[ppml] The Choice: IPv4 Exhaustion or Transition to IPv6

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

This is a very useful document to hand off to a manager that doesen't know
shit from shinola about networking, but it is not really a technical
document.

The biggest glaring problems I see with it is the document makes an
assumption that Peer to Peer is a Good Thing that everbody wants,
and it completely ignores the desire of end user consumers to be
provider-independent.

Your average business owner does not want peer to peer.  He does not
want his employees running instant messaging, or online gaming or
file sharing or any of that.  He likes NAT devices because they make it
harder for those applications to run.  And the newer NAT devices on
the market are getting more and more unfriendly to those protocols.
Right now Cisco has put in protocol blocking for AIM, ICQ, IRC and a
bunch of other of those protocols into it's high-end IOS.  It works
by examining the packets themselves so setting the AIM client to use
port 80 to find an AIM server so as to sidestep the blocks is useless.
It will only be a matter of time before you will see this technology
appear in the low-end Cisco AKA Linksys gear that sells for under $300.

Secondly, your average business owner does not want to have the IP
handcuffs on him.  If he gets pissed off at his ISP he wants the
ability to call another ISP competitor and move his connection to
the competitor without the expense of renumbering his internal network.

In the United States today, the market for networking gear sold to
the SOHO under-100 employee firms EXCEEDS the dollar value of the
market for networking gear sold to the traditional enterprise.  Intel
has been studying this market for years and they saw the SOHO
exceed the enterprise sometime back in 1998 (I do not know if Intel
ever declassified these marketing studies but I know they exist)
that is why they got into that market.  A lot of other networking
firms that kept focusing on the enterprise (can you say Bay Networks,
Cabletron, etc.) went bankrupt.

It is of course, true that large enterprises with 1000's of desktops
will want to be multihomed and thus will want to get their own AS
and own portable numbering, and thus are very interested in the IPv6
issues.  But they are a market minority.  The majority of businesses
are not like this and even if all ISP's switch over to IPv6 and
all business do likewise, your still going to see a very large demand
for NAT devices.  Even if they are nothing more than 1:1 IPv6
translators.

If you could rework the document to include this issue it might be
usable to a much wider audience.

Ted

>-----Original Message-----
>From: ppml-bounces at arin.net [mailto:ppml-bounces at arin.net]On Behalf Of
>JORDI PALET MARTINEZ
>Sent: Wednesday, June 27, 2007 12:03 PM
>To: ppml at arin.net
>Subject: [ppml] The Choice: IPv4 Exhaustion or Transition to IPv6
>
>
>Hi all,
>
>I've published a document trying to analyze the IPv4 exhaustion problem and
>what is ahead of us, considering among others, changes in policies.
>
>http://www.ipv6tf.org/index.php?page=news/newsroom&id=3004
>
>I guess this could be useful in order to understand possible
>implications of
>modifying existing policies, or setting up new ones, or even just to create
>some debate about those changes.
>
>The document was completed last April, but didn't had the time to tidy up
>until a few days ago.
>
>Regards,
>Jordi
>
>
>
>
>
>
>**********************************************
>The IPv6 Portal: http://www.ipv6tf.org
>
>Bye 6Bone. Hi, IPv6 !
>http://www.ipv6day.org
>
>This electronic message contains information which may be
>privileged or confidential. The information is intended to be for
>the use of the individual(s) named above. If you are not the
>intended recipient be aware that any disclosure, copying,
>distribution or use of the contents of this information, including
>attached files, is prohibited.
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>This message sent to you through the ARIN Public Policy Mailing List
>(PPML at arin.net).
>Manage your mailing list subscription at:
>http://lists.arin.net/mailman/listinfo/ppml
>