IPv6 is on the marketers radar

Sun Feb 13 15:22:47 UTC 2011

> From: Geert Bosch [mailto:bosch at adacore.com]
> Basically, it should not have to cost anything extra to set up
> new users for IPv6. The same hardware that handles IPv4 today
> can be programmed to do IPv6.

That is not the case for a significant number of home gateways
and other consumer electronics.  This is a market where a few 
dollars saved in flash or RAM means market share or profitability.
Only in high-end gateways is there capacity for IPv6 (see the
plans from Linksys, Netgear).  You can argue about whether
this "should" be true, but the manufacturers say they can't add
IPv6 to the current low-end gateways.

> >> the foreseeable future, people will have (NATed or not) IPv4
> >> connectivity, so content providers are fine without IPv6.
> > [why content providers hate NAT and will dual-stack]
> Users don't care about IP geo-location or anti-DDOS measures, or
> any of the other reasons you list. These are things content providers
> care about, but they don't get to choose wether their viewers use
> IPv4 or IPv6.

You were arguing, I thought, that content providers would stay
on IPv4-only for a long time, and that web users would never move
until content was IPv6-only.  I disagree with the first part: most web 
content will be dual-stack, so that as much traffic as possible will
be over IPv6.

> > 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.
> As long as a majority of users come over IPv4, better anti-DDOS
> measures or anti-abuse procedures for IPv6 are not going to make
> any difference. "When you DOS my site, please use IPv6, so we
> can better find out your location and more effectively block
> your IP address."

That's not what I was saying.
Since anti-DDOS in IPv4 will inflict collateral damage, interfering
with innocent users' experience of the site, web content providers
should have a strong preference for IPv6.  Meaning they will make
it available, and possibly promote it as much as possible.

> Users are going to drive adoption of IPv6, if and when they
> find a "killer-app" where IPv6 can provide usability that (heavily
> NATed) IPv4 can't. This could be better file-sharing tools, lower
> latency online gaming, better long-distance video-calling or whatever,
> as long as the benefits will be worth the relatively small
> (<$50) investment of money and time.

The killer app is the avoidance of CGN: head-to-head gaming, p2p,
SIP, remote access, etc.
ISPs are deploying IPv6
(http://www.cablelabs.com/news/pr/2011/11_pr_ipv6_transition_020111.html)
Web content providers are deploying IPv6 (http://isoc.org/wp/worldipv6day/)
It's bad that home gateways need replacing
(http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9208718/Cisco_Linksys_routers_still_
don_t_support_IPv6?taxonomyId=16)
And consumer electronics are dangerously far behind.

> 
> For content providers, as long as 90+% of the net is IPv4 only and

Less than a year before > 10% of the net has IPv6.  
You read it here first.

> essentially nobody is IPv6 only, providing dual-stack support is just
> adding cost for little or no gain in viewership. Content providers
> often depend on dozens if not hundreds of pieces of hardware and
> software to provider their services, so supporting IPv6 is vastly
> most expensive than it is for users to take advantage of it.

Cisco and Netgear (see article above) say that essentially every user 
needs a new gateway in the $150 range.  You already have one--
excellent, but the high end does not dominate the market.  You're 
arguing that web content provider costs are greater than $100 per 
user?

I don't mean to trivialize the effort content providers must make.
But to suggest that it's enormously higher than any other
segment's investment, and has no benefit, is misguided.

Lee