nanog mailing list archives

RE: Dual stack IPv6 for IPv4 depletion


From: Jacques Latour <jacques.latour () cira ca>
Date: Thu, 16 Jul 2015 16:20:39 +0000

Hi,

Dual stack is where we need to go 'now', but we need to think about the future where we run an IPv6 only stack and stop 
thinking how to leverage, extend, expand and create ugly IPv4 solutions. IPv4 is done; it served its purpose well, 
thank you. We need a date where IPv4 is no longer routed on the Internet. I am suggesting 4/4/2024. Whatever the 
timeline, we need to agree on the date and drive toward a common goal for a better Internet.

My 2 Canadian cents :-)

Jack


-----Original Message-----
From: NANOG [mailto:nanog-bounces () nanog org] On Behalf Of Joe Maimon
Sent: July-16-15 11:24 AM
To: Doug Barton; nanog () nanog org
Subject: Re: Dual stack IPv6 for IPv4 depletion



Doug Barton wrote:


Joe,

In this post, and in your many other posts today, you seem to be
asserting that this would work if "$THEY" would just get out of the
way, and let it work. You've also said explicitly that you believe
that this is an example of top-down dictates. I know you may find this
hard to believe, but neither of these ideas turn out to be accurate. A
little history ...

In 2004 I was the manager of the IANA. Tony Hain came to me and said
that he'd been crunching some numbers and his preliminary research
indicated that the burn rate on IPv4 was increasing fairly
dramatically, and that runout was likely to happen a lot sooner than
folks expected it would. Various people started doing their own
research along similar lines and confirmed Tony's findings.

So amongst many others, I started taking various steps to "get ready"
for IPv4 runout. One of those steps was to talk to folks about the
feasibility of utilizing Class E space. Now keep in mind that I have
no dog in this hunt. I've never been part of an RIR, I've never worked
for a network gear company, I'm a DNS guy. To me, bits are bits.

I was told, universally, that there was no way to make Class E space
work, in the public Internet or private networks (because the latter
was being considered as an expansion of 1918). There are just too many
barriers, not the least of which is the overwhelming number of
person-years it would take to rewrite all the software that has
assumptions about Class E space hard coded.

Further, the vendors we spoke to said that they had no intention of
putting one minute's worth of work into that project, because the ROI
was basically zero. In order for address space to "work" the standard
is universal acceptance ... and that was simply never going to happen.
There are literally hundreds of millions of devices in active use
right now that would never work with Class E space because they cannot
be updated.

Of course it's also true that various folks, particularly the IETF
leadership, were/are very gung ho that IPv6 is the right answer, so
any effort put into making Class E space work is wasted effort; which
should be spent on deploying IPv6. On a *personal* level I agree with
that sentiment, but (to the extent I'm capable of being objective) I
didn't let that feeling color my effort to get an honest answer from
the many folks I talked to about this.

But all that said, nothing is stopping YOU from working on it. :)  The
IETF can't stop you, the vendors can't stop you, no one can stop you ...
if you think you can make it work, by all means, prove us all wrong. :)
  Find some others that agree with you, work on the code, do the
interoperability tests, and present your work. You never know what
might happen.

In the meantime, please stop saying that not using this space was
dictated from the top down, or that any one party/cabal/etc. is
holding you back, because neither of those are accurate.

Good luck,

Doug



Thanks for the this.

To clarify, my criticism of top down is specifically in response to the rationale
presented that it is a valid objective to prevent, hinder and refuse to enable
efforts that "compete" with ipv6 world-takeover resources.

I have no intention of using Class E. I have no intention of developing code that
uses Classe E. I will note that the code involved that is publicly searchable
appears to be simple and small, the task that is large is adoption spread.

But perhaps we can all agree that standards should be accurate and should not
be used to advance uninvolved agenda. And class E experimental status is
inaccurate. And keeping that status serves nobody, except those who believe it
helps marshal efforts away from IPv4. And that is top down.

Burn rate is specious. Applying liberally constrained green-field burn-rate as a
projection of ROI on brownfield space likely to be heavily constrained by
market force if nothing else is wholly inapplicable and inaccurate.

Joe

Current thread: