[ppml] Policy Proposal: 2007-12 IPv4 Countdown Policy Proposal

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: James Jun [mailto:james at towardex.com]
>Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2007 1:15 AM
>To: 'Ted Mittelstaedt'; ppml at arin.net
>Subject: RE: [ppml] Policy Proposal: 2007-12 IPv4 Countdown Policy
>Proposal
>
>
>> When ARIN runs out of allocations then you will have a situation where
>> some carriers in the US will run out before others, and the problem will
>> propagate downwards to their ISP customers.  And eventually you will in
>> fact have situations were multiple ISP's in the same city, some will be
>> able to delay IPv6 switchover.  Very likely it will be the deep pocket
>> ISPs.  So a day will come when the poorer ISPs start telling their
>> customers they must switch to IPv6, and their customers, not wanting to
>> spend money, will simply drop service and go to the deep pocket ISPs
>> who have been able to delay IPv6 switchover, and get a few more years of
>> IPv4 service before they will finally be backed into a corner and will
>> have to spend money to switch over.
>
>
>I am puzzled by the notion that somehow end-users have to spend notable
>amount of money to get IPv6, when end-users often times spend money anyway
>to replace their computer and associated hardware, including home/SOHO
>routers as often as once every year if not even more often

I was not referring to home users there.  I was referring to your typical
4-40 person small business.  Some of these are in fact setup like home users
behind a cheap DSL router, etc. and get all their services from the ISP.
Others however have put thousands of bucks into software and licensing
and do not want to change.

Suppose I go to customer X that has 35 people on a Microsoft Small Business
Server.  SBS includes Exchange 2003 which is not IPv6 compliant.  Exchange
2007
is not IPv6 compliant either - although it will be after Service Pack 1 is
out
for it.  (the damn server product hasn't even shipped yet and they are
already
talking about what it's service pack will be like)  Exchange 2007 is not
projected to be in SBS for 2-3 more years meaning SBS will not be IPv6
compliant for several more years.  And it requires a 64 bit server.

The upshot is that I have to tell these guys if they want to update to IPv6
right now they have to chuck out their Microsoft server and all it's client
licenses and switchover to all Microsoft Enterprise stuff, buy a new 64 bit
server, and break every 3rd party application they have on the damn thing.

With the number of years that Microsoft stuff has to be on the market BEFORE
enough service packs and patches have been released for it to be usable in a
production network, we are looking at least 4-5 years out before you could
replace a Microsoft SBS 2003 server with a stable Microsoft SBS server that
supported IPv6.

Now, repeat for all the rest of your SOHO business customers.

 -- all
>as part of
>their routine home-entertainment/office-use technology upgrades.  IPv6 does
>not have to be a costly dedicated upgrade in everyone's annual household
>budget, or even for many small business budgets.

It isn't the home residential users.  We probably will put all -them-
behind an IPv4-IPv6 proxy NAT anyway.  It is the small businesses that
have gone down the Microsoft applications road.

These customers get sold a big bill of goods by Microsoft and then after
their budgets have been ruined and destroyed putting the stuff in and
paying people to get it to work right, they do not want to even discuss
the subject of replacing their MS servers for at least another 5 years.
We still have significant installed base of business customers using
Win 2K.  It takes 5-8 years for the memories of the horror and
pain to fade and be replaced by the usual Microsoft marketing claptrap
before they are ready to have their wallets liposuctioned again.  Thus,
if their dumb-ass ISP comes waddling in and announces 3 years after the
last forcable wallet rape that they are going to have to do it all over
again to support IPv6, the ISP will be found swinging from the nearest
tree.

>It can be gradually
>migrated into their existing annual spending budgets or next year
>budgets as
>part of everyone's routine technology upgrades.

Yes it can, but that market is nowhere near ready.  Give it another decade
and the IPv6 support will be slipstreamed into everything important.  But
not 3-4 years.

>Unless of course you are
>dealing with certain router vendors that charge extra $$ just for enabling
>IPv6 in your firmware/OS code :)  But the 'certain router vendors' problem
>hasn't occurred to end-user market yet to my knowledge, just within
>service-provider area (apparently it is already the carriers who are
>suffering the most with IPv6 mess, not the end-users and 'poor' ISPs who
>have not even enabled IPv6 yet).
>
>It is the *vendors*, the home CPE vendors, the software developers (major
>props to Microsoft for making Vista a lot more IPv6-friendly), the access
>ISPs/MSOs and content providers (youtube/Google, etc) that need to
>look into
>IPv6 to create a so-called "killer app" for the switch.  End-user's regular
>cycle of upgrading their computers and software will then
>automatically pick
>up IPv6 on their next upgrade.  All that is needed is a transition strategy
>at ISP level that would inter-operate the two protocols while the upgrades
>are taking place.
>

All those people are trying to find the killer app to get end users to start
buying television and movies on-demand, and to start buying software
on-demand.
They are not interested in writing a killer app for us to help IPv6.

>
>>
>> If you want all Interent service concentrated in the
>> AOL/Comcast/RoadRunners
>> of the world, then I guess you might be in favor of this happening.
>>
>> A published and advertised T-date can help to equalize things because
>> those who run short of IPv4 first, can use the published T-date to
>> help educate their customers that IPv6 is inevitable, and moving to
>> their competitor down the street that will not require them to switchover
>> to IPv6 yet, will not in the long run save them any money.
>
>
>
>The idea of equalizing things with a T-date unfortunately again further
>exacerbates the IPv4 problem.  Because with all due respect, in your
>perspective, it simply buys you more time and a shelter to keep reclaiming
>IPv4 again and again, just so your marketing department doesn't
>have to work
>to keep your products competitive.  You said it right there when
>replying to
>my suggestion to enable IPv6 in your network: you prefer to keep reclaiming
>IPv4 space.

competitive products are products that people want to buy.  I have not had
one single customer in the last 10 years ask for IPv6.  None of our
competitors are advertising IPv6 so I can only conclude none of their
customers have asked for it either.  So what work does our marketing
department need to do?

This has nothing to do with why we continue to reclaim our own internal
IPv4 space.  If we didn't reclaim space we would get space for our customers
by just getting more allocated.  Two different approaches to getting
IPv4 for the customers is all that is.  We chose the reclaim approach
because it is a more responsible approach.

Figure out a way to generate customer demand and interest.  I have already
- use of a T-date.  I know how successful that is with people, the global
warming people are using it very successful right now.  There is nothing
like a
fixed date to get people's attention.  And no I am not saying the T-date
needs to be 2007 or something that rediculous.  I have maintained from the
beginning that IPv4 reclamation must be done before setting a T-date.

>have little
>or nothing to do with it.  Remember that end-users are customers of
>Internet; they are the ones who should be getting the least inconvenience.
>

Customers that pay more will get less inconvenience.  That is always how
it has worked in the past and how it will work in the future.  Remember
that in this big Internet scheme thing we have going, the only money that
pays for anything comes from the end user customers.  If we need to update
things internally, the money to do that comes from them, not from us.
Nobody else but the customers puts money into what we are doing.

Yes, it is perhaps a sad thing that the customers will pay for our cock-up
of not designing IP large enough.  But in every other industry on the
planet, the customers pay for cock-ups in those industries as well.  They
always have the choice of not buying.

Ted