[arin-ppml] IPv6 Heretic thoughts

[Paul Vixie]

dwhite at olp.net (Dan White) writes:

> In my personal point of view, I see these lines of thoughts following two
> general strains. Let me summarize by offering a case that I expect to
> occur in the next couple of years:
>
> Let's suppose that someone at a hosting company decides to offer a
> service that is IPv6 only. Perhaps the host is dual stack or maybe it
> isn't, but the admin of that host decided that it would be best to offer
> a service that is only reachable over IPv6. Perhaps it's a gaming
> service, or a SIP server or something else.
>
> Suppose that one of my customers comes to me and complains that they are
> unable to use this service. They keep getting an error. The reason is
> that they do not have (native) IPv6 service.
>
> Who's at fault in this scenario?

by definition: whoever loses, or fails to make, the most money as a result
of their actions or inactions.  there's no higher court for a network owner
than that, since you spoke in terms of customers and their complaints.

> It's easy to say that it's the host admin. Why would he enable IPv6 when 
> not everyone can reach it? Doesn't he know he's going to cause a lot of 
> support calls for other admins?

i think you mean "offer an ipv6-only service" (which you said above) rather
than "enable ipv6".  all of the hosts i use regularly have been dual stack
for years, and other than the times ipv4 is down and i can only reach ipv6
endpoints, i've neither made nor received support calls as a result of it.

> The other point of view is that no one is to blame in this scenario 
> except me, since I have not given my customers access to IPv6. I didn't 
> do the heavy lifting up front or properly prepare for future demand. My 
> customer, who really likes that game, is free to find another ISP who 
> will give them that access.
>
> IPv6 will not (and has not) deployed as all or nothing, but piecemeal as 
> it should. It would be insanity to do otherwise.

i agree with that last statement, which is why i think everybody ought to be
running dual-stack, while there are still greenfield ipv4's to do it with.
the time will come when various providers will offer only "native ipv6 plus
NAT'd ipv4" and this will be the moment when your own customers will wish
that you could offer them dual-stack.
-- 
Paul Vixie