Operational challenges of no NAT

[George Bonser]

> >
> > That is because the only thing v6 offers is "more IP addresses". It
> > greatly complicates things for no additional benefit from the
> > perspective of many end users.  Now if there were some new
technology
> > that could only be supported on v6 and there was some great clamor
> for
> > that technology, that would act to pull v6 into the network.  There
> are
> > no such technologies or applications at present.
> 
> I doubt that there will be, the days of the networking industry being
> driven by that sort of thing have been gone for some time.  Even the
> iphone for all it's coolness, has not caused the majority of cell
phone
> owners to run into the store and upgrade their phones.

Well, there are SOME cases where it is compelling and a network
technology is dragged in.  An example is multicast which never really
lived up to its potential.  It was designed to save bandwidth when that
was at a premium.  You send one copy of something, and many people get
it at the same time.  Then available bandwidth skyrocketed and it sort
of just died.  Now it is making a comeback in the mobile networks where
many users might be subscribed to the same content at the same time and
bandwidth IS tight.  Verizon's VCAST is an example and multicast
capability is a big part of the 3G and 4G standards.

> But what there WILL be are the millions of NEW Internet users who get
> on with only IPv6, and some kind of IPv6->IPv4 translator to get at
> the legacy stuff.  That is already driving the content providers to
get
> on IPv6.

To some extent, yes.  But the number of unique ASNs in the v6 routing
table is still pretty small and the number that actually offer any v6
service even though they are routing v6 is even smaller.  If you take
the people who are just routing v6 out of that number, what you are left
with is something pretty small.

 
> 
> When Sally Schmoe the Marketing Manager throws her old home laptop to
> the kids and buys a brand new one that speaks IPv6 out of the box
> to her home DSL line, it will not be long before she is in the network
> admin's office demanding to know why this cool app that is IPv6 only
> that works great at home isn't working on the company network.

If the network admin works for the marketing manager, yeah, that might
be a big deal.  Otherwise she needs to go up the chain and justify to
corporate management why her app working at work is worth the company
engaging on a migration scheme "right now" to make it work.

> 
> She won't give a tinkers damn that it's because the corporate network
> admin is going slow on IPv6 deployment, in 2 shakes she's going to be
> in the CEO's office peeing in his ear about how incompetent the
network
> people are if you don't have something for her.

Most network administrators WANT to deploy v6.  They aren't the one
holding up the train.  It is management who might not want to shell out
money to replace those old network switches/routers that were end of
life 5 years ago from the vendor, are being "supported" by buying used
replacement parts as they fail, and have no code updates anymore to take
them to v6 but work perfectly well for IPv4.  

 
> At least, that's how it's always worked in the orgs -I'VE- worked at.

Maybe so, but YOU'RE experience doesn't necessarily project across the
entire scope of network administrators internet wide.   How many
Cat6500's are deployed worldwide with old SupI and SupII blades and not
even enough RAM to upgrade to the last code release available on them?
I am not even going to start into the Cat4000's or PIX firewalls. How
many of those companies are barely operating at a profit as it is or are
losing money currently?  Would such an effort literally cost a job in
not being able to hire someone this quarter or year because you have to
get a few hundred thousand dollars worth of network gear?

It isn't *just* a technical decision in many cases.  It is also a
business case call.  There is a LOT of old crap still running out there
and doing a perfectly acceptable job.  You have to have a case that
justifies spending the money in addition to having a technical argument
and in this economy, you need more justification that normal, at least
in the US. 

> 
> It will come, just wait and see.  Have faith.

Ted, this isn't a religion.  Religious arguments are matters of faith
with no room for logical discussion as they are simply based on faith.
Those are fine in matters of culture but that doesn't translate well to
matters of technology.

There needs to be a way to interoperate with v6 that isn't "painful".
In the analogy you presented, which is easier, getting the CFO to
refresh all the network hardware or getting the developer of the program
to release an IPv4 version?  The developer's decision not to do that
might be one of personal preference.  The CFO's decision might be one of
actual dollars and cents.  You might be able to persuade the developer
to accommodate v4 more easily than you can persuade the bank to
accommodate an overdraft.

The point is that the obstacles to more widely deployed v6 are more than
technical or competency issues.  There are all sorts of infrastructure
considerations.