RIPE our of IPv4

Tue Nov 26 06:03:17 UTC 2019

On 2019-11-25 20:26, Brandon Martin wrote:
> On 11/26/19 4:36 AM, Doug Barton wrote:
>> I get that some people still don't like it, but the answer is IPv6. 
>> Or, folks can keep playing NAT games, etc. But one wonders at what 
>> point 
>> rolling out IPv6 costs less than all the fun you get with [CG]NAT.
> 
> If it weren't for the ongoing need to continue to support IPv4
> reachability (i.e. if we'd flag-day'd several years ago), I think the
> (admittedly non-scientific) answer to that question is that we have
> already passed it.
> 
> However, in the face of continuing need for IPv4 reachability, I'm
> less sure.  I think that the incremental cost to deploy and support
> IPv6 is probably no more than the incremental savings of CGNAT
> headaches for service providers caused by offloading what traffic you
> can to native IPv6.  Those savings from not just from capacity savings
> (which can be extreme to totally trivial depending on your size) but
> also support for having 3rd party services properly treat an SP
> customer as an individual customer rather than the results of multiple
> SP customers being lumped onto a small CGNAT target pool.
> 
> That is, even if you are 100% committed to needing to run a functional
> CGNAT as a service provider and deal with everything that entails, I
> think it's probably STILL in your short-term economic best interest to
> deploy IPv6 simply due to the reduction in scope of "everything that
> entails".

I think this is spot on. The only thing I'd add is that the costs to 
deploy IPv6 will remain fairly constant or perhaps go down some over 
time as economies of scale continue to grow, whereas the costs for 
continuing to prop up IPv4 will only increase.

Doug