[ppml] Soliciting comments: IPv4 to IPv6 fast migration

[Paul Vixie]

> Clearly, the majority will is that things are fine the way they are.

no.  the common viewpoint is some mixture of "this is a problem we don't
know how to solve" and "this is a problem and i hope somebody works on it".

> "If some people have problems getting IPv4 allocations at some point
> in the future, well tough cookies to them, they shouldn't be bothering
> with IPv4 then anyway, they should be using IPv6."

since the value of having an internet connected device depends on the size
and diversity of the population of other internet connected devices, there
is no sane way to ignore any market size constraint like ipv4 depletion.

you may be mistaking the common american business practice of focusing on
the quarter's results rather than on the long term effects on the economy
or ecology of the system, for a deliberate head-in-sand approach to the
problems of ipv4 depletion and ipv6 transition.

> I am not sure that even you, Paul, understand.

note, i would usually exit a discussion when personal identities come into
play -- our discussions here have to be about the issues, not the people.
however, since i can see that your focus is still the issues, i'll continue.

> The Czar isn't really going to be needed to force IPv6 migration, he's going
> to be needed to force IPv4 off the Internet or we are going to see a huge
> growth of hacks to try to get both addressing to coexist, which is going to
> impact stability.

the internet would interpret that kind of force as damage and route around it.
the answer to "what will internet people do?" does not depend in any way on
government mandates.  there is no place for a Czar to sit.  i can think of
some monopoly-like players on the business side who could force something like
this through, if there was a business model for it involving lock-in revenue,
but for the rest of us, all we can do is build roads that go in our preferred
directions, and hope those roads are the ones more often taken.

> And if it gets bad enough, and the Internet gets unreliable enough, then the
> billionaires that run sites like Google will see it impact their bottom
> line, and call in the governments, who are going to take control.

if the billionaires want to protect their existing revenue streams without
also trying to lock in additional revenue, then they need to get going on
their own IPv6 transition, and build roads for others to do the same.  there
is no government who could mandate the end of IPv4, no matter who asked for
it or how many billions of dollars were involved.

> That is how it's worked in other industries where they tried "bottom up"
> solutions in the face of change.

sometimes the internet proceeds differently than any example or template that
the world knew before.  my bet is on us.