[arin-ppml] IPv4 Depletion as an ARIN policy concern

[Lee Howard]

----- Original Message ----

> From: William Herrin <bill at herrin.us>
> To: "arin-ppml at arin.net" <arin-ppml at arin.net>
> Sent: Fri, October 30, 2009 2:07:32 PM
> Subject: Re: [arin-ppml] IPv4 Depletion as an ARIN policy concern
> 
> On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 12:23 PM, Lee Howard wrote:
> > I agree, 6to4 is in many cases poorly implemented, as are many of the
> > other tunnel solutions.  Google's response is to return AAAAs only if
> > they have pretty high confidence that the client will have native IPv6.
> 
> Hi Lee,
> 
> That's an option I look forward to seeing in the bind9 documentation.
> But while that helps me, it does little for the plethora of server
> operators who don't host their own DNS and have only weak control over
> the folks who do.

Many of them also don't host their own web servers, so the hosting company
will handle the migration.

> > Right.  If you don't have IPv6 connectivity, then you can't connect via
> > IPv6.  This is not unique to IPv6.  I should have included a Step 0: get
> > good IPv6 transit.
> 
> Rhetorical question: is it presently possible to get "good" IPv6
> transit for the same standard of "good" as is available for IPv4
> transit? The answer, of course, is no.
>
> Should IPv6 transport quality ever reach parity with IPv4 transit
> quality then naturally my objections would fade. But declaring it "as
> good" doesn't make it so and right now it isn't even close enough for
> the difference to be subtle.

Sounds like there may be some dollars to be waived under the noses
of some transit providers.  "Give me production-grade IPv6 transit
or my IPv6 bits go elsewhere."


> At any rate, I'm not trying to argue with you. I'm just explaining
> some of the reasons why I stopped my IPv6 deployment work after the
> "experimental, figure out how this thing actually works and take it
> for a test drive" phase.

You know, if you have plans for how to implement IPv6 when you
think it's safe, that's pretty good.  I wish you would help with the 
things that cause you concern (talk to your transit providers, and 
use the AAAA-for-IPv6-only feature).  Maybe in six months, 
conditions will have changed enough for you not to worry.
 
> >> Or, of course, if a substantial enough deployment of IPv6-only users
> >> goes forward despite my own reluctance.
> >
> > Or maybe if your servers run an app that doesn't like multiple layers
> > of NAT?
> 
> My services are NAT-tolerant. Long since passed the point where
> systems that don't play well with NAT can be considered reliable.

Sure, everything can hack around home gateway NAT, but some of
those hacks assume only a single layer.  Question born of ignorance:
can you track unique web views if thousands of users are behind a
single IPv4 address?  It might not be an issue for your servers, but
many websites use that as their primary metric for selling ads, don't
they?

Lee