start with a matter of fact look at my 2012 resolutions, then a more holistic wrap up of 2012, and finally my resolutions for 2013.

Write more.

• Write an average of 1 blog post every week (52 posts in 2012).

Well, I did not write 52 posts in 2012 . I did however write 40 (this post is #41) and compared to the 16 I wrote in 2011, I’m willing to call that a win. Perhaps more importantly, I branched out and wrote some articles outside of my personal blog, including one on the Team ARIN blog and several on CircleID. I also decided that although I want to continue to grow as a writer, I don’t want to be a journalist and I don’t want to write filler. Writing when I have something to say is what’s most important to me, and becoming a better writer a close second (75%).

• Self-publish at least one book this year.

No joy. This just did not happen. While I did recently sign a deal to write a short user guide over the next few weeks though, I still very much want to self-publish and offer for sale a book of my original work (0%).

Create more and in new ways.

• Assemble a decent “craft/art box” in the first quarter of 2012, then use it.

I still want to beef it up quite a bit, but we do have a craft box / art-kit in the house seeing regular use (at least once a month) (100%).

• Complete at least one project from every issue of Make: received in 2012.

I never made the time for this. Me and my sons did assemble a gaggle of brush-bots and a couple box-bots, but we did not tackle any of the more complex projects that I was thinking of when I set this goal (0%).

• File at least 4 patent applications this year.

Here I can find a bit of redemption. While I feel like the whole “I was too busy” excuse is typically a pile of steaming crap, this year I might just be justified if I were to use it for some of my failed resolutions. I filed 20 distinct invention disclosures with CableLabs in 2012 and so far 6 have been selected to be filed as official patent applications. That makes a total of 10 active patent applications with my name on them at the moment (150%).

Exercise more consistently.

• Ride my bike to work (with a little bus assistance) at least 90% of the days I go into the office.

Another one I feel I can take great pride in, I only drove to the office 4 times in all of 2012. While I am not sure how many days I was traveling (quite a few) or working from home (several), I am very confident that I met my 90% goal – through rain and snow and sun, and almost exclusively on my fixy. So yes, my legs look great (because I know you were wondering) (100%).

• Do push-ups, sit-ups and pull-ups every day (especially when traveling) during 2012.

Whoops. I never quite got on the ball with this in 2012. I think that I need to find a productive activity that strengthens my upper body, like bicycling for the lower parts – ideas welcome! I have a fairly hard time making the time for pure exercise (0%).

• Have sex at least 20 times every month in 2012.

A lady never asks, a gentleman never tells – but since Meagan agreed to marry me, I guess I’m doing something right (100%).

Be more present with my children.

• Go to the park at least three times a month with my boys.

While the winter chill has put a bit of a damper on this, and I didn’t actually keep count anywhere, we made it out of the house almost every weekend – often to one of Denver’s great parks (100%).

• Do at least two creative projects a month (using the craft box from 2.1.) with my boys.

While we did assemble the craft box, and we did put it to some use, I’d be remiss if I called this one a win. We should have done more organized craft projects together (0%).

• Take at least one trip a month to a museum, zoo or aquarium with my boys.

Having a family membership at both the Denver Zoo and the Denver Museum of Nature & Science made it quite easy (and cheap) to follow through on this resolution (100%).

Stay positive.

• Identify positive and negative thoughts as often as possible.

This one isn’t quite a “SMART” goal and is a little hard to objectively measure, but I can without a doubt say that I have been much better about being in touch with my feelings, and thus being more in control of them as well (100%).

• Avoid negative people (not sad/sick/hurt people, truly negative ones).

Once you start to weed negative folks out and surround yourself with positive people, it becomes easier and easier to identify and avoid the negative ones. Even better, some of the negative ones eventually start the shift to positivity themselves (100%).

• Post a positive affirmation on Facebook at least once a week.

I was doing this every week for a while, with great response even, but I did fall out of the habit as 2012 wore on (25%).

• Continue and grow Colorado Love.

When we discovered the lady with Colorado Love merch for sale, along with our inability to trademark any design including a state flag, I lost much of my motivation for this project. I still like the general premise, and I still really want to orchestrate a community art project, but I failed to make it happen this year (0%).

2012 Wrap-up

That puts me at right about 60% for my 2012 resolutions. Not great, but not horrible. Hopefully it means mostly that I chose some good stretch goals and not that I am simply a lazy bastard. The full story of course lays outside of my resolutions alone; a lot happened in 2012 – let’s revisit some highlights: I proposed to Meagan McCorkle and she said yes! We got a dog and moved 6 blocks. I helped get ISPs around the globe a Shared Transition Space to use in their CGN deployments, led the organization and execution of CO ISOC’s first large-scale event, was elected to the Board of the Rocky Mountain IPv6 Task Force, appointed to the NANOG PC, and got a new CEO at CableLabs. I took 12 trips, visited 6 new cities, attended my first IETF meeting, gave 11 invited talks, moderated 3 panel discussions and taught my first professional IPv6 tutorial. I published the first ever BCOP (on IPv6 subnetting), started writing about creativity, spent more time with my kids than I ever have in a single year, discovered the pure joy of single-speed 29″ mountain bikes, and took my kids to Disney World. I laughed, I cried, I met some fabulous new people, and I was constantly amazed by the beauty and opportunity in this world. Oh, and I survived the 2012 solstice on 21 December 2012.

Starting Fresh

Now it’s time to put all of that in the past as I tear down my 2012 calendar and replace it with the blank potential of 2013. I’ve decided that my resolutions need to be measurable and should be more than just goals – my resolutions this year (even more than last year) will be habits and milestones meant to help mold my year into the journey I intend.

2013 Resolutions

1. Learn to draw – Complete at least 75% of the lessons in my drawing book and draw an acceptable self portrait.
2. Keep writing – Publish at least 6 articles outside of my blog and (self)publish at least one book.
3. Create with my kids – Complete at least 4 ‘major’ creative projects with my sons.
4. Start saying n0 – Do not take on any new responsibilities without eliminating others first.
5. Be a better friend – Contact at least one friend I haven’t seen in person recently every week.
6. Be a great fiancee – Help throw an awesome wedding.
7. Add a fitness routine – Find an additional fitness activity to add to my weekly routine, and add it.
8. Step up my riding – Participate in at least two bicycle races.
9. Celebrate more – Don’t sweat the small stuff, celebrate it! Take time to celebrate every achievement.

Happy New Year everyone! Make it your best one yet.

(picture credit)

Taking Stock (2012) and Starting Fresh (2013) is a post from don't panic - One Network Architect's View of Life, the Internet, and Everything.

I’m a network engineer, and like many engineers I often gravitate to the big projects; large networks with problems of scale and complexity in my case. However, I also consider myself a student of Occam’s razor and often quote Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: “perfection is reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” In this spirit of “less is more” I have recently become intrigued by the problems appearing in home networking.

Up till now home networks have been fairly simple; a single home router and one LAN. A single WAN IP address, DHCP RFC 1918 space in the LAN, and NAT on the home router. If the user needed extra Ethernet ports or more WiFi coverage they simply hooked up another home router, which DHCP’d it’s own RFC 1918 LAN and NAT’d that into the “primary” LAN.

For the most part this seems to work, so why fix what ain’t (too) broke? Why is this an interesting area now?

What’s New?

Home networks are starting to be bombarded by a plethora of new use cases:

• Ever increasing devices in the subscriber home: Tablets, smartphones, laptops, smart-TVs, game consoles, smart appliances, the list goes on and on.
• Separation of guest users from home users: As more and more of our lives become digital, the need to keep guests from accessing your personal data (photos, tax returns, etc.) is growing. More and more homes require a trusted network for their own use and a guest network to grant visitors Internet access.
• Community Wi-Fi: Another new wireless use-case is the addition of a Wi-Fi GW (or additional SSID) in the subscriber home that is used to provide Wi-Fi roaming services to folks passing by outside of the home.
• Femto cell: A GW in the subscriber home used to provide cellular services over the existing Internet connection.
• Smart grid: Home routers providing connectivity to utility company equipment.
• Security, Monitoring, & Automation: More and more sensors and other devices are becoming IP enabled and need network connectivity to function.
• Multi-homing: Users who are increasingly dependent on Internet access may choose to reduce their odds of failure by having two distinct connections, maybe Cable and DSL, or Cable with an LTE backup, etc.
• IP video streaming from the Internet: Video is going IP. Netflix, Youtube, Hulu, HBO-Go, and soon perhaps even your cable channels, IP video is the largest consumer of Internet bandwidth today and shows no sign of slowing.
• Video content sharing and streaming between the devices inside the home: Home movies, downloaded content, ripped DVDs, etc. We need ways to play any content from any source any time.
• Telecommuting and corporate IT requirements: As more people choose to work from home, more companies are requiring strict security measures for their employees home networks, including completely separate networks for telecommuting.
• Emergence of Heterogeneous link layer technologies: ZigBee, Bluetooth, and others are making plays for home device connectivity, and these devices will need to communicate with the rest of the home network to provide the most benefit.

So what does this mean for home networks?

Tomorrow’s Home Network

These emerging use cases for the home network, along with the facilitating technologies (including IPv6), seem to be pushing us away from the simple, single router home network of the past to a much more complicated multi-router future.

For one example, I think it will become common to buy a pre-packaged “home security system in a box” that will include a multitude of door and window sensors, motion detectors, glass break sensors, etc. all IP enabled and ready to connect wirelessly (perhaps with 6LoWPAN) to the included router / gateway. This home security router will then be plugged in (likely quite arbitrarily) to the existing home network, alongside a home theater router, a smart kitchen router (perhaps embedded in an eFridge), etc.

Of course, adding routers to a network increases its complexity. In enterprise and service provider networks, increased complexity can be dealt with by training or hiring network engineers (or bringing in contractors). In the home however, I do not believe that we can assume that network users will increase in complexity themselves (nor will they hire engineers). This is the crux of the home network problem statement; how do we deal with increasing network complexity in home networks without increasing the complexity of operating a home network? We must design a network that is completely self-configuring in (almost) every situation. This raises several problems that must be solved.

Opportunities for Innovation

There are a number of problems, er opportunities, that must be addressed to enable this multi-router, arbitrary-topology, configuration-less home network:

• Prefix-­distribution & Routing: The first problem that likely needs to be considered when developing a multi-router home-network architecture is how to distribute IP prefixes throughout the home, and how to route packets within and out of the home network once it’s established. The current default with IPv4 home routers is NAT-stacking, where each router creates its own private (RFC 1918) LAN addresses and NATs into the upstream network, and bridging, where the home router recognizes a private address on its WAN port and stops routing altogether. Some proposed options (focused on Pv6) are recursive DHCPv6 PD, DHCPv6 relay, and a routing protocol (yes, OSPF in your Grandmothers house). More work is needed.
• Network Detection: This problem can be split into two; edge detection and up detection. Edge detection is important for routers to understand if they are a Customer Edge Router (CER) connected to an ISP, or an Internal Router (IR). This is necessary information for many other decisions like whether to activate a firewall, when to perform NAT, etc. Up detection could facilitate “directionless” home routers, common in other environments, and allow hierarchical logical topologies to be built over looped, meshy or other non-linear physical topologies.
• Multi-homing and Failover: Having multiple Internet connections greatly complicates routing, especially if the desire is for active/active load-balancing over multiple ISPs. Without introducing BGP and complex routing and forwarding tables, how can we get functional auto-configuring multi-homing? Do we need to?
• Service Discovery: Most current service discovery technologies assume a single broadcast domain (a single home LAN). The introduction of multiple home routers will make it more challenging for networked devices to discover each other, especially when they are several hops away from each other (when there are several routers between them). We need solutions for whole-home service discovery that “just work.” This could mean additional multicast support, centralized service discovery services, etc.
• RF Interference: As we add multiple SSIDs, technologies that utilize multiple channels, and multiple new wireless protocols, how do we avoid service impacting RF interference?
• Non-IP Gateways: There are additional challenges that may arise when connecting Zigbee, Bluetooth, and other non-IP networks into your home IP network.
• Troubleshooting: After all this is working, we must be able to keep it working. What is an ISP call center going to do to help customers with networking problems in this more complicated environment? How will hired-geeks be able to quickly analyze and mitigate network issues?
• And More… This is just the tip of the iceberg, as we start designing, building, and deploying these networks in earnest, there are likely to be plenty of surprises and more “opportunities for innovation.”

Moving Forward

As network engineers begin to address the future of home networking, we should keep the principle of Occam’s razor and the words of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry top of mind. We need to ask ourselves about the expected level of sophistication, for both devices and users. We should remember that while we may have gained our experience and expertise working on enterprise, campus, or service provider networks; home networks are a new and different challenge, requiring a new and different approach. We must also consider the 80/20 rule and not let exceptions (often our own “home networks”) rule the conversation and spoil the solution for everyone else. Finally, like any design endeavor, we should fight to keep the solution(s) as open and extensible as possible – while we need to solve for an unmanaged network, we mustn’t close the door on configurability for more advanced users and uses.

For a bit more on this problem statement, you can watch my recent talk at NANOG 56, and/or check out the slides:

This article originally appeared (sans media) on CircleID.

The Future of Home Networking: A Problem Statement is a post from don't panic - One Network Architect's View of Life, the Internet, and Everything.

As you may have noticed, the fall ARIN meeting is just around the corner and that, of course, means it’s election time again. I’m pleased to be able to tell you that we have another great slate of candidates this year. As always there are three distinct elections happening; one for the Board of Trustees, one for the Advisory Council, and one for the NRO NC.

UPDATE: Election results are available at: https://www.arin.net/announcements/2012/20121109.html

Board of Trustees

There are two spots on the Board up for grabs, with the following seven candidates vying for them:

• 
Paul Andersen of Egate
• Ron da Silva of Time Warner Cable
• William Herrin of ITT Exelis
• Aaron Hughes of 6Connect Inc.
• Martin Levy of Hurricane Electric
• Dave Siegel of Level 3
• Josh Snowhorn of Cyrus One

Paul Anderson is the only incumbent running, it appears that Scott Bradner will not be seeking re-election. This really is a shame as Scott has been on the Board since it was founded in August 1997. More than just time, Scott has been instrumental in ensuring that ARIN maintain its role as a beacon of openness and efficiency in Internet governance. He will be sorely missed by all.

Advisory Council

Five seats open up on the AC each year and this year we have ten great candidates:

• Jesse Geddis of LA Broadband LLC
• Frank Hoonhout of State of Oregon
• Stacy Hughes of tw telecom
• George Morton of Madisol
• Milton Mueller of Syracuse University School of Information Studies
• Brandon Ross of Network Utility Force
• Bill Sandiford of TELNET
• Heather Schiller of Verizon Business
• Rob Seastrom of Time Warner Cable
• John Springer of Inland Telephone

The four incumbents seeking re-election are Stacy Hughes, Bill Sandiford, Heather Schiller, and Rob Seastrom. Chris Morrow is leaving his seat uncontested.

NRO NC

Finally, there are two candidates for one seat in the NRO NC election:

• Andrew Dul of Cascadeo Corporation
• Louis Lee of Equinix Inc.

Louis Lee is the incumbent.

Vote Early, Vote Often

There are some important dates to keep in mind for these elections:

• 25 August 2012 – You must have been an ARIN general member in good standing on this date to vote in the BoT and AC elections.
• 10 October 2012 – This is the final day to establish voter eligibility. For the BoT and AC elections, this means setting a valid DMR for your organization with a name and personalized email address. For the NRO NC election it means either setting a DMR or registering for either the NANOG 56 or ARIN XXX meetings.
• 17 October 2012 – Voting opens for the NRO NC (at 0900 ET).
• 24 October 2012 – Voting opens for the BoT and AC, voting for the NRO NC closes (at 1700 ET).
• 3 November 2012 – Voting for the BoT and AC closes (at 1700 ET).

For more information be sure to check out ARIN election headquarters: https://www.arin.net/app/election/. That’s where you can read candidate bios and read and/or post statements of support. Also, that whole DMR thing is super important if you want your organization to vote (and I know that as a responsible netizen you do) so if you have any doubts about it, email info@arin.net.

That’s all for now – I hope to see you in Dallas!

ARIN Election 2012 is a post from don't panic - One Network Architect's View of Life, the Internet, and Everything.

The Colorado Chapter of the Internet Society (CO ISOC) recently held an event aimed at giving local IT and networking folks an introduction to IPv6.

IPv6: What is it, why do I need it, and how do I get it?

As IPv6 adoption is ramping up around the world in service and content provider networks, many enterprises run the risk of falling behind. Our goal with this event was to help mitigate that risk by providing practical IPv6 knowledge that could be put to work deploying IPv6 the following day. The event consisted of a keynote by Scott Hogg, followed by an open discussion between our panel of experts and the audience. The panel included Scott Hogg, Jeff Doyle, Cricket Liu, Shannon McFarland (via video feed from VMWorld 2012), and myself.

We believe that this event was able to give the folks in attendance a pragmatic introductory lesson on IPv6 and a chance to get their early questions answered. We had nearly 50 people in the room and another 50+ attend remotely via the live stream. Lucky for you we also recorded the event so you can view and share it to your hearts content:

What do you think? Was this event worthwhile? Would you like to see more CO ISOC events like this one?

IPv6: What is it, why do I need it, and how do I get it? is a post from don't panic - One Network Architect's View of Life, the Internet, and Everything.

Steve Crocker is an Internet Pioneer. Steve organized the Network Working Group (the predecessor of the IETF) and is responsible for the Request for Comments (RFC) series (he is the author of RFC 1). He was the first IETF security area director, the first ICANN SSAC (Security and Stability Advisory Committee) Chair, a board member of the Internet Society, and much, much more. He is currently the CEO and co-founder of Shinkuro and Chair of the ICANN Board. Despite the recent transition in management at ICANN, which has certainly swallowed much of his time, I got a chance to ask Steve some questions and can now share his responses here with you:

dp: How do you describe the Internet to someone who has never experienced it?

SC: You mean there are people who haven’t experienced the Internet?  Surely not!

dp: What was your first experience with a computer?

SC: IBM 650, the first commercially produced computer.  It was on the campus of Northwestern University in early 1960 when I was 15.

dp: What was your first experience with the Internet?

SC: Concept: Summer 1968.  Discussions about what the protocols should look like.  (Some would argue this was only the Arpanet.  From my point of view, the issues we dealt with were common across the Arpanet and Internet.)
Operationally: Fall 1969 as the first nodes were put in place.

dp: What was the first involvement you had with Internet policy development?

SC: Policy was implicitly interwoven in the technical work.  I created the RFCs in 1969 and set forth their rules.  See RFC 3.  That turned out to have major policy implications.

dp: Can you describe how the IETF came to be?

SC: Today’s IETF is essentially a continuation and expansion of the early Network Working Group that was created in the 1968-69 time frame to provide an open forum to develop the protocols for the Arpanet.

dp: What has been, in your opinion, your most significant contribution to the Internet so far?

SC: I’m pleased the instincts we had toward openness — open architecture, open participation and open publication of RFCs — have paid off so well.

dp: What is your biggest regret (so far), wrt your involvement with the development of the Internet?

SC: Hmm…  Well, we anticipated some of the security problems, including spam, but we didn’t have the tools or the focus to deal with them.

dp: You were recently inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame, can you describe that experience?

SC: A number of old friends I hadn’t seen for a while were there.  It’s now more than forty years since we started the network, and we may not have a chance to get together like that again.

dp: How do you use the Internet today (favorite sites, applications, etc.)?

SC: The Internet is fully part of our daily life.  No site is particularly special; the entire system is like air — it exists everywhere and it’s vital to our existence.

dp: Where do you see the Internet taking us in 10 years?

SC: Wherever we’ll be.  (That’s not intended to be snippy.  I don’t know where we’ll be, but I am sure the Internet will be intimately involved in getting us there.)

dp: What are you working on today?

SC: Deployment of DNSSEC throughout the Internet, and development of some tools to facilitate small group collaboration.

dp: What should folks just getting into Internet technology be focusing on?

SC: There are way too many options for me to choose from.  Choose whatever looks interesting and you have an aptitude for.

dp: What should folks just getting into Internet policy be focusing on?

SC: Same answer.  There are LOTS of Internet-related policy issues.

dp: Is there something out there that will dwarf the Internet with regard to its impact on society?

SC: Medical advances, particularly cure for cancer and combating viruses.

dp: Thanks Steve!

A Chat with Steve Crocker is a post from don't panic - One Network Architect's View of Life, the Internet, and Everything.

With the Autumnal Equinox behind us, fall is in the air and that means we are nearing the next ARIN PPM: ARIN XXX! It will be held 24-26 October 2012 in Dallas, TX.

Of course an impending ARIN Public Policy Meeting means that it’s time for me to provide a policy update, so, here it is!

Draft Policies

The following are all of the Draft Policies up for Adoption Discussion in Dallas next month:

ARIN-2012-2: IPv6 Subsequent Allocations Utilization Requirement

This proposed policy change has gone through several textual changes, without getting much clearer IMO. The final text (as I now understand it) does two things:

1. It adds a sentence to the definition of an IPv6 serving site, explicitly removing any requirement to perform route aggregation at a serving site.
2. It adds a third criteria under which a local Internet registry (LIR, typically an ISP in the ARIN region) can qualify for subsequent allocations of IPv6 address space.

The first change seems to be a textual clarification and probably a no-op. The second change is more consequential. Current policy includes two criteria under which an LIR can receive additional IPv6 address space (a subsequant allocation): “show utilization of 75% or more of their total address space, or more than 90% of any serving site“. The new criteria proposed in ARIN-2012-2 reads:

Has allocated more than 90% of their serving site blocks to serving
sites, and has sufficient actual utilization at their serving sites to
continue to justify the block size being utilized for all serving sites as
specified in section 6.5.2.

OK, that one is hard to parse, even for me. Since the referenced section 6.5.2. does not discuss actual utilization, I am unsure what “sufficient actual utilization” effectively means in this context (if anything at all). Unfortunately, even getting beyond the current text is hard because the stated rationale for the change doesn’t add much clarity either:

If you are executing to a long term plan, you should be able to continue to execute on your approved allocation and assignment plan regardless of the number of regions/groupings you originally planned for. We want to promote tie downs on nibbles and long term planning.

I also want to promote subnetting on nibble boundaries and long term address planning in IPv6. But the fact is that existing policy allows LIRs to request very large amounts of space, based on nibble-boundary-aggregation, with allowances for long term planning built in (see ARIN-2011-3). That same policy also allows SPs who grab a too-small-allocation initially to come back and get the properly IPv6-sized allocation (See NRPM 6.5.7.) without a renumbering requirement. So I’m having a hard time understanding why this change is needed (and what it is really intending to do).

The only explanation that I have received is that this policy change is aiming to cover the case of an LIR that is unable to add additional serving sites after they have already received at least two allocations from ARIN. I take issue with that on two fronts. First, if you mess up your first allocation, you should really change your planning method for the second one – if you still screw it up, I have a feeling this policy won’t be able to help you anyway (especially considering how generous the existing policy already is). Second, we are very early in this IPv6 game, and we just last year implemented the current policy – is there really even one case of this happening in the real world today? I believe that policy changes should fix real problems, and so far I am unconvinced that there is a problem here.

ARIN-2012-5: Removal of Renumbering Requirement for Small Multihomers

Today, if you are an end-user (I.e. you use the addresses assigned from ARIN on your own network, not to hand out to customers), the minimum IPv4 allocation size (the smallest prefix you must qualify for to get space from ARIN) is a /20. There is however an exception to this minimum:

For multihomed end-users who demonstrate an intent to announce the requested space in a multihomed fashion to two or more distinct ASNs not owned or controlled by the end-user, the minimum block of IP address space assigned is a /24.

The catch is that any assignments smaller than a /22 must be returned (within 12 months) in order to get a larger block. So, if you get a /24 initially and then grow; you are required to return the /24 when you receive your /23, and then you must return that /23 in order to move up to a /22. This renumbering requirement is contained in section 4.3.6.2. of the NRPM, titled: Additional Assignments for Small Multihomers. ARIN-2012-5 seeks to remove that section from the NRPM completely. The effect of this would be, as the name of the draft implies, to remove the requirement for small IPv4 multihomers to renumber in order to receive more address space. The downside is that we may see more routing table fragmentation if small multihomers are allowed to keep and use multiple, small, non-aggregatable prefixes. The upside is that we may see more multihomed end-users able to get the provider independent (PI) space they need.

Of course, this being an IPv4-specific policy, we may see IPv4 address exhaustion make both points moot shortly after (or even before) the policy can be implemented.

ARIN-2012-6: Revising Section 4.4 C/I Reserved Pool Size

Currently ARIN has a /16 of IPv4 space reserved for “critical infrastructure.” The reservation of this space was set to expire three years from the implementation of the policy, which was on 27 July 2011; so it’s set to expire in a bit less than two years from now. ARIN-2012-6 proposes to double that reservation to a /15 and remove the expiration timer (thus reserving the space indefinitely). Since the current policy (ARIN-2011-4) was only adopted last year, and we have not seen any uptick in critical infrastructure requests since then (in fact, all CI ever handed out adds up to just over a /16 in total), I don’t see the need to make changes here at this time. Some reservation for critical infrastructure is good for the Internet, but reserving too many addresses for too long only robs other users of those addresses.

ARIN-2012-7: Reassignments for Third Party Internet Access (TPIA) over Cable

This one is somewhat of a sticky situation. As I understand it, Canada has laws that require their Cable companies to sell wholesale transit to competitive ISPs. In other words, they must allow third parties to provide Internet access over their physical infrastructure, for a reasonable fee (hence the TPIA name). This is similar to the common carriage laws in the United States which apply to telecommunications companies. Unfortunately, in a typical Cable network today, these third parties don’t have any view into what equipment corresponds to which addresses/customers. In response to this, the Canadian Cable companies require TPIA providers to number (add IP addresses) equally across all equipment in a given region that the TPIA provider wishes to serve. In most cases, this results in the TPIA provider (TPIA-P) using a lot of addresses to serve a small number of clients. Therein lies the rub. Once a TPIA-P numbers out a region, they are commonly unable to meet ARIN utilization criteria and thus unable to acquire more addresses. So, when the number of TPIA customers connected to one cable modem termination system (CMTS) exceeds the number of addresses available, the TPIA-P is stuck. They can’t move addresses around because of CableCo requirements and/or minimum prefix requirements on other CMTS’ and they can’t get more addresses from ARIN to number the fast growing areas. This is the dilemma that birthed draft policy ARIN-2012-7.

Despite this noble effort there are two potential problems:

1. This is a hard issue to solve in policy; on one side you open the system up for abuse and on the other you keep the rules so tight that the situation is not improved. The current text is much better than the original proposal but still has problems.
2. This feels a lot like a policy solution to a technical problem. While I don’t propose to have an answer, as I only know the details of the problem second hand, I’m not completely convinced there isn’t one. Right off the bat my mind wanders to the idea of network interface devices (NIDs) and tunneling, à la other Type-2 Ethernet services.

ARIN-2012-8: Aligning 8.2 and 8.3 Transfer Policy

Last but not least, ARIN-2012-8. This is the one policy I am shepherding for the Dallas PPM. Basically, this policy intends to bring the requirements, restrictions, and protections which are written explicitly into NRPM section 8.3. Transfers between Specified Recipients within the ARIN Region into section 8.2. Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A). From the rationale:

The base intent here is to lower confusion, raise clarity, and level the bar between 8.2 and 8.3 transfers. M&A transfers are distinct from specified transfers and not all of the same rules can apply – but many can and should. Therefor this policy change explicitly adds requirements which do not exist in 8.2 policy text today: [The transfer] source must be the undisputed current registered holder, [the transfer] recipient must sign an RSA (and is subject to [ARIN] policy), and [it adds a] /24 minimum [transfer size] for IPv4, /48 for IPv6.

The most persuasive argument against this change that I have heard is that ARIN staff already practices these controls for M&A transfers. Personally, I still think we are better of codifying the rules, rather than expecting people to know how things are done through experience.

Register Now!

The only way to have your voice heard is to participate. Register for ARIN XXX today (in addition to physical attendance, there is great remote participation available as well)!

Pre-XXX ARIN Policy Update is a post from don't panic - One Network Architect's View of Life, the Internet, and Everything.