[governance] IPv[4,6, 4/6] was IGF delhi format
Ian Peter
ian.peter at ianpeter.com
Tue Feb 26 15:53:09 EST 2008
Agreed, we need to look at this as co-existence. If TCP/IP networks survive,
IPv4 and NATs are not going to go away via deployment of IPv6, or not for
some years or decades. So we need to understand very carefully what the
coexistence issues are and how they can be best dealt with.
Central to this are a range of immediate deployment issues. That should be
the focus of anyone wanting to encourage IPv6 deployment.
We also need to look carefully at what co-existence means in practice.
ARCHITECTURE
Architecturally, we have moved from
IPv4+NATS or IPv6
to
IPv4+NATS+IPv6+dual-stack (with a strong probability of IPv6 NATS as well).
Not pretty!
RATIONALE FOR DEPLOYING IPv6
When we accept co-existence, we then have to ask why would anybody bother to
deploy IPv6. It’s a lot of hard work, particularly for large corporations.
I realize a few governments are now beginning to mandate IPv6 in tenders.
That will make them all behave, I hear some say. I doubt it - for years in
the early 1990s governments mandated OSI in tenders and we just got on with
deploying TCP/IP instead and created clever words in tender documents to
avoid the rather silly requirement being put on corporations by governments
who didn't really realize what was involved. Government tender requirements
will not succeed in enforcing IPv6 deployment.
Being forced to by governments aside, the only reason in a co-existence
scenario that anyone apart from geeks would bother to upgrade would be
because they cannot obtain an IP address unless they go IPv6. So, the
address-rich have no motivation - only the address-poor have sufficient
reason to bother.
This creates a series of public policy issues. Market or no market, the
address poor are almost certain to be largely confined to LDCs and/or those
least able to afford to purchase in an open market. As the address rich
don't need to bother, there will be little in the way of hardware and
software to smooth widespread adoption. Clever solutions will arise but they
are likely to be based on variations of NATs, not adoption of IPv6. Either
way, connectivity is not good.
So yes, I believe we have to accept and understand co-existence. But we also
have to understand that it may have social ramifications we don't understand
yet.
I think that we have to realize that co-existence is not pretty, which is
why there is a strong argument for transition. Therefore, against the logic,
socially and architecturally, of the current transition strategy, we have to
consider the complete lack of a compelling reason to migrate and the
realities of human behavior as factors making any successful transition
highly unlikely. Therefore, like it or not, co-existence is with us for a
considerable period of time.
This is not an easy issue!
Ian Peter
Ian Peter and Associates Pty Ltd
PO Box 10670 Adelaide St Brisbane 4000
Australia
Tel (+614) 1966 7772 or (+612) 6687 0773
www.ianpeter.com
www.internetmark2.org
www.nethistory.info
-----Original Message-----
From: Izumi AIZU [mailto:iza at anr.org]
Sent: 27 February 2008 04:24
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Thomas Narten
Cc: Avri Doria
Subject: Re: [governance] IPv[4,6, 4/6] was IGF delhi format
If I may,
I very much agree with what Thomas wrote below, especially the need
to think of this as "co-existence", not just "transition".
Especially, as Avri points out, some of these technical and
operatoinal challenges
and homeworks require interpretation into policy/social/business actions. If
there are no such needs, I/we can go back home and sleep - let
engineers solve the
problem.
But, being a member of civil society on this list, and engaged with the
policy
area of Internet for more than 15 years mostly standing on the
end-user viewpoint,
I must say IP address makes the core of Internet and its use,
application, business,
etc, and the transition or coexistence of two different IP address
systems require
good attention and observation from non-techie people but responsible
for these social
areas wheter we like it or not.
First of all, I like to see "accurate" information and reasoned
discourse. What I like
to avoid is subjective judgements without clear or proven facts. Of
course, this list
is not the place for technical details. But the benefit of this list
is, to me, people like
Thomas, Avri or Karl, some of the most knowledgeable people on the
technical side
can directly feed the information to the policy oriented people who
are also exprerts
in Internet policy area, if not technical experts.
Today, there was a first meeting of Internet Policy Study Group hosted by
MIC of Japanese government, and I was on that group. On top of the net
neutrality
and broadband competition issues, IPv4v6 issue is also identified. I
took the floor
and added that "we better consider it as coexistence, not only transition".
I just came back from APRICOT (which is still ongoing till end of this
week),
and there is IPv6 hours after NANOG. IF you are interested in some technical
work, this link might be of your interest, or so I found:
http://www.civil-tongue.net/clusterf/
best,
izumi
2008/2/27, Thomas Narten <narten at us.ibm.com>:
> > i would still like to see a real strategy for co-existence of the two
> > addressing architectures that had an actual chance of wide scale
> > deployment and success. this is for some definition of success that
> > includes the ability to connect all of the world's peoples to a single
> > global Internet, with all that means about end to end reachability.
> >
> > after over a decade of IPv6 'inevitability,' i still don't know
> > exactly what IPv6 transition means, but if it means that there will
> > be no more global usage of IPv4, then i don't expect this to happen in
> > my life time (and I am expecting to live for a while yet).
>
>
> One of the oft-repeated myths that seems to continue making the rounds
> is that IPv6 is about "transition" and that it is necessary to move
> away from IPv4 ASAP.
>
> Transition is a poor term, it turns out, because people associate the
> term transition with "must stop using IPv4" and that raises all sorts
> of alarm bells (and rightly so).
>
> It has been an assumption from the very beginning that there would be
> a very long coexistance period where IPv4 and IPv6 would both be in
> use. Many years. Decades more likely. This is not new thinking. It is
> not some recent realization that wasn't thought about from the
> beginning. (Though it is true that people have argued forever just how
> long a coexistance period would be.)
>
> I can imagine data centers and other parts of an enterprise
> effectively NEVER turning off IPv4. Why should they? It would only
> make sense to turn off IPv4 if it is no longer working or
> necessary. Think about legacy apps and cobol. They still exist. :-)
> You don't change things that are working unless you have a compelling
> reason to. The same will be the case with IPv4 deployments.
>
>
> > this is for some definition of success that includes the ability to
> > connect all of the world's peoples to a single global Internet, with
> > all that means about end to end reachability.
>
>
> The reality is that we don't have that today with IPv4. We have a
> world in which some parts of the internet reach some other parts of
> the world, that is, where the set of destinations I can reach may be
> very different than the set of destinations you can reach. This has to
> do with routing and how the routing infrastructure actually works as a
> business (e.g., due to policy considerations, there may be no route to
> me (or you) in some parts of the Internet). It also has to do with the
> widespread use of NATs/Firewalls, where many machines do not have
> direct connectivity to other machines.
>
> So, I don't think its entirely useful to talk about "a single global
> Internet" except at a very high level. Having IPv6 and IPv4 coexist
> will add strains to this (e.g., one particular IPv4 device might not
> be able to communicate with another particular IPv6 device). But the
> reasons for this will be varied and may be just fine. E.g., consider
> email. Email works today because mail is relayed from one part of the
> Internet to another, allowing sites that are not really directly
> connected to communicate. This sort of thing will also work for
> IPv4/IPv6. E.g., an IPv6-only site can relay mail to gateway that does
> dual stack, which in turns relays to IPv4 destinations. This is
> already done today, and will surely also happen in an IPv4/IPv6 world.
>
> My point here is that having IPv4 and IPv6 does add some complications
> to the ideal of a single global internet, but it's not a black and
> white kind of thing. We don't even have such an internet today (if one
> looks closely), though most people don't notice.
>
> And when you think of IPv6 deployment, think "coexistance". IPv4 will
> not go away anytime soon. Or even within our lifetimes, most
> likely. That is perfectly OK.
>
>
> Thomas
>
>
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--
>> Izumi Aizu <<
Institute for HyperNetwork Society, Oita
Kumon Center, Tama University, Tokyo
Japan
* * * * *
<< Writing the Future of the History >>
www.anr.org
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