[ppml] IPv6>>32

[Stephen Sprunk]

Thus spake "Steve Atkins" <steve at blighty.com>
> On Thu, May 12, 2005 at 08:54:49AM -0700, Jeff Williams wrote:
> >   No offense, but the average Joe knows much more than your
> > giving him credit for...  And as such an assumption is troubling
> > with regards to participation, many average Joe's also know that
> > this attitude is so prevalent that many of them feel as though
> > they are being relegated to being ignorant improperly...
>
> Joe User may know, but Joe User doesn't really care that much. With
> a few exceptions Joe User simply picks from the options available.

Right.  And we need to make sure ISPs and vendors are able to provide Joe
with the option(s) he wants.

> I also don't think that it's a perceived scarcity of addresses - I
> think Joe User sees that it's because the consumer ISPs don't
> want servers running on consumer accounts because they can
> charge more for accounts that do allow servers. Dynamically
> assigning addresses to always-on connections (and to a lesser
> extent creative port blocking) are primarily for product differentiation,
> and I think that's pretty well understood by Joe User. I've not even
> heard an ISP claim that dynamic assignments are due to scarcity
> of addresses since the days of pay-per-minute dialup.

IMHO, dynamic assignment is the default now primarily because it's the
easiest model to support.  Just tell the user to plug in their PC (or
whatever) and it works -- no messing with complicated IP settings.  The
problem comes when providers lock things down so that a given user can only
get one DHCP address or use one MAC at a time; mine happens not to do that
(though multiple hosts are against the AUP), but I suspect there are many
that do.

Banning servers is handled more easily through AUP enforcement than via the
addressing model.  Sure, it requires a bit more work to run a server on a
dynamic address, but it's still possible and still an AUP violation for most
consumer accounts.  Providing insufficient upstream bandwidth is the most
effective method in any case.

> I suspect that if there is any choice of IPv6 service available at all
> the one Joe User demands will be driven more by what Linksys and
> Netgear support well, rather than by any of Joes beliefs about
> how it should be, and that may make Leo's optimistic thoughts about
> autoconfiguration more realistic. Then again, Linksys and friends
> are sneaky and may well be able to provide a very simple, happy
> end-user experience without having 2^64 bits to play with. And
> that's all Joe User really cares about.

Then I think it's up to the IPng WG, perhaps at the RIRs' request, to come
up with standards for how we expect such devices to work with IPv6.

Vendors do generally try to do the right thing given the constraints of the
market dynamics they face.  Telling them "every home must get a /48" or even
a /64 will end up just as futile as saying "don't do NAT" was.  The market
disagreed with the IETF, and the market always wins.

S

Stephen Sprunk      "Those people who think they know everything
CCIE #3723         are a great annoyance to those of us who do."
K5SSS                                             --Isaac Asimov