Dual stack IPv6 for IPv4 depletion

Tony Hain alh-ietf at tndh.net
Thu Jul 16 04:08:16 UTC 2015


Joe Maimon wrote:
> Jared Mauch wrote:
> 
> >
> > This isn’t really a giant set of naysayers IMHO, but there is enough
> embedded logic in devices that it doesn’t make that much sense.
> 
> Enough to scuttle all previous drafts.
> 
> > linux
> 
> a little google comes up with this
> 
> http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/linux/kernel/866043
> 
> It defies reason to compare that kind of update to ipv6.
> 
> > various *bsd flavors
> 
> > That effort would need to have everyone moving in the same direction
> now which seems unlikely.
> >
> > - Jared
> 
> All I ever wanted to see was that the (minimal) effort was made possible.
> No guarantee of its success should be required for that. Even now.
> 
> Because by doing so, you guarantee failure.


Joe, 

It appears you are asking for the world to sanction your local efforts. There is nothing stopping you from deploying and using that space if you can. Asking for a change in the standards status though will only lead to confusion and anguish. If 15 years ago it had been, or would now be changed to unicast, people would expect to be able to use it as they use the rest of the space. Those with access to source for all their devices could accomplish that, but everyone else would have to beat on vendors and wait an indeterminate time to get usable code, and that still would not fix rom based devices. On the other hand people with source don't need any standards change, they can just turn it on. 

If you want the additional effort to manage a global distribution of the space so it is not just an extension of 1918, then you have to acknowledge that it would only last a few weeks at best. While ARIN managed to change policy and slow things down, when APnic flamed out they burned through 6 /8's in 8 weeks and were accelerating, while Ripe was burning through one every 3 months, and Lacnic was accelerating through their last one over 4 months. So ignoring pent up demand since they have all been out for awhile now, and assuming that they space was generically usable, you get 8 weeks tops. Recognizing that they are not generically usable though it will likely take quite a bit longer than that. 

This is not being a naysayer, it is simply presenting issues that have been raised and considered many times over the last 15 years. There is a lot of work to make that space usable, and as you pointed out above the smallest part of that is the code change. In the context of the amount of work required in relation to the few weeks of gain that would result, it has always been difficult to establish much interest. At the end of the day it is not that much more work to fix all the devices to run IPv6. At that point you have no limitations, while 240/4 still leads to the place where the IPv4 pool is exhausted. 

Tony






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