[arin-ppml] Draft Policy ARIN-2019-19: Require IPv6 Before Receiving Section 8 IPv4 Transfers

[Owen DeLong]

> On Nov 14, 2019, at 20:14 , Michel Py <michel at arneill-py.sacramento.ca.us> wrote:
> 
> Hi Owen,
> 
>> Owen DeLong wrote :
>> You seem to be assuming he’s in the internet business. He made it pretty clear he’s talking from
>> the enterprise perspective where the internet isn’t the revenue generating portion of the business,
>> but merely one of the many tools used by the business to accomplish its revenue goals.
> 
> Indeed. The Internet is not the same thing as the Internet business. There is no Internet without customers. Some customers, such as the mobile market and the low-end residential market can be forced into IPv6 because they control nothing, but the enterprise market is not subject to this. The enterprise adoption is a trickle, for reasons I have explained publicly for years.
> 
> I'm sorry to say it bluntly, but the enterprise business is about making money, not saving the world from an impending doom that has not happened. I say it again : the problem of IPv6 is that it is a solution to a problem that I do not have.

Well… More accurately, it is a solution to a problem that you feel it is better to live with than to solve. In short, you feel that the barriers to implementing the cure are worse than living with the symptoms of the disease.

Like or to, the need for NAT is a problem at least most enterprises have. The fact that we have an entire generation of engineers who have grown up not understanding the advantages of end-to-end addressing (and don’t understand that stateful inspection is a dependency for NAT, but can be implemented without header mutilation) further complicates the recognition of this problem, but you and I are both old enough to remember an IPv4 internet with transparent addressing and the benefits thereof.

Making matters worse, enterprises failing to deploy IPv6 enjoy all of the advantages of the toxic polluter business model. The costs of their refusal to move forward with the rest of the internet are borne not by those making said refusal, but pushed off on those sharing the internet with them who cannot complete their transitions so long as there is a critical mass of enterprises holding back progress.

> 6 years ago, you thought that I was full of it. We had a couple beers and you respectfully dismissed me as an IPv4-only crackpot.

Oh, I still think you’re full of it to some extent. I don’t think I dismissed you as a crackpot so much as we respectfully agreed to disagree on several areas. I think little has changed in the intervening years.

> With you, I do not seek revenge. You are a formidable opponent and I respect you as such, but look back in the past.

From my perspective, there is nothing to seek revenge for. I don’t see you as an opponent so much as just someone with a differing opinion and operating on a different time line.

You feel that the self-serving advantages of delaying IPv6 deployment in your environment outweigh the broader public interest advantages of proceeding to a point where IPv4 deprecation can begin. From a purely Ayn Rand/Gordon Gecko oriented perspective, this is one available philosophy. It’s the same mentality that will likely lead to human extinction through global climate change… It’s the attitude that a business should first and foremost maximize profit above any other concern.

It’s not a philosophy I embrace. Does a business have an obligation to make a profit? Certainly. Does a business have other duties besides maximizing profit? IMHO, yes. IMHO, a business has a responsibility to the community(ies) in which it operates. It has an obligation not to dump toxins into the local rivers for those living downstream to deal with. It has an obligation not to partially offload the payment of its employees onto the taxpayers (a la a certain large well known chain of stores). It has an obligation to function as a supportive member of the community providing a general benefit to the community and not act as a parasite consuming the community in question.

> 6 years ago, when we shared a couple beers on stage. I told you so. You did not listen. You were wrong.

This will likely not surprise you, but I disagree. Even then, I agreed that enterprises would likely be the last class of laggards procrastinating the deployment of IPv6.

You say that this procrastination will likely continue indefinitely. I feel that its days are numbered. Not as short as I’d like to see, but I believe sooner than you expect.

>> I disagree with Michel in a number of areas. He and I have had frank discussions about this.
>> However, the points he raises are legitimate and we ignore or dismiss them at our peril.
> 
> I am glad you realize the peril part of it. 6 years ago, you never thought I would be challenging you publicly on this. 6 years ago, you would not even have considered the possibility that we would have this talk on this mailing list.

Actually, I am not at all surprised to see you still publicly challenging me on this. I may not have predicted 6 years ago that it would be you, but I fully expected some contingent of IPv6 opponents would still exist in the enterprise realm and that this discussion would still be ongoing.

> There is one more thing you should realize about enterprise business : they like people who have been steady in predicting the future.
> I'm on track.

Meh… I’m fond of the saying that Prior Performance does NOT guarantee Future Results.

The nice thing about the enterprise world is that no enterprise is for ever and new ones come to life every day. There is a time coming in the not too distant future where deploying a new enterprise without IPv6 will seem as silly as deploying one without IPv4 today.

At that point, then it’s just a matter of time before a combination of ever increasing quantities of new enterprises combined with attrition of old ones shifts the dynamic.

Things may move slower that many of us would like because of the drag induced by people who share your mindset, but, nonetheless, time is on the side of those of us who believe IPv6 will eventually replace most of the current IPv4 utilization on the internet.

Eventually (assuming we manage not to go extinct due to climate change in the meantime), we will get there. The question is will we ever realize the wisdom of ripping off the bandage, or, will we continue to peel at the edges making a slightly lower level of pain last for a much much longer time period. Personally, I prefer a shorter period of slightly more significant disruption. You obviously prefer to endure a prolonged period of pain (or denial about pain in your case).

Owen