Why is IPv6 broken?

Sun Jul 10 15:56:53 UTC 2011

On 7/10/2011 10:14 AM, Jeff Wheeler wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 9, 2011 at 5:25 PM, Bob Network<networkjoe at hotmail.com>  wrote:
>> Why is IPv6 broken?
> You should have titled your thread, "my own personal rant about
> Hurricane Electric's IPv6 strategy."  You may also have left out the
> dodgy explanation of peering policies and technicalities, since these
> issues have been remarkably static since about 1996.  The names of the
> networks change, but the song remains the same.  This is not a novel
> subject on this mailing list.  In fact, there have been a number of
> threads discussing HE's practices lately.  If you are so interested in
> them, I suggest you review the list archive.
>
> There are quite a few serious, unresolved technical problems with IPv6
> adoption besides a few networks playing chicken with their collective
> customer-bases.  The lack of will on the part of vendors and operators
> to participate in the IETF process, and make necessary and/or
> beneficial changes to the IPv6 standards, has left us in a situation
> where IPv6 implementation produces networks which are vulnerable to
> trivial DoS attacks and network intrusions.
>
> The lack of will on the part of access providers to insist on
> functioning IPv6 support on CPE and BRAS platforms has even mid-sized
> ISPs facing nine-figure (as in, hundred-million-dollars) expenses to
> forklift-upgrade their access networks and end-user equipment, at a
> time when IPv6 seems to be the only way to continue growing the
> Internet.
>
> The lack of will on the part of major transit networks, including
> Savvis, to deploy IPv6 capabilities to their customers, means that
> customers caught in multi-year contracts may have no option for native
> connectivity.  Cogent's policy of requiring a new contract, and from
> what I am still being told by some European customers, new money, from
> customers in exchange for provisioning IPv6 on existing circuits,
> means a simple technical project gets caught up in the complexities of
> budgeting and contract execution.

+1

The lack of will on the part of the IETF to attract input from and involve
operators in their processes (which I would posit is a critical element in
the process).  And the lack of will/fore site on the part of the IETF to
respond to input from operators that they have received. If fingers can
be pointed at both sides, i.e. operators and IETF, then both sides are to
blame.  The IETF only has value if they are publishing "standards" that
work properly in the real world.  If the implementers of these "standards"
say that they are broken, then the IETF has failed to provide value.

>
> If you believe that the most serious problem facing IPv6 adoption is
> that HE / Level3 / Cogent don't carry a full table, you are living in
> a fantasy world.

+1

-DMM