[ppml] IPv6 flawed?

[Michel Py]

> David Conrad wrote:
> I'm beginning to believe that IPv6 as it exists is so flawed and
> the business/economic/political factors are such that in the end,
> [...]

Please do not confuse IPv6 with the business/economic/political factors.
The protocol suite itself, while certainly not perfect, is not what I
call flawed. Yes, there are many things associated with it that are
indeed flawed, but not IPv6 itself. There are several technical aspects
that I do not agree with, or would not have designed the same way
though.

The main issues associated with IPv6 are:

- It was designed as a protocol (with heavy input from protocol purity
zealots), not as a product. Very large numbers within the IETF crowd is
outright stupid about economic issues. They still live in an ivory tower
where (for example) Unix and MacIntosh are the only acceptable ways,
while the rest of the world is running windblows from the evil empire.

- It never delivered initial promises, such as aggregation (the "8K
DFZ"). In their great wisdom, the IETF pushed the protocol out with the
promise that they will deliver the missing features (such as multihoming
and effortless renumbering) later. Problem, nobody figured it out.

- As it turned out down the road, the multiple-addresses-per-host are
too much of an administrative overhead.


So we're in a situation where the only remaining real reason to upgrade
to IPv6 is IPv4 address space exhaustion, while IPv6 still does not have
hugely popular features such as NAT and no equivalent either.

Technically, I consider NAT more flawed than IPv6. Nevertheless, NAT has
addressed market needs, while IPv6 is a solution without a market.

Michel.