[discuss] we need to fix what may be broken

Fri Apr 18 19:40:41 UTC 2014

We generally agree but one counter-point:

On April 18, 2014 at 11:18 Lee at asgard.org (Lee Howard) wrote:
 > 
 > As far as "crumbling," that may be too strong a word. More like atrophy;
 > slow degeneration over time.  Rising costs, increasing complexity, greater
 > brittleness.

FWIW, I was referring to the current governance structure (as it were)
crumbling not the internet per se.

We can all imagine different dystopias of course.

There are technical reasons to fear a failure of the IPv6 transition
beyond this simple mental model of enough addresses to hand out.

For example, the growth of the routing table.

Say that in a network infrastructure crowd and the room is likely to
become uncomfortably silent. Unlike address allocation and
distribution it's a potentially exponential problem and exponential
problems are bad, like "airborne ebola" bad.

This is why I just shake my head and think "they really don't get it"
when someone responds with "oh IPv6 seems to work just fine.

There may be solutions, don't get me wrong. But some who really,
really understand this stuff are skeptical. At least not without some
major and painful technical changes probably as big as IPv4->IPv6
itself tho perhaps more affecting infrastructure providers.

So my dystopia involves those with the biggest economic stake,
particularly in infrastructure (e.g., NSPs such as AT&T, Comcast,
France Telecom/Orange, NTT, China Telecom, Tata, et al), and
governments, saying ok, you folks had your chance and now we're in
trouble. I hope you enjoyed all the coffee and doughnuts. Time for a
new sheriff.

I suppose that resembles the ITU takeover fears and there could be
parallels tho it takes on new dimensions if the infrastructure, and
hence the economics, is in real trouble.

But, ok, none of ICANN et al's interest...if they say so.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

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