IPv6 is on the marketers radar

Sun Feb 13 02:03:41 UTC 2011

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Geert Bosch [mailto:bosch at adacore.com]
> 
> Honestly, I can't quite see the big deal for home users. I'm using
> an Apple Airport Extreme, and setting it up with a IPv6 tunnel from

$150?  That's a high-powered device compared to most home gateways.

> HE was quite straightforward. Sure, I don't expect the average user
> to go through these steps, but they could easily be automated and
> rolled out as part of a firmware update (which is a routine matter

Yes, if the ISP provided the gateway.  In many markets, they don't.
Even if they start now, they would have to convince every customer
to swap routers.  And find the capital to pay for them.  And have a
system for updating the firmware and configurations of those
devices.  Or maybe the customer's going to have to buy a new 
gateway, when the one they have is still functioning,  and might 
even be brand new.

> the foreseeable future, people will have (NATed or not) IPv4
> connectivity, so content providers are fine without IPv6. 

Depends on the content.  Large-scale NAT is bad for you if you
depend on IP geo-location, or use anti-DDOS measures to limit
number of connections or bits from a single IP address, or use
IP address to report abuse, or blacklist IP addresses, or log the
user's IP address, or try to enforce copyright by reporting IP
addresses of violators, or rate-limit outbound data per address,
or record unique visitors by IP address.
It might also increase latency, but probably not so much that
you'd panic.

Except for the most basic, static of websites, content providers
are going to prefer IPv6 over IPv4.  I don't know whether web
hosting companies will ever automatically dual-stack the PTA's
website, but at some point it will be easier for them to warn all
their customers and just do it, than to track which customers
asked for IPv6 explicitly.

> So, I think we'll transition to a situation where for some purposes
> (Skype, gaming, file-sharing) there will be a benefit for (tunneled)
> IPv6 compared to (NATed) IPv4, but for simple content providers
> there will still be no incentive to leave IPv4.
. . . 
> Again, it seems it is far easier to deal with the relatively
> homogeneous base of users for IPv6, compared to the fragmented and
> irregular market of content providers.

That sounds heterogenous:  web-browsing-only users, and 
peer-to-peer-application-using users.

Lee