IPv6 Ignorance

[Tim Densmore]

Hi Thorsten,

On 10/5/2012 4:03 AM, Thorsten Dahm wrote:
> I completely understand your situation. And I know that you can't do 
> much about it.

So things are clear, I was just using cost as an example.  We *are* 
deploying IPv6, but not using slaac for anything yet.  How we get v6 to 
small customer CPE is still not decided, so we'll have to work that out 
down the road.  I'm obviously still "just getting my feet wet" but I'm 
working towards 100% IPv6 availability.

>
> Simple example: If I come to you as a small company and want from you 
> connectivity and a /24 for my servers, office and so on. And you have 
> to tell me that you don't have a /24 anymore and you also can't offer 
> me IPv6. But the next company is offering me IPv6, maybe a special 
> service contract to set up my router initally and such. You may can 
> keep existing customers, but it will be hard to get new ones. And to 
> keep the old ones, because they may ask for something else sooner or 
> later as well.

Forgive me if I'm missing something obvious here, but assuming I only 
have basic dual-stack connectivity available, how much value is even a 
/48 going to be to a customer who wants to collo servers? Making the 
assumption that the customer wants these servers in place for internet 
facing services, what percentage of the internet connected hosts would 
be able to reach that service at this point in time?  I don't have 
nat64/dns64 setup yet, and honestly am not sure that it's the direction 
I want to go.

Using my own internet connection as an example, if I turn off IPv4, I 
can reach almost nothing via a browser, and I don't think it's much of a 
stretch to say that most people think email+browser=internet.  Dual 
stack, I reach some services via v6, like google and youtube and cisco 
pages, but most of them seem to be sort of half-baked v6.  So, bringing 
this back around to your point, how does a v6 only connection help this 
hypothetical customer?  Or is the assumption that we'd give them, say, a 
v4 /29 and a v6 /48 and have them do their own nat64 or whatever?

>
> Again, I can understand your point. And you can argue that you don't 
> need IPv6 in 2012 to run your business. But what's about 2020? 2025? 
> 2050? As long as your company has a long-term plan, like "we will 
> switch to IPv6 between 2025 and 2028, before that IPv4 only is 
> sufficient", that's good enough. If it works out that way or not is a 
> bet, nobody knows, since we can't go to the future and check what 
> happened. I just know that I wouldn't put too much of my money into 
> this bet.

Well, my argument isn't exactly that IPv6 isn't needed, only that I have 
seen significant resistance to spending money and very little desire for 
the product itself.  Add to that the fact that, for most people at 
least, IPv6 doesn't allow them access to anything they want that they 
don't already have, and I can understand why there's not more uptake.  
In terms of supply and demand, there's very limited of supply (I'm only 
seeing around 10k IPv6 BGP routes in my routing table, and I'd estimate 
2 or 3 percent of websites I visit are "IPV6" according to sixornot), 
and basically zero demand. Again, IMO/IME, I don't mean to speak in 
absolutes here at all.

I hope this changes, but I can't see the often referenced "IPv6 killer 
app" scenario panning out.  What company in their right mind would 
purposely limit their exposure in the marketplace?  Again, I'll be 
delighted if I'm proven wrong, but IME so far, money talks, technical 
purity walks.

>
> cheers,
> Thorsten
>
Thanks for you input!

TD

TD