moving to IPv6

Sun Nov 2 19:09:00 UTC 1997

[ soapbox ]

> What problem is IPv6 solving?

IPv6 solved the problem it was intended to solve.  In '93-'94, there was an
increasing sensationalist panic in the half-informed press that the internet
was going to run out of address space in the next fifteen minutes.  This is
despite the ALE WG (soon cidrd) analyses to the contrary, but it made 'good'
press.

This presented a serious problem to the internet community, both in market
perception and in the amount of time and energy (of otherwise useful folk)
it was taking to combat the bogus press.

The IPv6 decision immediately solved that problem.  Victory over the address
space problem was declared.  The industry press went on to be cluelessly
sensationalistic about other things.

And IPv6 did not even have to be deployed!  Many people consider this to be
a good thing, as IPv6 has not really been demonstrated to improve anything.

OTOH, the much maligned CIDR effort received horrid press but seems to have
been amazingly successful in actual deployment and use.  Judge by the
results, look at the curve (Tony Bates's weekly cidrd report).

randy