Creating demand for IPv6, and saving the planet

Thu Oct 4 02:51:09 UTC 2007

At 08:04 PM 10/3/2007, Stephen Sprunk wrote:

>Thus spake "Daniel Senie" <dts at senie.com>
>>A number of people have bemoaned the lack of any IPv6-only 
>>killer-content that would drive a demand for IPv6. I've thought 
>>about this, and about the government's push to make IPv6 a reality. 
>>What occurred to me is there is a satellite sitting in storage that 
>>would provide such content:
>>
>>   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triana_(satellite)
>>
>>Al Gore pushed for this satellite, Triana, to provide those on 
>>earth with a view of the planet among its scientific goals. The
>>Republicans referred to it as an "overpriced screen saver," though
>>the effect even of just the camera component on people's lives
>>and how they treat the planet could be considerable.
>>
>>By combining the launch of Triana with feeding the still images and 
>>video from servers only connected to native IPv6 bandwidth, the 
>>government would provide both a strong incentive for end users to 
>>want to move to IPv6, and a way to get the people of this planet to 
>>stop from time to time and ponder the future of the earth.
>
>Here's a simple question that applies to every "killer app" that's 
>been proposed for IPv6: if you're going to the trouble of making a 
>killer app and giving/selling it to the public, why wouldn't you 
>include support for IPv4?

The US Government has stated an intention to have all equipment 
supplied to it be capable of IPv6, and networks to run IPv6. 
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/egov/b-1-information.html#IPV6) That 
being the case, this would be an opportunity for the government to 
use something to push that goal along. Clearly there's nothing about 
a screen saver image from L1 that requires IPv6, but the government 
owns Triana, and the government wants to push IPv6 (OK, so the 
government also pushed OSI in the form of GOSIP, and we all know how 
well that worked out).

>Virtually every "unique" feature of IPv6, except the number of bits 
>in the address, has been back-ported to IPv4.  There is simply no 
>other advantage left, and thus no room for apps that "require" IPv6.

Agree all the way around. There's no technological reason to tie 
these items together. There is a political reason, as it fits with 
the agenda of the government to push IPv6 development and deployment.

How the government would prevent proxying of this content into IPv4, 
well, that's another matter. Perhaps the IPv6 evangelists will be 
able to convince Congress to outlaw that at the same time as they 
approve the launch of Triana and provide for the server farm to serve 
the images.

BTW, thanks for bringing this thread back to the question of creating 
demand for IPv6. There's plenty of anti-NAT activity on other 
threads. Some constructive discussion over ways to create incentives 
to deploy IPv6 is worthwhile. The most common argument for deployment 
of IPv6 is fear, as in "the sky is falling." Yeah, we all heard that, 
and have for a decade. Got it. Now, is there some POSITIVE reason to 
push IPv6? Fear is not a positive force.

Dan 