"It's the end of the world as we know it" -- REM

Wed Apr 24 22:26:09 UTC 2013

I guess my question is what the difference is between the sharp-demand curve (Tony's latest, which perhaps mirrors APNIC's final few months of IPv4) and the straight-line curve. My read is that we're arguing about the difference between "late 2013" and "some time in 2014". I suspect that what most ISPs are going to find necessary is some combination of keeping the lights burning in IPv4-land, by whatever means, and deploying the next generation.

Frankly, the ISPs likely to be tracking this list aren't the people holding back there. To pick on one that is fairly public, Verizon Wireline is running dual stack for at least its FIOS customers, and also deploying CGN, and being pretty up front about the impacts of CGN. Verizon Wireless, if I understand the statistics available, is estimated to have about 1/4 of its client handsets accessing Google/Yahoo/Facebook using IPv6.

http://www.verizon.com/support/residential/internet/highspeedinternet/networking/troubleshooting/portforwarding/123897.htm
http://www22.verizon.com/Support/Residential/Internet/HighSpeed/General+Support/Top+Questions/QuestionsOne/ATLAS8742.htm
http://www.worldipv6launch.org/measurements/

Where we're having trouble is in enterprise and residential deployments. Enterprise tends to view the address space run-out as Somebody Else's Problem - behind their NATs, they generally have enough address space to work with. On the residential side, the X-Box is still IPv4-only, Skype is still IPv4-only, the vast majority of residential gateways used by broadband subscribers are IPv4-only.

Some broadband ISPs are taking steps toward a managed service offering, by selling their customers a replacement router. If the router is IPv6-capable, that helps.

If we really want to help the cause, I suspect that focusing attention on enterprise, and finding ways to convince them that address shortages are also their problem, will help the most.