Address Lifetime Expectations (ale)
-----------------------------------

 Charter
 Last Modified: 1995-03-16

 Current Status: Concluded Working Group

 Chair(s):
     Frank Solensky  <solensky@blaze-net.com>
     Tony Li  <tli@procket.com>

 IP: Next Generation Area Director(s):
     Scott Bradner  <sob@harvard.edu>
     Allison Mankin  <mankin@isi.edu>

 IP: Next Generation Area Advisor:
     Scott Bradner  <sob@harvard.edu>

 Mailing Lists: 
     General Discussion:ipv4-ale@ftp.com
     To Subscribe:      ipv4-ale-request@ftp.com
     Archive:           research.ftp.com:pub/ale/

Description of Working Group:

The primary purpose of the Address Lifetime Expectations Working Group
is to develop an estimate for the remaining lifetime of the IPv4
address space based on currently known and available technologies. The
members of the working group will consider whether more stringent
address allocation and utilization policies might provide additional
time and, if so, recommend such policies. The working group will also
investigate whether it is worthwhile to mount a serious effort to
reclaim addresses and/or to renumber significant portions of the
Internet.  It will also weigh the benefit of other potential options
against their expected cost and notify the responsible working groups
or area directors of those  proposals the ALE group considers worthy of
further attention.

The working group will have several ongoing activities which will
result in reports to the IETF community and the IPng Area Directors.
One ongoing activity is to produce monthly predictions of the address
space exhaustion timeframe, assessing the accuracy of these predictions
and the data on which they are based.  The group will also project the
impact of various policy compliance data and possible policy
recommendations.

Another ongoing activity is to monitor the perceived utilization of
address space and identify sources of poor utilization, set address
utilization goals and to itemize possible policies to improve
utilization.

The group will also monitor the number of routes present in the
Internet backbones, and identify sources of poor aggregation within the
network, (in conjunction with the BGP Deployment Working Group), and make
necessary recommendations to insure continued operations.


 Goals and Milestones:

   JAN 94       Coordinate with existing efforts in this area. For example, 
                those of the IEPG and the CIDR Deployment Working Group. 
                The result is an allocation of tasks agreed among the 
                efforts. 

   Done         Make presentation to the IETF plenary on the current status 
                of the address space utilization. 

   APR 94       In cooperation with the BGP Deployment Working Group, 
                produce a report on the status of address aggregation, 
                including additional guidelines/strategies, if necessary. 

   JUL 94       Produce a report on the status of address space 
                utilization, including goals and guidelines for improving 
                address space utilization. Summarize this report during the 
                IETF plenary. 


 Internet-Drafts:

  No Current Internet-Drafts.

 Request For Comments:

  None to date.