[arin-ppml] IPv4 is depleted today - unrealistic statements about IPv6 inevitability

[Robin Whittle]

I think this is completely unrealistic:

Michael Dillon wrote:

>> I don't have to; IPv6 was built into our requirements for our 
>> last tech refresh,
> 
>> Probably not as a separate project, but if your not doing a 
>> tech refresh in the next 2 years or so why didn't you include 
>> IPv6 in your last tech refresh?  The writing was on the wall.
> 
> That is a darn good question and one which I expect stock market
> analysts to be asking before the year is out. Apparently in some
> large publicly traded companies, management screwed up and did
> not include IPv6 in their technology refresh other than as an 
> afterthought. Those companies are going to have very tough times
> in two to three years, their share values will plummet, and their
> customers will suffer as well.
> 
> If this is the case, then it is better for all of us if market analysts
> ask the tough questions now and spur senior management into
> incorporating IPv6 into the company's survival plan. There is still 
> enough time for these companies to avoid financial disaster
> and shareholder lawsuits if they act soon.

IPv6 isn't much use to anyone right now, because almost no-one else
is using it

http://www.potaroo.net/presentations/2008-08-21-ipv6-failure.pdf
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2328258,00.asp
http://asert.arbornetworks.com/2008/8/the-end-is-near-but-is-ipv6/

and since there is still so much software and hardware which doesn't
work with it.  IPv6 doesn't enable ordinary end-users to do anything
of value they can't already do with IPv4.

The shortage of previously unallocated address space in IPv4 will
just mean that people get smarter about using the available space.

The IPv4 Internet works.  It is what everyone uses.

Virtually no-one uses the IPv6 Internet.  (Traffic is ~0.00002 of
IPv4's traffic.)  It is a separate Internet and is not compatible
with the IPv4 Internet in terms of being able to do what people want
to do while only having an IPv6 address.

The IPv4 Internet works OK right now and this won't change as it
gets a bit trickier to find address space over the next five or ten
years.

What I wrote about IPv6 will take an awfully long time to change:

  It is a separate, incompatible, Internet from IPv4.

  No-one uses it much.

  There is way too much hardware and software which doesn't
  work with it to consider abandoning IPv4.

I think it is wildly unrealistic to talk about companies failing due
to not having IPv6.

This imminent doomsday stuff about IPv4 address depletion is even
less credible than Y2K scaremongering.


For more on why it is hard or impossible to get ordinary domestic
and office DSL/DOCSIS end-users away from having their own IPv4
address, please search for "Dual Stack Lite" (Comcast's proposal for
having a bunch of DSL/DOCSIS customers on a single IPv4 NAT public
address) in the IRTF Routing Research Group list:
http://psg.com/lists/rrg/2008/maillist.html

To see my approach to making IPv4 and IPv6 more scalable, whilst
also enabling much finer slicing and dicing of IPv4 space, so space
can be better utilized . . . and a new approach to global mobility
for IPv4 and IPv6:

  http://www.firstpr.com.au/ip/ivip/

  - Robin