IPv6 woes - RFC

Sat Sep 25 01:53:24 UTC 2021

> On Sep 24, 2021, at 9:56 AM, Joe Maimon <jmaimon at jmaimon.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> Owen DeLong wrote:
>> 
>>> On Sep 23, 2021, at 13:26 , Joe Maimon <jmaimon at jmaimon.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> I hope not, both for IPv6 sake and for the network users. We dont know how much longer the goal will take, there is materializing a real possibility we will never quite reach it, and the potholes on the way are pretty rough.
>> By “the only way out is through” I meant that the only way we can get back to anything resembling mono-stack is, in fact, to complete the transition to IPv6.
> 
> The question is how? Waiting for everyone or nearly everyone to dual stack, the current strategy, is awful. Like pulling gum off a shoe.

Agreed, so the question boils down to what can be done to motivate the laggard content providers to get off the dime.

>>> And as the trip winds on, the landscape is changing, not necessarily for the better.
>> The IPv4 landscape will continue to get worse and worse. It cannot possibly get better, there just aren’t enough addresses for that.
> 
> I was referring to the more general network landscape, the governance system, the end of p2p, balkanization, etc, all trends and shifts that become more likely and entrenched the longer IPv6 lags and the scarcer IPv4 becomes.
> 
>> 
>>> One more "any decade now" and another IPv4 replacement/extension might just happen on the scene and catch on, rendering IPv6 the most wasteful global technical debacle to date.
>> If that’s what it takes to move forward with a protocol that has enough addresses, then so be it. I’m not attached to IPv6 particularly, but I recognize that IPv4 can’t keep up. As such, IPv6 is just the best current candidate. If someone offers a better choice, I’m all for it.
> 
> Whose to say it would be a proper p2p system? I know you believe strongly in that and want it fully restored, at least on the protocol level.

There are so many potential useful things we could do with a restored e2e system that are simply not proactical today that yes, I consider that vital.

For one thing, I’m really tired of vendor cloud locking just because products need rendezvous hosts with public addresses.

>>>>  Unfortunately, the IPv6 resistant forces
>>>> are making that hard for everyone else.
>>>> 
>>>> Owen
>>> You say that as if it was a surprise, when it should not have been, and you say that as if something can be done about it, which we should know by now cannot be the primary focus, since it cannot be done in any timely fashion. If at all.
>> It’s not a surprise, but it is a tragedy.
>> 
>> There are things that can be done about it, but nobody currently wants to do them.
> 
> So lets make the conversation revolve around what can be done to actually advance IPv6, and what we should know by now is that convincing or coercing deployment with the current state of affairs does not have enough horsepower to get IPv6 anywhere far anytime soon.

I’m open to alternatives if you have any to offer.

>>> Its time to throw mud on the wall and see what sticks. Dual stack and wait is an ongoing failure slouching to disaster.
>> IPv4 is an ongoing failure slouching to disaster, but the IPv6-resistant among us remain in denial about that.
> 
> Who is this "us"? Anybody even discussing IPv6 in a public forum is well ahead of the curve. Unfortunately. All early adopters. Real Early.

Everybody using the internet, but more importantly, the content providers that are resisting IPv6 deployment on their content are probably the biggest problem at this time.

>> At some point, we are going to have to make a choice about how much longer we want to keep letting them hold us back. It will not be an easy choice, it will not be convenient, and it will not be simple.
>> 
>> The question is how much more pain an dhow much longer will it take before the choice becomes less difficult than the wait?
>> 
>> Owen
>> 
> Exactly what does this choice look like? Turn off IPv4 when its fully functional? Only the have-nots may make the choice not to deploy IPv4 sometime in the future, and for them, its not going to be a real choice.

IPv4 hasn’t been fully functional for more than a decade. At some point, the pain of continuing to wait for the laggards will become sufficient that those who have been running dual-stack will simply turn off IPv4 and leave the laggards behind. It might tragically not happen in my lifetime, but it has to happen at some point.

Owen