Subject: [Ietf-hub-boston] Confirmation of net 18 move we mentioned last night

From: "David Oran" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2017 10:55:22 -0400

joi
RIP @MIT net18 http://whois.arin.net/rest/cidr/18.0.0.0/8/more :cry:
Posted in #generalYesterday at 2:29 PM

DaveO

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2017 11:41:40 -0400

--On Thursday, April 20, 2017 10:55 -0400 David Oran
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>  joi
> RIP @MIT net18 http://whois.arin.net/rest/cidr/18.0.0.0/8/more
> :cry: Posted in #generalYesterday at 2:29 PM

Hmm.  Looks like MIT has kept a big chunk of it as separate
blocks but given back other blocks, presumably the ones it
isn't/wasn't using.  That suggests that the conditions Jeff
Schiller suggested many years ago for the conditions under which
MIT would "give up" net 18 and renumber out of it have not yet
been challenged.

So is this just a matter of being a good citizen and giving up
(or selling) unused space, or am I missing something?

   john

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From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2017 12:23:52 -0400

Given that the blocks were acquired immediately by Amazon, I expect money
changed hands. It would be astonishing if it hadn't given that IPv4 address
space has intrinsic value. It would be like MIT discovering it had
inadvertently mined $100 million in bitcoin and giving away.

On Thu, Apr 20, 2017 at 11:41 AM, John C Klensin <[email-masked]> wrote:

> _______________________________________________
> Ietf-hub-boston mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf-hub-boston
>

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From: "Scott O. Bradner" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2017 13:05:30 -0400

> On Apr 20, 2017, at 11:41 AM, John C Klensin <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> isn't/wasn't using.

no reason to think that MIT “gave” anything for free

> That suggests that the conditions Jeff

Jeff is very far out of the picture these days - this move would be under John Charles 
the MIT CIO

Scott

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From: Sam Dukhovni <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2017 13:20:05 -0400

> inadvertently mined $100 million in bitcoin and giving away.

That's correct; here's an excerpt from the email that got sent out to
the MIT community:

"""
As part of our upgrade to IPv6, we will be consolidating our in-use IPv4 address
space to facilitate the sale of MIT’s excess IPv4 capacity. Net proceeds from
the sale will cover our network upgrade costs, and the remainder will provide a
source of endowed funding for the Institute to use in furthering its academic
and research mission.
"""

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2017 13:37:50 -0400

I would think it likely that the old AI lab block was freed up during the
move to the new building and most of the net18 block was never actually in
use. So this is probably the start of a re-org that will continue to throw
up new blocks for quite some time.

It isn't exactly in MIT's interest to create a sudden glut on the market
either.

Also remember that while most mobile devices and home routers will be on
IPv6 in the near future, most services will have to support IPv4 until 2040
at the earliest. The WebPKI is still supporting machines running 17 year
old web browsers. The long tail is really long.

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From: Kyle Rose <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2017 14:06:55 -0400

> (or selling) unused space, or am I missing something?

You could make the argument that hoarding the space instead of selling it
and encouraging further duct-taping of IPv4 is better for the internet in
the long term.

Kyle

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From: "Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2017 18:18:58 +0000

> Posted in #generalYesterday at 2:29 PM

https://gist.github.com/simonster/e22e50cd52b7dffcf5a4db2b8ea4cce0

Given the market price of IPv4 these days, they should make close to $100Million.

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2017 19:14:18 -0400

--On Thursday, April 20, 2017 14:06 -0400 Kyle Rose
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> You could make the argument that hoarding the space instead of
> selling it and encouraging further duct-taping of IPv4 is
> better for the internet in the long term.

One could... and I essentially have although it was long before
IANA ran out of space to delegate to the RIRs.  I can tell you
from experience that making that argument didn't and won't win
one any popularity contests.

However, given the market price of IPv4 address pools these days
(see below), such an argument is essentially a non-starter.

--On Thursday, April 20, 2017 18:18 +0000 "Salz, Rich"
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>>  joi
>> RIP @MIT net18
>> http://whois.arin.net/rest/cidr/18.0.0.0/8/more :cry: Posted
>> in #generalYesterday at 2:29 PM
> 

I didn't skim all the way down the list, but it appears to be as
if most, or at least a very large fraction of net 18 that MIT
didn't keep is now assigned to Amazon.  I could speculate on why
might have happened and what resources changed hands among what
parties, but I won't.

   john

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2017 21:26:36 -0400

> and encouraging further duct-taping of IPv4 is better for the internet in
​You could also argue a lot of things but you would be utterly wrong.​

---

From: Jeffrey Schiller <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2017 22:58:52 -0400

Scott O. Bradner writes:
> Jeff is very far out of the picture these days - this move would be
> under John Charles the MIT CIO

I’m not that far out of the picture... though I was not directly
involved in this transaction. The important decisions were made at a
higher level then John Charles, though it was initiated at a lower
level.

Basically what happened is what I had been telling folks internally
for a while. I assumed that we would never have net 18 taken from MIT
by force, though of course there were people who would have wanted to
do that. However once there was a market for IPv4 addresses, the value
of the addresses that MIT would hold would be worth enough money that
it would be hard to argue why we shouldn’t put a significant chunk of
our address space on the market.

So we have the convergence of two related forces.

1) The address space is valuable enough that it is worth the resource
investment required to re-number MIT into a more compact space. It
will cost $$ for us to re-number and it will inconvenience some folks,
but we’ll cope.

2) IPv6 is finally getting real. Most computers on campus support
it. One of the things that the resources brought in from selling IPv4
space will help will be in the upgrading of systems to use IPv6 where
they don’t already do (and the routing infrastructure etc.).

-Jeff

-- 
_______________________________________________________________
Jeffrey I. Schiller
Information Systems and Technology – MIT App Inventor
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
77 Massachusetts Avenue  Room 32G-530
Cambridge, MA 02139-4307
617.910.0259 - Voice
[email-masked], [email-masked]
http://jis.qyv.name
http://appinventor.mit.edu
_______________________________________________________________

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From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2017 08:44:27 -0400

--On Thursday, April 20, 2017 13:05 -0400 "Scott O. Bradner"
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>> Schiller suggested many years ago for the conditions under
>> which MIT would "give up" net 18 and renumber out of it have
>> not yet been challenged.
> 
> Jeff is very far out of the picture these days - this move
> would be under John Charles  the MIT CIO

Scott, I wasn't suggesting Jeff was involved in this decision (I
had no reason to believe that although I found his clarifying
note interesting and helpful).   I was referring to comments he
made a very long time ago about the conditions under which MIT
would decide to give up Net 18 and renumber out of it.  The
current action appears consistent with the conditions he
outlined in the sense that MIT hasn't renumbered out of the
block, just compacted their use within the block and given up
the rest.  As Jeff points out, that is still presumably
operationally aggravating and expensive, but not as much so as
getting out of the block entirely.

At the time he made that comment, I made the observation
(probably less publicly) that, if and when such a decision was
made, it probably would not be made on a technical or
network-operational basis but by someone contacting MIT's
President's Office or "development" (i.e., fundraising) people
and saying something equivalent to "how about we fund that
building you want in return for the block?".   Sam's quotation
from the note to the community  leads me to suspect that group
of people had the market value situation pointed out to them,
whether than pointer came via a specific offer or not.

Out of sympathy and concern for those who have to go through the
renumbering pain, I'm glad they were able to condense rather
than giving up the block entirely.

    john

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From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2017 10:49:42 -0400

> higher level then John Charles, though it was initiated at a lower

​The only real question was going to be price and method of sale. IPv4
address space is a valuable commodity. So it was going to be a question of
when to sell rather than whether.​

I would presume being MIT that someone in the economics dept ran the
numbers. Given that the full block is worth upwards of $30 million, it
would have to be the COO call or higher.

---

From: "Scott O. Bradner" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2017 10:58:58 -0400

the prices I found ranged from $10 to $15 per address - MIT is  selling 4M

Scott

> On Apr 21, 2017, at 10:49 AM, Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> ​The only real question was going to be price and method of sale. IPv4 address space is a valuable commodity. So it was going to be a question of when to sell rather than whether.​
> 
> I would presume being MIT that someone in the economics dept ran the numbers. Given that the full block is worth upwards of $30 million, it would have to be the COO call or higher.
> 
> 
> 
>

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From: "Aaron Falk" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2017 11:02:23 -0400

That would fund only a smallish campus building…

Question is, does this mean that MIT thinks (say, because of v6 
deployment) the IPv4 address market is peaking?

—aaron

On 21 Apr 2017, at 10:58, Scott O. Bradner wrote:

>> ​The only real question was going to be price and method of sale. 
>> IPv4 address space is a valuable commodity. So it was going to be a 
>> question of when to sell rather than whether.​
>>
>> numbers. Given that the full block is worth upwards of $30 million, 
>> it would have to be the COO call or higher.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2017 11:37:00 -0400

Quite, the low end I have heard is $2 million. Since $30 million is
obviously going to kick it up to Reif, we can assume he made the decision.

I think we can also assume that while Amazon is known for aggressive
dealmaking, MIT has a much longer history of same and has the leverage. I
would suspect they got at least $10.

It won't show in Amazon's accounts but it probably will show up in MIT
accounts if people look closely. It should show up in Other Operations and
Revenues which were $385.4 last year.

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2017 11:37:57 -0400

> deployment) the IPv4 address market is peaking?

​No because they kept far more addresses than they sold. They are merely
diversifying their portfolio.​

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From: [email-masked] (Dale R. Worley)
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2017 12:15:46 -0400

"Aaron Falk" <[email-masked]> writes:
> That would fund only a smallish campus building...
>

The numbers I got from the first page of Google results are that IPv4
addresses go for $10 each or somewhat less.  If I counted right, MIT
sold 42 class B's, which comes to roughly $27M.  At that level, the
president would have signed off on it, I'm sure, but lots of very
knowledgeable people underneath him would have studied the matter.

If MIT thought the market was peaking, they'd be unloading their entire
class A, which is worth something like $160M.

The advantage MIT has is patience.  Witness that they've purchased land
in their vicinity and held on to it for a decade or more before the
planned use became viable.

The worst prognostication for the future of the Internet is that Amazon
still finds it worthwhile to buy IPv4 addresses and rent them out to
their customers.  OTOH, Amazon only has to be able to rent them out for
$1/year to make it worth the cost.

Dale

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2017 12:38:11 -0400

> $1/year to make it worth the cost.

​Even in a world where 99% of Web clients are IPv6 capable, ​95% of Web
service providers will want to offer IPv4 connectivity.

There is still a demand for SSL certs to support IE4 browsers which shipped
over 20 years ago. It is now a demand that is only met by off label CAs
using roots that are outside CABForum rules but there is a demand and a
legitimate use case. One of which being download of updates.

So IPv4 addresses will have value for quite some time yet.

---

From: [email-masked] (Dale R. Worley)
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2017 23:05:34 -0400

Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]> writes:
> over 20 years ago.

    ... the hideous Devil of Eternal Compatibility with the Horrors of the
    Past, whose nefarious influence is all too visible in the computer
    industry.	-- Bertrand Meyer

I'm reminded of the fact that in the first 128 positions of the enormous
Unicode matrix are frozen-in the English version of the Roman alphabet,
which got there only as a matter of the historical accidents of how
Unicode developed.  I envision that 10,000 years from now, buried down
inside the AI systems that serve (or *are*) civilization, graphic
characters will be represented by some nth generation derivative of
Unicode, and ASCII will still be in the first 128 positions only because
it had always been marginally cheaper to keep it that way than to
rationalize it.

Dale

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From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2017 07:54:30 -0400

> it had always been marginally cheaper to keep it that way than to

​10,000 years is the span of human civilization to date. On those
timescales, languages will converge and they converge on the lowest common
denominator and become creoles. Most of the major commercial languages in
the world are actually creoles.

It is really hard to see how path dependence and technology constraints
would lead to any outcome other than English becoming the universal
language.

---

From: [email-masked] (Dale R. Worley)
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2017 10:21:18 -0400

Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]> writes:
> 10,000 years is the span of human civilization to date. On those

Most accountings don't even allow 6,000 years for civilization.  And
what will happen with language is an interesting problem, between the
fact that languages aren't stable on timescales more than a couple of
hundred years (the distance from now to proto-Indo-European is about
6,000 years) and the possible creation of ubiquitous machine
translation.

Which leads to another horror-vision:  Like Classical Chinese, English
spelling will be locked in while the language changes ... for the next
2,000 years.

Dale

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2017 12:09:47 -0400

> 6,000 years) and the possible creation of ubiquitous machine

​Its about 10,000 years since that asteroid allegedly kicked off the ice
age and kickstarted civilization by forcing an agricultural revolution.​

​But yes, the cultures have changed a lot since.​

> spelling will be locked in while the language changes ... for the next

​I suspect that where we are now is likely to stick because of the
persistence and ubiquity of the cultural artifacts. 100 years from now,
Star Wars will still be shown in theaters but as a classic film. ​

If you look at the gap between the 1700 and 1900, there is a huge amount of
change. But there really hasn't been a lot of change since 1880 or so that
hasn't been driven by changes in cultural norms. Gilbert and Sullivan does
not sound in the least bit strange to us but the language of the Regency
period would have sounded very strange to the late Victorians.

​The process of change is driven by fusion of different cultures and it is
retarded by powerful shared cultural artifacts. The Hebrew Bible has
preserved a particular dialect that was spoken by the ancient Palestinian
elite imported from Babylon by Cyrus the great. ​The Koran has preserved
classical Arabic. We have no reason to believe either of those tongues
would have been spoken as a native tongue by particularly large numbers of
people. They have survived because there is a cultural norm that requires
them to.

One big change is that in the past only the written word was recorded. The
spoken word could change independently. We have sound recordings now. That
makes a big difference. The main change in UK speech over the past 50 years
has been the elimination of large numbers of dialects. Most because they
are incomprehensible outside a narrow geography. But received pronunciation
and mid-Atlantic have also disappeared. The last actress to play a major
role in a TV serial in mid-Atlantic was cpt. Janeway in ST Voyager and many
found it grating.

So I think it rather likely that language will change rather more slowly in
the future than it has in the past.