[ppml] Proposed Policy: IPv4 Countdown

[michael.dillon at bt.com]

> What I am hearing and experiencing is that this isn't happening.
> 
> No one has a goal of using IPv6.  I've never gotten a budget request 
> approved "just to update the technology."

You probably don't even know that it is happening. Did you get budget
approval for your business case to upgrade some routers to Cisco
7206VXRs? If so, you have just upgraded to IPv6-capable technology. Same
thing goes for Windows 2k servers. Or Mac OS/X desktops/laptops. The
capability has been spreading for a while. You may not have IPv6
installed, or if installed it may not be enabled, but dealing with that
issue is a lot cheaper and easier than a forklift upgrade.

> It has been said that it is human nature to only respond when it's an 
> emergency. 

And when they panic and ask the technical people if they really are
doomed, the techies will say, "Nah, we just need to install a software
patch and do some network integration testing. Won't cost more than 10%
extra on this year's budget.".

> There isn't an "English" Internet or a "French" Internet. 

When was the last time you did a search at www.rambler.ru ? Or needed to
find out how to get an Austrian visa for a resident of Ukraine
http://www.ukremb.at/ ? There is a HUGE section of the Internet where
the users (people who do web, IM and email) never use English, don't
need to use English, and don't even know any English beyond a few words
learned in school.

> Besides 
> that goal of  One Internet, the language of business is 
> international.   There may be a center for a language, but the 
> Internet is a tool for global commerce too, not just expatriate clubs.

That global commerce happens in Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Spanish and
many other languages. English is not nearly as dominant as it seems.
There are huge sections of the Internet (and global commerce) that
unilingual English-speaking people are not aware of (or completely
misunderstand) because they don't speak the languages. If China decided
to use pure IPv6 for Internet broadband access services, most English
speaking people wouldn't even notice, because English-unilinguals and
Chinese unilinguals have no reason to communicate with each other.
Therefore, English unilinguals do not go to Chinese sites and Chinese
unilinguals never go to English sites. It is no accident that Korea and
Japan are the two countries with the biggest uptake of IPv6 including
for consumer connectivity.

--Michael Dillon