IPv6 Thought Experiment

Wed Oct 2 22:57:21 UTC 2019

> On Oct 2, 2019, at 09:33 , Antonios Chariton <daknob.mac at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Dear list,
> First of all, let me apologize if this post is not allowed by the list. To my best interpretation of the guidelines [1] it is allowed, but may be in a gray area due to rule #7. 
> 
> I would like to propose the following thought experiment about IPv6, and I would like your opinion on what you believe would happen in such a case. Feel free to reply on or off list.
> 
> What if, globally, and starting at January 1st, 2020, someone (imagine a government or similar, but with global reach) imposed an IPv4 tax. For every IPv4 address on the Global Internet Routing Table, you had to pay a tax. Let’s assume that this can be imposed, must be paid, and cannot be avoided using some loophole. Let’s say that this tax would be $2, and it would double, every 3 or 6 months.

You’re talking about starting at $1536 per quarter for a /24 and doubling that every three to 6 months?

Who, exactly gets all this money in your make money fast scheme here?

I’d say it would provide an impressive motivation to get rid of IPv4, but I also would say that nobody would ever stand for such a tax.

> What do you think would happen? Would it be the only way to reach 100% IPv6 deployment, or even that wouldn’t be sufficient?

The internet’s version of the Boston Tea Party.

I think the backlash would exceed any possible positive outcome.

> And for bonus points, consider the following: what if all certification bodies of equipment, for certifications like FCC’s or CE in Europe, for applications after Jan 1st 2023 would include a “MUST NOT support IPv4”..

That one is significantly more practical than your first suggestion, but still pretty unlikely from a practical perspective. For one thing, FCC doesn’t certify gear outside of RF considerations. CE mostly certifies that it’s not going to burn your house down. THey’re more like UL or CSA than FCC.

By the way, CE, UL, CSA are among several other “Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratories” for products that need to meet certain consumer safety standards.

> What I am trying to understand is whether deploying IPv6 is a pure financial problem. If it is, in this scenario, it would very very soon become much more pricey to not deploy it.

I think it is more of a perceived financial problem than a pure financial problem.

I think that the problem is primarily one of perceptions:
	1.	Executives don’t perceive the benefits to their operation.
	2.	Staff and Executives overestimate the cost vs. the equipment they already have in place.
	3.	Due to the above perception errors, not deploying or delaying deployment as long as possible is perceived as a no-brainer.

> I know there are a lot of gaps in this, for example who imposes this, what is the "Global Internet Routing Table", etc. but let’s try to see around them, to the core idea behind them.

Well, even just looking at the core idea, I think that you’d create a very strong backlash and little else, even if there were some way to implement it.

Owen