Yesterday's Windows update causes IPv4 to be default

[Doug Barton]

On 11/20/2012 6:04 PM, Lorenzo Colitti wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 10:54 AM, Doug Barton <dougb at dougbarton.us
> <mailto:dougb at dougbarton.us>> wrote:
>
>     Oh c'mon, that's just silly. The intermittent problems are almost
>     certainly not the fault of the content end of the system, they are
>     almost certainly on the user end, or somewhere in between.
>
>
> Correct. In case it wasn't clear, what I meant was:
>
>   * If you're an ISP, don't provision the user with an IPv6 address and
>     default route if you're not prepared to give them an appropriate
>     level of service.
>   * Similarly, if you're a website operator, don't give a website an
>     AAAA record if you're not prepared to make it sufficiently reliable.
>
> That is - if you're deploying IPv6, do it properly. Don't deploy
> unreliable IPv6 "because it's the responsibility of the hosts to avoid
> stuff that doesn't work".

Ok, on that much we agree. :)

>     We have to be able to deal rationally with the issue of the IPv4
>     network having a high degree of reliability and familiarity vs. the
>     IPv6 network which by comparison has neither. Otherwise we've
>     removed the motivation from both sides of the network to deploy it.
>
>
> I disagree. If we do this, we will be permanently increasing the
> complexity of hosts just so we can work around a temporary problem
> (immature IPv6 deployments and implementations).
>
> Happy eyeballs is a useful crutch to get us over the initial bump of
> IPv6 transition, but it's very much a double-edged sword. Relying on it
> has long-term implementations for the complexity of the Internet
> architecture, and that is IMO the wrong tradeoff..

... and with this perspective I sympathize, but I think the reality is 
that we are going to have wacky IPv6 connectivity problems well into the 
next decade, during the long ramp-up of knowledge and experience on both 
sides of the network. We are also going to continue to see reluctance on 
both sides if the hosts/apps are not robust enough to handle said wacky 
networks without significant degradation to the user experience.

Regardless of what we think it _should_ be, solving this problem is 
incredibly important to the long-term success of IPv6.

Doug