Re: IPv6 woes - RFC

[Eliot Lear <lear () ofcourseimright com>]

On 13.09.21 20:22, Randy Bush wrote:
> < rant >

> ipv6 was designed at a time where the internet futurists/idealists had
> disdain for operators and vendors, and thought we were evil money
> grabbers who had to be brought under control.

and...

> <snip>

> real compatibility with ipv4 was disdained.


I'm not claiming IPv6 is any sort of perfect, but let's not revise history.

To quote Lee Hayes' adaptation of Will Rogers:

“Things aren't what they used to be, what's more they never were.”

There were four proposals for the IPng:

 * NIMROD, PIP, SIP, and TUBA

SIP was the one that was chosen, supported by endpoint manufacturers 
such as Sun and SGI, and it was the MOST compatible.  Operators and 
router manufacturers at the time pushed TUBA, which was considerably 
less compatible with the concepts used in v4 because of variable length 
addressing.   If we endpoints had some notion that v6 would take as long 
as it has to diffuse, perhaps we all might have thought differently. I 
don't know.

There is no evidence that any other design choices on the table at the 
time would have gotten us transitioned any faster, and a lot of evidence 
and analysis that the exact opposite is more likely.  There are many 
reasons v6 has taken this long to deploy, but one prediction model 
(Elmore/Camp) dating back to 2008 have said it would take to the end of 
the century to get to 80%, barring a paradigm shift.  We may have that 
paradigm shift with IoT, but the jury is still out.

Eliot

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