[ppml] Soliciting comments: IPv4 to IPv6 fast migration

[Paul Vixie]

> ... because the community does not have the balls to allow it to happen.

i don't think it's wise to bet against this community's will or powers.

> If the Internet community had balls, they would appoint a Czar and tell all
> IPv4 holders they had until 2010 to switch to IPv6 and pay the fees, to hell
> with your legacy status.  In 2010 they would aggressivly block IPv4 all over
> the Internet.  In 2012, everyone would have switched to IPv6 and you would
> have 4 or 5 large legacy holders in court, suing ARIN/IANA/everyone claiming
> they were illegally forced to submit to IPv6.  The courts would find in
> their favor sometime in year 2020 by which time IPv6 would be so entrenched
> and IPv4 so dead, that the wins would have no meaning whatsoever.  And no
> court would go against the rest of the world and try ordering the Internet
> to stop blocking IPv4 so the legacy holders could get their free ride for a
> few more years.  And even if one did the rest of the world would ignore it
> with the result that a tiny chunk of the Internet would revert to IPv4 and
> become useless.

while i won't address your concern (or lack of same) about lawsuits against
ARIN, i'm generally in favour of "tough love" positions.  see my 1995 paper
on domain names (http://sa.vix.com/~vixie/dns-badnames.pdf) for an example.

the big problem with the above proposal isn't lack of "balls", but lack of
coherency.  there isn't an "internet community" in the sense you mean, and
there isn't going to be a Czar because there's no way to get universal
agreement on who it could be.  whatever "we" (the internet community or even
just the ARIN community) do will be by bottom-up consensus, period.  and that
rather does take "tough love" positions off the menu.  (i have no regrets.)

> But, the Internet community is too short sighted to understand that since
> they are unwilling to do this, and force the issue, that if ignoring the
> problem ever causes a serious problem on the Internet, the worlds
> governments will simply come in and take over and do it for them.  And if
> that happens once the governments get involved they will never leave.  There
> is a term for that it is called a Pyrric victory.

it's not all doom and gloom.  consensus driven governance has high inertia,
so, it's hard to get it moving, but also very hard to stop it.  let's steer.