Access to the IPv4 net for IPv6-only systems, was: Re: WG Action: Conclusion of IP Version 6 (ipv6)

Tue Oct 2 12:55:25 UTC 2007

On 2-okt-2007, at 14:08, John Curran wrote:

> That's a wonderful solution, and you should feel free to use it.
> It's particularly fun from a support perspective, because you
> get to be involved all the way down the host level.

Tunneling IPv4 over IPv6 and translating IPv4 into IPv6 pretty much  
do the same thing except that translating means information gets  
lost. I don't see how there is a "host level" difference between the  
two.

> A lot of ISP's don't want to be involved in supporting *anything*
> all the way down to the local host level, and want a simple method
> for connecting new customers via IPv6 while offering some form of
> legacy connectivity to rest of of the (IPv4) Internet.

Well, then obviously they're not going to tunnel real addresses, so  
address use is not an issue. This means they can easily give out an  
address to all hosts connected to their network that wants one. This  
only costs the amount of state required per address, which should be  
negligible compared to the amount of state (per session) that's  
required when users start actually using such a service.

> You're asserting
> that they shouldn't be allowed to use NAT-PT for this purpose, despite
> the fact that it meets their needs?

"The IETF" is asserting that NAT-PT is not fit for deployment.

What I'm saying is that there are better ways to accomplish the same  
goals.

Not sure what I would do if I had the power to make people stop using  
protocols that I feel they shouldn't use.