Re: V6 still not supported

[John Curran <jcurran () istaff org>]

> On 23 Mar 2022, at 1:34 AM, Joe Maimon <jmaimon () jmaimon com> wrote:
> ...
> Since IPv6 was born of the effort to fix the upcoming address shortage visible at the time and to prevent and 
> alleviate the resulting negative effects, the fact that it did not and that globally v4 address shortage is still a 
> problem is a tally of multiple years of failure.

Joe - 

It all depends on your measure of success; i.e. the victory conditions that one wishes to set.  If the victory 
conditions are “has displaced the previous IP4 protocol”, then we’re certainly not there (and may never achieve at such 
an outcome for many decades to come…) 

If the victory conditions are “provide an updated IP protocol that the larger providers can use as an alternative for 
address their continued growth requirements”, then it is indeed a success - as proof one just has to look at major 
broadband and mobile network deployments that use IPv6 to enable their continued growth…  (and IPv4 on many of those 
networks is just network application shim to a gateway service that’s present for obsolete software to use.) 

The fact that the majority of the network operators don’t use IPv6 is irrelevant under such victory conditions, so long 
as those who needed to have it due to their growth requirements have had it as a viable option.  Many of the largest 
networks out there (service providers, cloud, social media) are running IPv6 as their primary infrastructure because 
they prefer the long-term economics of that architecture given their needs – so by that measure one can consider 
definitely a success. 

That doesn’t meant everyone has to run IPv6 – if your network isn’t growing that much and you’ve got enough IPv4 
addresses for your needs then by all means continue to use just IPv4..

However, recognize that IPv6 deployment continues to grow, and that means there could easily be a “tipping point” 
sometime in your future – i.e. a point in time when your organization needs to support IPv6 because of internal or 
external requirements  – and it’s probably best for networking engineers to be up-to-speed & comfortable with IPv6 by 
that point (or ready to do something else for a living) 

Thanks!
/John