OMB: IPv6 by June 2008

Scott McGrath mcgrath at fas.harvard.edu
Thu Jul 7 14:20:02 UTC 2005



Alexi,

Ah, You mean the excellent 'The Mythical Man-Month' Fred Brooks wrote a
second edition a few years back.  I had not thought of IPv6 in terms of
the second system effect but you are absolutely correct in your appraisal.

                            Scott C. McGrath

On Wed, 6 Jul 2005, Alexei Roudnev wrote:

>
> IPv6 is an excellent example of _second system_ (do you remember book,
> written by Brooks many years ago?) Happu engineers put all their crazy ideas
> together into the second version of first 9succesfull) thing, and they
> wonder why it do not work properly.
> OS/360 is one example, IPv6 will be another.
>
> IPv6 address allocation schema is terrible (who decided to use SP dependent
> spaces?), security is terrible (who designed IPSec protocol?) and so so on.
>
> Unfortunately, it can fail only if something else will be created, which do
> not looks so.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Daniel Golding" <dgolding at burtongroup.com>
> To: "Scott McGrath" <mcgrath at fas.harvard.edu>; "David Conrad"
> <david.conrad at nominum.com>
> Cc: <nanog at merit.edu>
> Sent: Wednesday, July 06, 2005 8:58 AM
> Subject: Re: OMB: IPv6 by June 2008
>
>
> >
> >
> > There is an element of fear-mongering in this discussion - that's why many
> > of us react poorly to the idea of IPv6. How so?
> >
> > - We are running out of IPv4 space!
> > - We are falling behind <#insert scary group to reinforce fear of Other>!
> > - We are not on the technical cutting edge!
> >
> > Fear is a convenient motivator when facts are lacking. I've read the above
> > three reasons, all of which are provable incorrect or simple fear
> mongering,
> > repeatedly. The assertions that we are falling behind the Chinese or
> > Japanese are weak echoes of past fears.
> >
> > The market is our friend. Attempts to claim that technology trumps the
> > market end badly - anyone remember 2001? The market sees little value in
> v6
> > right now. The market likes NAT and multihoming, even if many of us don't.
> >
> > Attempts to regulate IPv6 into use are as foolish as the use of fear-based
> > marketing. The gain is simply not worth the investment required.
> >
> > - Daniel Golding
> >
> > On 7/6/05 11:41 AM, "Scott McGrath" <mcgrath at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > >
> > > You do make some good points as IPv6 does not address routing
> scalability
> > > or multi-homing which would indeed make a contribution to lower OPEX and
> > > be easier to 'sell' to the financial people.
> > >
> > > As I read the spec it makes multi-homing more difficult since you are
> > > expected to receive space only from your SP there will be no 'portable
> > > assignments' as we know them today.  If my reading of the spec is
> > > incorrect someone please point me in the right direction.
> > >
> > > IPv6's hex based nature is really a joy to work with IPv6 definitely
> fails
> > > the human factors part of the equation.
> > >
> > >                             Scott C. McGrath
> > >
> > > On Wed, 6 Jul 2005, David Conrad wrote:
> > >
> > >> On Jul 6, 2005, at 7:57 AM, Scott McGrath wrote:
> > >>> IPv6 would have been adopted much sooner if the protocol had been
> > >>> written
> > >>> as an extension of IPv4 and in this case it could have slid in
> > >>> under the
> > >>> accounting departments radar since new equipment and applications
> > >>> would
> > >>> not be needed.
> > >>
> > >> IPv6 would have been adopted much sooner if it had solved a problem
> > >> that caused significant numbers of end users or large scale ISPs real
> > >> pain.  If IPv6 had actually addressed one or more of routing
> > >> scalability, multi-homing, or transparent renumbering all the hand
> > >> wringing about how the Asians and Europeans are going to overtake the
> > >> US would not occur.  Instead, IPv6 dealt with a problem that, for the
> > >> most part, does not immediately affect the US market but which
> > >> (arguably) does affect the other regions.  I guess you can, if you
> > >> like, blame it on the accountants...
> > >>
> > >> Rgds,
> > >> -drc
> > >>
> >
> > --
> > Daniel Golding
> > Network and Telecommunications Strategies
> > Burton Group
> >
> >
>



More information about the NANOG mailing list