On killing IPv6 transition mechanisms

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

Jeroen Massar wrote:
> Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
> [..]
>> Most if not all the large content providers have multiple servers
>> behind a load balancer.
> 
> The problem is that with 6to4 the user generally does not even come to
> that point.
> 
> The google folks can tell you better what their motives are for not
> enabling IPv6 without the whitelist, but there
> 
> For that matter F5's BIG-IP boxes have been doing IPv6 already for
> several years and quite happily, ask the www.bit.nl folks and various
> others of their customers ;)
> 
> [..]
>> Dual-stacking the host is not needed to dual stack the site.
> 
> The problem with upgrading a site is not so much stuff an IPv6 enabled
> proxy/loadbalancer in front of it, the problem generally is the fact
> that folks tend to store those nasty things called IP addresses and that
> suddenly you have very long ones.
> 

And this is our problem?  As I said if a content provider wants to build
their network ass-backwards with hard-coded IP addresses buried in 
config files all over their servers, that's their right.  I doubt that
such sites would ever be enabling IPv6, though.  They will probably 
still be fighting it even with the entire Internet has switched.

>> Of course, I should not assume to tell content providers how to
>> run their businesses, if they want to do it the bass-ackwards way
>> that's their right. :-)
> 
> Backwards would be dedicating a pool of boxes and connecting them
> directly to the Internet while you can just use the same methods you
> already use for IPv4 just for IPv6...
> 

So I take it then you disagree with the claim that dual-stacking melts
down the latency?

> [..]
>>> (and no, not even I pretend that the above is scientific, but users
>>> shouldn't search for "disable ipv6" at all. ;-))
>> Only the "power" users are going to bother digging that out
> 
> Must be a lot of "power users" in this world then ;)
> Google/Bing/Yahoo! for it, there are lots of people who have problems
> with the fact that their OS of choice enables IPv6 per default and stuff
> start breaking due to either broken connectivity (6to4/Teredo) or even
> native being broken (though if the ISP turned it on, then heck they
> probably can fix it too ;) or broken DNS (which IHMO is a worse problem).
> 
> If you earn say a million a day, and you loose 0.01% of that, well, then
> you know how much money you are missing every year. And money hurts.
> 
> And do realize that Windows Vista/Seven come with IPv6 per default. XP
> can do it too. And more importantly: there are utilities (utorrent to
> name a famous one) who enable IPv6 per default et voila, you are broken.
> The user does not know, but they will notice.
> 
>> Unfortunately this is all part of educating the consumer about
>> what constitutes a decent ISP service and what doesn't.
> 
> Nothing to do with the consumer, they didn't do a thing.
> The ISP will get the complaints though that service X is unreachable.
> 

What it boils down to is laziness of the ISP.  The ISP can educate
their customers, fix their nameservers, and provide workarounds for
other idiots on the Internet who have botched their IPv6 rollouts.

Or they can be lazy-asses and find some quick hack to get their
customer off the phone.  (disable IPv6 on the workstation, perhaps?)

>> The fact of the matter though is that it really only matters
>> to get the center of the bell-curve users on IPv6.  Once that
>> happens the power users will have to get on it also.
> 
> True power users know what they do, they don't have issues.
>

That's why I quoted "power users" :-)

Ted


> Greets,
>  Jeroen
>