[discuss] IPv6 Deployment and IG

Thu Dec 26 15:52:00 UTC 2013

On Dec 26, 2013, at 10:21 AM, Jorge Amodio <jmamodio at gmail.com> wrote:

> And fortunately after many years of explaining and whining about the "business case", a large number of them are starting to understand that it will be better for them to implement IPv6 sooner than later.

So, we have many service providers beginning to move to IPv6 because they now see 
the need...  this will improve IPv6 use as a connectivity method, but even as that 
is going on, those same providers must also provide backwards compatibility to 
IPv4-only websites and content.

Doing that backwards compatibility can be dual via dual-stack (presuming you can 
get enough IPv4 addresses to continue that model) or via some form of carrier-
grade NAT gateway.  Both of these options have significant costs and operational 
considerations,as well as creating some rather colorful new intersections with the 
perceived public policy goals of governments.  These situations will need to be 
addressed, in some cases with rapidly increasing cost and complexity as we slice 
IPv4 up with thinner and thinner pieces. 

The only long-term way out of this is to get vast majority existing _content_ 
connected with both IPv6 as well as IPv4, and this is very hard business case.  
Folks think "I'm already on the Internet - I don't have to do anything", whereas 
the reality is that we've changed what "being on the Internet is" to include both 
IPv6 and IPv4, but haven't actually gone through the effort to engage with governments 
to explain that this is an ongoing change to the global Internet that they need to 
be aware of, and consider the implications to their people and economy.  The RIRs 
have done some major outreach to governments in making plain that this transition 
is underway, but that is not the same thing as having a multistakeholder discussion
about how governments can (or whether they even should) help in getting the existing
enormous amount of content to be IPv6 reachable...

/John

Disclaimer: My views alone.