It's Ars Tech's turn to bang the IPv4 exhaustion drum

Mon Aug 18 18:42:53 UTC 2008

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Deepak Jain [mailto:deepak at ai.net]
>Sent: Monday, August 18, 2008 2:19 PM
>To: james
>Cc: nanog at nanog.org
>Subject: Re: It's Ars Tech's turn to bang the IPv4 exhaustion drum
>
>
>
>james wrote:
>> http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080817-were-running-out-of-ipv4
>> -addresses-time-for-ipv6-really.html
>>> Well, on reading it, it's more an "IPv6: It's great -- ask for it by
>>> name!" piece.
>>
>>
>> IPv6 gives me brain ache. I hear I'm not alone in that. I'd
>> v6 tomorrow if I didn't have to  think about it so hard.
>
>You just need 96 more bits in your head everywhere you store IPv4
>techniques. Yes, lots of us have a brain ache with it, but I'm sure IPv4
>gave us brain ache when it was new to us too.

A little software and/or memory upgrade to support dual-stack?

>
>I'm sure there are already folks in environs that are mostly IPv6 that can
>spit off binary to hex to decimal IPv6 addresses. The US tends not to be
one
>of those environs.

Indeed, we do exist!  And it does become natural, given enough time &
practice.
(And yes, some of us are even in the US ... but not that many, yet (...
which is good for business ...))

>
>It'll come.
>
>operational content: Is anyone significantly redesigning the way they
>route/etc to take advantage of any hooks that IPv6 provides-for (even if
its
>a proprietary implementation)? As far as I can tell, most people are just
>implementing it as IPv4 with a lot of bits (i.e. /126s for link interfaces,
>etc).

>From what I have seen, no.
I have seen no interest what-so-ever in redesigning the networks; most see
it as enough work to get IPv6 into their environment and don't want to
complicate the project with any "above and beyond" work.  Additionally, most
are keeping IPv4 for just a bit longer so would be hampered in redoing their
architecture by that little factor.

>
>I know we aren't use auto-config on critical server architecture and
instead
>nailing in addressing like we would in IPv4. (an address hopping firewall
is
>not necessarily a good thing ;) ).

As a general rule, most clients are following the "If we gave them static
IPv4 addresses we will give them static IPv6 addresses" (infrastructure,
servers, etc).  The whole SLAAC(autoconfig) vs DHCPv6 is a separate (albeit
related) conversation ...

>
>Deepak

/TJ