Addressing plan exercise for our IPv6 course

Fri Jul 30 15:57:40 UTC 2010

On Jul 30, 2010, at 3:11 AM, Matthew Walster wrote:

> On 30 July 2010 09:53, Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com> wrote:
>> 2.      Yes, they are already available. A moderate PC with 4 Gig-E
>>        ports can actually route all four of them at near wire speed.
>>        For 10/100Mbps, you can get full featured CPE like the SRX-100
>>        for around $500. That's the upper end of the residential CPE
>>        price range, but, it's a small fraction of the cost of that functionality
>>        just 2 years ago.
> 
> A moderate PC is not a typical CPE. An SRX-100 is not a typical CPE. A
> Draytek DSL modem/router is not a typical CPE.
> 
> Your typical CPE is, and always will be, a simple device. It will (and
> should) contain no user configuration that is required for operation.
> If it does, it's too complicated for the average user.
> 
An Apple Airport Extreme is relatively typical CEP and meets your criteria.
I have one forwarding packets at 800Mbps throughput between the
LAN and WAN ports. On a gig-E network, that seems close enough
to LAN speed.

A lot of your "simple devices" are actually PCs running linux under
the hood, so, in fact, a moderate PC today is likely to be tomorrows
"toaster".

>>                Home sensor network and/or appliances
> 
> If it's really necessary to put these on a separate network, I highly
> doubt anyone but the true gadget geek will bother.
> 
Then you will be surprised.

>>                Kids net (nanny software?)
> 
> Should be sorted at the PC-level, not the network level. If it really
> is going to be a network service, it should be off the home network
> and a managed service by an ISP somewhere.
> 
We can agree to disagree about this.

>>                Home entertainment systems
> 
> Really? A separate network just for an HTPC?
> 
No. A separate network for:
	Playstation/Wii/etc.
	Amplifier (See Yamaha RXV-3900 for example)
	HTPCs
	Apple TVs
	TiVOs
	Mac Minis operating in that role (the new one rocks for that)
	DVD players
	Blue Ray players
	Monitors/Televisions
	etc.

Just because the only home entertainment thing you have today with
an ethernet port is an HTPC (which, btw, is way geekier than half
the CPE you argued against at this point) does not mean that
everyone will be subject to such limitations.

>>                Guest wireless
> 
> Wireless is polluted enough. Supposing everything's fixed in the
> future and there is near-unlimited wireless spectrum, your average
> user is just going to give the encryption key to the router to the
> guest. Network management is not on the radar for 99.9% of resi users.
> 
Again, we can agree to disagree. Lots of people I know, including
non-technical ones have turned on the guest wireless capability
with their Airport Extremes.

> Seriously, this is getting silly. I'm not even going to respond any
> more - if you genuinely think users care about network management,
> you're wrong. They treat it as a black box, and that isn't going to
> change for a long, long, long time.
> 
I don't think they care. I think it will be automated for them in the future.
The argument wasn't about whether users care or not. The argument
was about whether households would eventually come to a point
where the norm was to require more than one subnet per household.

You remain in denial, and, that's fine, but, I think enough use cases
have been shown and enough people have told you that they already
have multiple subnets in IPv4 as a result of default service they
receive from their provider to prove that multiple subnets in the
average home will be commonplace in the future.

Owen