Why do we still need IPv4 when we are migrating to IPv6...

[Tore Anderson]

* Anfinsen, Ragnar

> On 12.02.15, 12.24, "Tore Anderson" <tore at fud.no> wrote:
> 
> >Can you really with a straight face today call your product «premium»,
> >when it lacks the IPv6 support at least two of your largest competitors
> >offer?
> 
> Keep in mind that end customers don't care about IP addresses but 
> services, and as long as CGN like technology reduces the service
> level.

That depends on the service used, doesn't it?

There's a non-zero amount of end customers who *do* care about IPv6.
After all, you do have a opt-in service which several thousand of your
customers did actually opt in to - so it would seem to me that several
thousands of your own customers disagree with your statement above.

In the same way, you in all likelihood have a non-zero amount of end
customers who do care about having a public IPv4 address all to
themselves. If you did make this an opt-in feature, I'm sure you'd have
many thousands of users opting in to that, too.

But if you flip it around, there's a non-zero amount of end customers
who do not care about neither having an exclusive public IPv4 address
nor about having IPv6. If I were to venture a guess, that group would
constitute the majority of your customers. Reclaiming those addresses
would likely allow you to postpone your next IPv4 purchase quite a
while, so I'd give that approach serious consideration if I were you.

Obviously if you do so, you'll also want to automatic provision those
users with IPv6 simultaneously, to reduce the chance that they will
actually notice anything and opt in to the public IPv4 service.

> As of today every service available on IPv6 is also available
> on IPv4, hence as long as one uses native IPv4 the service is what we
> call a Premium service.

Every service that's available over 4G mobile networks is available
over 3G as well, but even so you might have noticed how the Competition
Authority recently reprimanted the MVNO One Call for advertising their
3G-only service as being «equally good» as the (4G-capable) competition.

There's also now data that suggest that IPv6 has over the last few
years overtaken IPv4 as the performance leader, so even if you moderate
the «premium» claim to say that an IPv4-only is «equally good» as
dualstack, you'd still be on shaky ground. As an absolute minimum you
need feature parity with the competition before you can credibly claim
to have a «premium» service, IMHO.

http://www.slideshare.net/apnic/2014-0917v6performance-1410222276

Tore