Last Chance Rush -- was "Five Security Flaws in IPv6"

[David Conrad]

Hi,

On May 10, 2007, at 11:46 PM, Carlos Friacas wrote:
> My view can be somewhat biased because i'm running dual-stack for  
> some years now........... but this "last chance rush" thing doesn't  
> clearly show anyone that the _public_ IPv4 Internet's GROWTH is  
> doomed ???

Well, the growth characteristics are definitely going to change.  I  
imagine folks who have legacy space that they aren't using will begin  
to see (or perhaps will be encouraged to see by folks calling them  
up) increased value in that space.  The implications here are:

- increased efficiency of IPv4 address space usage
- a flood of longer prefixes in the routing system
- migration of the black market for IPv4 to a grey market.

Should be "fun" to watch.

> Yesterday I've once more listenned to the "what can a small/mid- 
> sized company gain by going into IPv6?" question. For me the answer  
> is still "...a continuously growing Internet and potentially more  
> customers!", but this argument isn't really convincing the  
> majority. :-(

The problem is that it won't be _a_ continuously growing Internet,  
it'll be two Internets.  One that has growth limitations but the vast  
majority of content and the other that can grow much, much more, but  
has limited content, limited availability, and lots of teething pains  
and fragile portals into the other Internet.

> In the end, addressing is still an ISP issue. And if ISPs don't  
> push it, they will reach the point where they will have to explain  
> customer B that customer A has its public addresses, but customer B  
> will have to live only with NAT -- bad luck, the world can be  
> unfair now and then.

As should be readily apparent, the vast majority of customers, by and  
large, don't care.  If they did, ISPs would be beating down the RIR  
doors for IPv6 addresses and we wouldn't be having this discussion.   
What customers care about is the ability to reach the content they  
care about.  As long as that content overwhelming resides on IPv4,  
IPv6 is going to be a technogeek toy.

Rgds,
-drc