An Internet IPv6 Transition Plan

Wed Jul 25 11:30:27 UTC 2007

On Wed, Jul 25, 2007 at 07:14:49AM -0400, John Curran wrote:
> At 11:52 AM +0100 7/25/07, Stephen Wilcox wrote:
> >On Tue, Jul 24, 2007 at 09:34:01PM +0100, michael.dillon at bt.com wrote:
> >>
> >> > However, what I'm trying to understand is why the motivation
> >> > to rapidly go from v4 to v6 only? What are the factors I'm
> >> > missing in operating v4/v6 combined for some time?
> >>
> >> Growth.
> >>
> >> Lack of IPv4 addresses will put the brakes on growth of the Internet
> >> which will have a major impact on revenue growth. Before long stock
> >> market analysts are going to be asking tough questions, and CEOs are
> >> suddenly going to see the IPv6 light.
> >
> >What exactly will cease to grow tho? The 4 billion IPs that have always been around will continue to be. I think you overestimate the effects..
> >
> >All the existing big businesses can operate with what they already have, Google and Yahoo are not going to face any sort of crisis for the foreseeable future. And as I've been saying for a while and Randy put in his presentation, supply and demand will simply cause the cost of having public IPs to go up from zero to something tiny - enough to see IPs being put back into the pool to those who really need them.
> 
> Steve -
>  
>    Putting them back into circulation doesn't work unless
>    its done in very large chucks to major ISPs.  If this isn't
>    the model followed, then we will see a lot more routes
>    for the equivalent number of new customers.  People
>    complaining about the ability to carry both IPv6 and
>    IPv4 routing need to think carefully about how long
>    we'll actually last if the ISP's are injecting thousands
>    of unaggregatable routes from recovered address space
>    each day.
> 
>    Additionally, the run rate for IPv4 usage approximates
>    10 /8 equivalents per year and increasing.   Even given
>    great legacy recovery, you've only gained a few more
>    years and then still have to face the problem.

Hi John,
 I fully agree on that.. but I am disagreeing as to the timescales. 

There is some opinion that when IANA hands out the last of its IP blocks things will change overnight, and I dont see any reason for that to be the case. I think there are a lot of IPs currently allocated to ISPs but as yet unassigned to customers, and I think there will be a lot of policy changes to make more efficient use of the space that is already out there - I specifically think that will come from ISPs reusing IPs and setting costs that ensure they continually have IPs available to customers willing to pay for them.

I think the combined effect of these things means 
- we will not be running into a wall at any time
- availability of IPs will slowly decrease over time (as cost slowly increases)
- adoption of NAT and v6 will be an ongoing trend with no sudden increase 

This means no end of the world as we know it, and no overnight adoption of new technology.. just business as usual in an evolving environment.

Steve