Subject: Re: Why IPv6 is a must?

From: Thomas Narten <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2001 14:40:23 -0500

"J. Noel Chiappa" <[email-masked]> writes:

>     > From: TOMSON ERIC <[email-masked]>

>     > do you really think that the IETF people (et al.) built IPv6 without a
>     > preliminary good consideration?

> There are a lot of people in the IETF who think exactly that,
> actually.

And there are a lot of other people that don't.

> (This message coming to you via the NAT box I bought in the hole-in-the-wall
> computer store in the little strip mall right down the street, here in
> Podunksville.

Lucky you.

If I had a NAT box at home, and I tried to connect to my corporate
network through it, I would quickly learn two things:

1) It doesn't work (it's an IPsec based solution)

2) If I then called the Help Desk, their response would be "we don't
   support that configuration".

YMMV.

Thomas

---

From: "Rinka Singh" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2001 19:20:06 +0530

That's right today.

Another 5 years later you would be singing a different tune. - scalability,
better bandwidth management (a.k.a QOS), mobile devices, internet appliances
will nail v4 down - UMTS will add some spice to the pot.  I agree a user
cannot do much unless the ISPs and Org routers/switches deploy v6.  But
that's not too far away as more sophisticated uses come up.

Incidentally, have you tried running apps like ftp over IPsec or L2TP/PPTP
over NAT.

Rinka.
----- Original Message -----
From: "J. Noel Chiappa" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2001 12:38 AM
Subject: RE: Why IPv6 is a must?

> There are a lot of people in the IETF who think exactly that, actually.
>
> Podunksville. Just for grins, I should have asked them if they had any
> IPv6... I wonder what the ratio of NAT sales volume is to IPv6, and how
> much profit people have made off the former, as opposed to the latter.
> Not that I like NAT, I don't.)
>
> Noel
>

---

From: Hans Kruse <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 06 Nov 2001 09:37:45 -0500

The discrepancy in opinions below seems to me to point towards the
deployment path for IPv6.  Corporate users and those with very large
address space needs (wireless handhelds) will deploy IPv6 and in effect
"pay" for the engineering cost of building IPv6 into operating systems and
network elements.  Once the costs come down, home users, small businesses,
and their ISPs will follow.

(Note that I do think IPv6 is inevitable and that is a Good Thing;  I also
think that it is unrealistic to expect the low-end/cost-driven user to jump
into the conversion;  telling them their (temporary) solution is "evil"
does not make them move any faster).

--On Monday, November 05, 2001 14:40 -0500 Thomas Narten
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>> (This message coming to you via the NAT box I bought in the
>> hole-in-the-wall computer store in the little strip mall right down the
>> street, here in Podunksville.
>
> Lucky you.
>

Hans Kruse, Associate Professor
J. Warren McClure School of Communication Systems Management
Ohio University, Athens, OH, 45701
740-593-4891 voice, 740-593-4889 fax

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 06 Nov 2001 23:17:09 -0500

> and their ISPs will follow.

Actually, the engineering cost of building IPv6 into operating systems
is already essentially paid.  The cost of building it into routers and the like
is paid.  The vendors are all (basically) IPv6-ready.

What has NOT been paid is the deployment cost, which has several very
distinct components.  

First is the cost of obtaining a release of your operating system
that supports IPv6 (which can vary anywhere from free to low-cost to
exhorbitant, depending on your vendor's business model, and whether
you're already running an IPv6-capable version for other reasons).

Second is the cost of installing that release - which can get complicated
if this forces an upgrade of third-party software such as a database
system.  This has several components - additional licensing costs for
new releases of add-on software, downtime costs, testing costs, and
all the other little things like that.  And add another 1% for each
time you ask yourself "Will this upgrade unexpectedly hose something
in a totally non-obvious way?".

(Note - none of the money so far has anything to do with IPv6 directly)

Third is the cost of actually configuring and enabling IPv6 - getting
an AAAA record assigned, the DNS set up, testing, and getting the software
to use an IPv6 connection.  This is usually the cheap part once
you get past the first two.

Note that in the current state of the world, those first two are usually
the big part of the expense, and THOSE costs are *NOT* going to come
down anytime soon.  That big database server on that big Sun E10K is
not going to be doing stuff over IPv6 until you upgrade to Solaris 8,
and drag Oracle along kicking and screaming.  And let's be honest here -
at the low end, if you're a Microsoft user, unless you're technically
skilled enough to install the developer toolkit and roll your own,
you're not doing IPv6 until you upgrade to Windows XP - which means
you also get to buy a Norton upgrade, a this upgrade, a that upgrade.

The cost is *NOT* in deploying IPv6.  The cost is getting to a
configuration that is *able* to run IPv6.

				Valdis Kletnieks
				Operating Systems Analyst
				Virginia Tech

---

From: "Tony Hain" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2001 12:03:56 -0800

Valdis.Kletnieks wrote:

> That big database server on that big Sun E10K is
> and drag Oracle along kicking and screaming.

Actually the real problem is the Oracle's of the world.

> And let's be
> honest here -

Even installing XP gets you nothing without the applications making the
appropriate API calls. The real requirement is in the other order; when
a desireable app becomes available that works over IPv6 but fails over
NAT. This will cause people to upgrade their OS to Solaris 8, or XP,
etc. This is more likely to be a peer-to-peer game than any business
app.

Tony

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 07 Nov 2001 20:40:56 -0500

> The real requirement is in the other order; when

I don't see a "killer IPv6-based business app" as likely, but IPv6
does seem like a good way to solve some of the problems that NATs
cause for communications between private v4 networks.  It won't be 
a single app that causes businesses to shift, it will be the ability
to run whatever protocols the businesses want to use to talk to each other.

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 09 Nov 2001 10:00:32 +0100

Tony, Keith,

> to run whatever protocols the businesses want to use to talk to each other.

Hold on just a minute. Business applications are moving away
from limited client/server models towards synchronous or asynchronous
exchanges between systems that are sometimes clients and sometimes
servers. I don't want to rant at length here, but peer-to-peer business
apps are absolutely what we need for IPv6.

   Brian

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 09 Nov 2001 04:15:15 -0500

> apps are absolutely what we need for IPv6.

I think we're in strong agreement.  I was only pointing out that the 
incentive for businesses to move to IPv6 might not be one or two well-known
apps that everybody uses, but a more general need to use peer-to-peer
communications between businesses.

Keith

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 09 Nov 2001 17:06:03 -0500

somebody needs to define an alternative to midcom that uses IPv6
prefixes to name the addressing realms, and an algorithm  to map
(prefix name + NATted IPv4 address) into an IPv6 address.

nobody says you have to actually be willing to route traffic to 
those IPv6 addresses, but you could use them in midcom as
unambiguous host names for pinhole specification, and you could
use them in network management.  and if/when you did decide to
actually route IPv6 traffic, management would be considerably
simplified by being able to use the same addresses.

Keith

> From: "Perry E. Metzger" <[email-masked]>
> To: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
> Cc: "Tony Hain" <[email-masked]>, [email-masked],
>         "Hans Kruse" <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: Why IPv6 is a must?
> 
> Keith Moore <[email-masked]> writes:
> > I don't see a "killer IPv6-based business app" as likely,
> 
> I think I know one. Network management and administration. There is no
> way in some of today's deeply NATed v4 networks to do adequate network
> management -- monitoring is especially hard. Overlaying a v6 network
> with a real address space over the NAT mess is easy, and results in
> being able to actually get to all the nodes being managed.

---

From: "Perry E. Metzger" <[email-masked]>
Date: 09 Nov 2001 16:39:33 -0500

--
Perry E. Metzger		[email-masked]
--
NetBSD Development, Support & CDs. http://www.wasabisystems.com/

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2001 09:38:55 +0100

> simplified by being able to use the same addresses.

And of course, the 6to4 prefix can be used exactly this way, with
no need to go to a registry for an IPv6 prefix. 

  Brian