[governance] IPv[4,6, 4/6] was IGF delhi format

[Milton L Mueller]

Thomas:
The reason people use the "transition" term in connection with v4-v6 is
the possibility of address space exhaustion in the v4 space. Your
comments below seem to imply a leisurely, choice-based migration - which
for some players may indeed be the case, but what seems more likely is a
game in which those who move to v6 first create costs and burdens for
themselves and so everyone has an incentive to let others move first and
stay in the v4 space as long as possible.

So, from my point of view the issue is not the abandonment of v4, but
getting stuck in it forever.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Thomas Narten [mailto:narten at us.ibm.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2008 12:00 PM
> To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Avri Doria
> Subject: Re: [governance] IPv[4,6, 4/6] was IGF delhi format
> 
> > 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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