OMB: IPv6 by June 2008

Mon Jul 4 11:52:20 UTC 2005

At 12:25 PM +0200 2005-07-04, Andre Oppermann wrote:

>>      IPv6 has its problems, yes.  There are implementation issues that
>>  confuse programmers at Sun working on Solaris, and confuse network
>>  application programmers with a hell of a lot of experience under their
>>  belt.  If you can't talk directly to Jinmei himself, you're likely to be
>>  well and truly screwed.
>
>  Ain't this *the* problem???  If not even Joe OperatingSystemEngineer
>  can understand it, what is John Doe at home supposed to do?

	John Doe at home is never going to see any of these issues. 
He'll see that BIND or NTP doesn't work correctly on his IPv6 
implementation and then go to the appropriate mailing list or 
newsgroup and see that it works fine elsewhere, but that's as far as 
he'll go.

	Moreover, we're still in the very early phases of IPv6.  We've 
learned how to move, but I'm not convinced that we're at the crawling 
stage, much less walking or running.  There are a lot of issues that 
still have to be resolved.

	In comparison, where were we with IPv4 this many years after it 
was invented?  We had, what, probably something less than 200 nodes 
on the ARPAnet, and DNS wasn't even a gleam in anyones eye?

	We're already way, way past that point with IPv6.  Yes, we've got 
a long way to go, but we've also come a lot further a lot faster than 
anyone or anything else before.  Give it a little time.

>  What fundamental address space problem?  I'd say we run out of AS numbers
>  about a year before we run out of IPv4 addresses, whenever that is.

	AS numbers can be recycled.  It is not politically feasible to 
insist that all those under-used address blocks get turned back in 
and more size-appropriate blocks get issued, so recycling of address 
blocks is both more difficult and happens more rarely.

	The problem with IPv4 space limitations is not the theoretical 
one of having more machines on the 'net than we can assign addresses 
to, although that problem will occur soon enough.  The practical 
problem we have is that much of the address space has already been 
allocated, and was allocated in a manner that was not very space 
efficient, thus leaving us with a very nasty upcoming crunch.

	Now, if you honestly think you can solve that problem without 
going to an expanded address solution such as found in IPv6 (with 
IPv6 being the only practical model on the radar that I can see), 
then I would encourage you to do so and to report back when you're 
done.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad at stop.mail-abuse.org>

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

     -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
     Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

   SAGE member since 1995.  See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.