[governance] Sad History of IPv6 (was: IPv4 Address Exhaustion Milestone & Comcast Starts DOCSIS IPv6 Trial)

[John Curran]

On Feb 6, 2011, at 12:51 AM, Avri Doria wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I have not researched it, just lived through it, especially in the years of the IETF.  I have been following, and participating at times, from the time the IPng issue got started.

I lived it, and many of your thoughts below are correct. Comments follow.

Disclaimer:  I was a member of the IETF's IPng task force, and am probably the one most clearly on record regarding my concern about the viability of the output (reference:  RFC 1669)

> Some of the chapters might include:
> 
> - the story starts with requirement  that were ignored when the beauty contest picked the winner.  and the fact that the winner was picked before it was time and the work was complete on the candidates due to political pressure to have a solution now.

Correct.  Enormous pressure for a decision resulted in a form of inter-protocol fratricide.

> - It includes the inability of anyone to get people to commit to fixing the routing architecutre while going through the pain of changing the address structure.  This even though there were candidate solution that included routing architecture considerations.  Many of us believe that architecture and addressing must always be worked on together.

Correct.  Tip of the hat to both Noel Chiappa and Paul Francis for working on protocol candidates that at least tried to take this problem on.

> - it includes a very strange tale of the inability of some very smart people to persuade anyone to include the notion of variable size addresses, or at least fixed addresses that allowed for IPv4 encapsulation.

Correct.  My own personal grievance about the outcome, particularly since we need variable sized addresses would not only work, but provide unique capabilities useful for some problem spaces including transition.

> - It goes through at least a decade of hubris where IPv6 was going to replace IPv4 any day now and the elite of IPv6 drank very expensive scotch to toast to the universal deployment of IPv6  

Indeterminate.

> - It includes years of miscalculation that IPv4 was the walking dead so there was no reason to think about coexistence.  

I would phrase the above as: "It includes years of ignoring any actual hard assessment of the need for a transition plan and transition tools"

> - it would include chapters of how CIDR and NAT saved IPv4.

Appropriate, particularly if it were "how CIDR and NAT greatly improved IPv4, and helped it to last past 2010"

> - it would discuss the economics of IP addresses and the fact that even though the need to have strict hierarchy is no longer that great, a free market in IP addresses is still prohibited.  

Disagree.  A free market isn't disallowed; it could be done by getting about 100 interested folks to participate to drive a policy change through... At present, there's never been sufficient support for it.  In the ARIN region, the policy discussion and the show of support are open to all including remote participants. 

> - it would discuss the sacred cow legacy IPv4 address blocks and the multicast blocks that have never really been exploited.

Agreed.

> - it would discuss the new reality where we need to support 2 protocol stacks and the routing infrastructure to support those 2 protocols.  We no longer have one Internet, we have 2 Internets that exist side by side, but are separate universes.  Good for router hardware sales, but not really an optimal solution.

"Not really an optimal solution" might be the understatement of the year. It's probably one of the least desirable outcomes.

> - It would include the stories of people who dedicated their lives to marketing a solution that nobody really wanted and made a fortune in the process.

Indeterminate.

> - it would discuss that in the future, while there will be IPv6 in the network, there will be IPv4 for most of our lifetimes.  The routing architecture is still a disaster, and there will be many new solutions to keep IPv4 going, so that unless vendors switch over based on political pressure, many of us will continue to use IPv4 for a very long time to come.

Most of us will continue to use IPv4, but you'd be amazed at how fast the broadband service providers are going to IPv6 because its their only option.  To the point, if you do not bother to dual-home your web site IPv4 and IPv6, do not be surprised if some of the newer folks have performance issued reaching it.

> As I said, IPv6 has come far enough so it will probably survive - I used to believe that could/should never happen but I long ago gave up fighting it.  But as we celebrate its alleged ascendancy, I just wanted to point out the sad path we took to get to this point and warn that we should not expect IPv6 to be the last address solution, nor should we expect that it will be an easy road ahead.

Correct.

> Me, I am still trying to figure out how to route on names and to avoid bothering with psuedo-numbers (aka IP addresses) anyway - why translate from one name type to another? Given that routing is getting less hierarchical all the time, these numerical names may someday be an anachronism of the past.  But this is a governance list and not technical research speculation list, so that was probably off topic.  And I apologize for being an IPv6 heretic and a party pooper.

Avri - Just remember that I'm not only the first IPv6 heretic (on record in August 1994 per RFC 1669) and presently one, I also get to be one of the lead cheerleaders today for IPv6 because the service providers have no other option at this point.  I don't disagree with most of what you've said, and certainly wish that we had a better IP Next Generation protocol, but that doesn't make IPv4 viable for another 20 years either.

/John



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