[ppml] back to the IPv6 Policy questions

[Phil Howard]

On Thu, Jan 09, 2003 at 08:03:38AM -1000, Barbara Roseman wrote:

| As for the topic that started this off, is there any evidence that the 
| current policy is discouraging the adoption of IPv6?

I'd say that the current policy is discouraging the adoption of IPv6, but I
don't knwo in what form to offer evidence of that.  What I can say is that
the policy is leaning too heavily on getting top side adoption first, and
I believe that this won't work very well.

Larger businesses, which fundamentally include backbone services, are
driven more by customer demand than by innovation.  They are loath to
spend any money unless there is a visible ROI.  And they can't see beyond
about 3 years for anything.  The current state of the economy is drawing
out the ROI for everything.

By encouraging IPv6 adoption at the bottom end, this would drive demand,
and thus the justfication for investment by the top end.  From their point
of view, few businesses care about IPv6, yet.  If there is no demand, then
why put the investment in.  I'm sure they have some technical people that
have put a couple routers together and make an IPv6 segment and even hooked
it in to 6bone.  But I don't think that's what you want.  You want real
IPv6 routability to happen.  And I'm saying it won't any time soon until
there is demand.

So what I see at issue is how to drive IPv6 demand from the bottom up.

The merits of IPv6 do have a play in this because IPv6 has to be justified
to the bottom end so they create that demand.  So what are they going to
get out of it?  More addresses?  Always static addresses?  Easier renumbering?
Permanent addresses?


| I'd ask John to state whether anyone he's working with has actually had an 
| application for IPv6 addresses rejected, and I'd like to ask ARIN's 
| registration services if they find themselves rejecting applications for 
| not meeting the proper criteria as ISPs as opposed to end-users.
| 
| If we need to do some education about how one qualifies for v6 space, that 
| is one problem.  If we need to change language or substance of the v6 
| policy, that is a different problem. I'd like to get a clearer picture of 
| which problem we're actually facing.

I was thinking I should ask how many ISPs are asking for space.  But I don't
think, from their point of view, that they have to hold back from that just
because there's no infrastructure changes planned.  The senior network engineer
can do that with no budget.  Then they sit on the addresses until there is
enough demand to start planning the rollout.

So I suspect there could be a lot of ISPs asking for space, but that won't be
any indication of the state of readiness of IPv6 deployment.

I think the end users do have to get in on it.

-- 
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| Phil Howard - KA9WGN |   Dallas   | http://linuxhomepage.com/ |
| phil-nospam at ipal.net | Texas, USA | http://ka9wgn.ham.org/    |
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