worse than IPv6 Pain Experiment

Thu Oct 10 20:12:30 UTC 2019

On October 9, 2019 at 17:12 bill at herrin.us (William Herrin) wrote:
 > On Wed, Oct 9, 2019 at 4:30 PM John R. Levine <johnl at iecc.com> wrote:
 > > > Can I summarize the current round of objections to my admittedly
 > > > off-beat proposal (use basically URLs rather than IP addresses in IP
 > > > packet src/dest) as:
 > > >
 > > >  We can't do that! It would require changing something!
 > >
 > > Nope.  You can summarize it as "it doesn't scale", which is what has
 > > killed endless numbers of superficially plausible bad ideas.
 > 
 > And Barry's been around long enough to know this. What's up Barry? What's the
 > meta-argument you're trying to make here 'cause "bits is bits" is about as
 > smart as telling a chef that "food is food."

Some brought up objections to IPv6 one of which was that its long hex
strings are difficult to remember compared to IPv4 addresses.

I first suggested that might be largly a human interface issue more
than a flaw in the design.

Then I remembered a talk I gave in Singapore, intended to be
controversial, suggesting the use of essentially URLs as a superset of
"domain names", but whatever, everyone knows what I mean, as actual
addresses in packets.

Just trying to stimulate some thinking beyond IPv6 and assessing where
we are in general terms regarding for example changes in hardware etc
availability since IPv6 was first being developed ca 1990.

Particularly in a context where the less than stellar adoption of IPv6
is an issue.

Some, most, of the comments have been very interesting and also
thought-provoking.

Others amounted to "but where do we put the gasoline in this
new-fangled electric car?!" (yes some fundamental things would need to
be redesigned), some wanted the entire design right here and right now
(sorry!), and a few basically revealed people who've never to my
knowledge managed anything more complicated than a zippo lighter
claiming profound and intuitive insight into mass scalability.

But as I said it's a few RFCs short of an internet.

Just meant to stir some discussion: Is there life after IPv6? What
might motivate another round of evolution and by whom?

My sense is these questions might be more imminent than some may want
to believe given the rise of issues such as security, privacy,
government control, accountability, legal and insurance issues, and a
multi-trillion dollar economy riding on this internet little of which
was really on the table in, say, 1990.

For example given the relatively low adoption of IPv6 and the
impossibility (pretty much) of going forward with IPv4, and the new
realities I mention, might someone(s) with sufficient interest and
capitalization and influence push to knock over the whole game board?

They marched us into a box canyon!

-- 
        -Barry Shein

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