[ipv6-ops] Re: So why is "IPv4 with longer addresses" a problem anyway?

[Mark Smith]

On Wed, 26 May 2010 11:45:32 -0700
Aaron Hughes <aaronh at bind.com> wrote:

> Doug,
> 
> - Survivability
> - End to end reachability
> - Guaranteed uniqueness
> - Some added security (everyone will be forced to address security without NAT in place)
> - IPv4 space will become very expensive post RIR exhaustion.
> - IPv6 allows for longer term architecture (allocations and assignment) planning.
> - Filtering is easier
> - Regional aggregation is easier
> - TE (Traffic Engineering) is easier
> - You will likely never haver to go back to your provider or registry for more IP resources.
> - Today, IPv6 transit is free -> $inexpensive
> - When the day comes (first IPv6 only reachable content/eyeballs come online, you will reach them.
> - Client / eyeball / content analysis gives more accurate data
> - From the end user perspective, real IP addresses for all objects. (no more pay for or small subs)
> 
> While this is a list of perfectly justifiable reasons, the key factor to selling this to your clients is survivability. This will cost money, it will take time, it will cause problems while migrating, but must be done. We don't run IPX/SPX,

IMHO, if the Internet was running IPX (32 bit network number, 48 bit
node address), we'd still be running it, and wouldn't now have the
problem of running out of addresses. It had nearly all the features IPv6
has, and it had them in the early 90s. I think one of the major reasons
it didn't survive because IPv4 is what the Internet runs. Having
personally gone from virtually not learning IPX and working with it
quite successfully, to then learning IPv4 and all it's quirks like
classes, subnet masks, prefix lengths etc., it seems to me that being
connected to the Internet was more important to people than the
protocol that operated it and it's drawbacks and complexities. I think
people also, sometimes very slowly, tend towards efficiency. Once IP was
deployed in people's networks, and there was no chance of getting rid
of it (because of this Internet thing), if IP could replace IPX it was
inevitably going to.

One of the things I like about IPv6 is that if people deploy it right,
and don't choose to make that deployment as complicated as they could,
we'll have back the 1990s (and earlier) simplicity in networking that
protocols like IPX and Appletalk provided. 

> AppleTalk, thin net, X.25, Windows 3.1(tcpman.exe), etc anymore
 because the technology is no longer good enough. IPv4 is no longer
 good enough for us either as the resource will simply run out. This
 run-out has many significant impacts to our costs, routing
 infrastructure, tracking abilities, etc and will have to be addressed
 (pardon the pun) sooner or later. The later we embrace, the more it
 costs us over the long term.
> 
> Hope this is helpful.
> 
> Cheers,
> Aaron
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 07:31:08PM +0100, Andy Davidson wrote:
> > 
> > On 24 May 2010, at 20:50, Doug Barton wrote:
> > 
> > > So my question is, other than longer addresses, what are the benefits to IPv6 that I can point clients to which will help them justify the expense of the upgrade?
> > 
> > For me, it's that one day, we'll get to bin the v4 swamp.
> > 
> > Andy
> > 
> > 
> 
> -- 
> 
> Aaron Hughes 
> aaronh at bind.com
> +1-831-824-4161
> Key fingerprint = AD 67 37 60 7D 73 C5 B7 33 18 3F 36 C3 1C C6 B8
> http://www.bind.com/