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RE: How the IPnG effort was started

2004-11-08 09:09:28
    > From: "Christian Huitema" <huitema(_at_)windows(_dot_)microsoft(_dot_)com>

This is a silly thing to be wasting time on (it's water long under the
bridge now - I was just struck by the power of the irony, and mentioned
it simply because of that), but:

    >> IPv6 exists because of a previous round of concern about IPv4
    >> address exhaustion, which was used by the proponents of yet
    >> another protocol that was going to "replace" IPv4 to push for
    >> their protocol's adoption

    > That is not quite what the minutes convey. The main argument behind
    > CLNP then was convergence ..
    > ...
    > For better or worse, [IPv6] was mostly defined as "just IPv4 with
    > larger addresses".

You are quite right that the rationale given for the adoption of CLNP
changed over time, and was originally rooted in the assumption that it
would become dominant (e.g. through government mandate and/or
procurement). However, I never denied that. 

The whole IPng process was clearly driven by concerns about address space
- which is exactly why IPv6 is, as you so precisely put it, "IPv4 with
larger addresses". Those concerns were also, *at the late stage of CLNP's
life*, the principal arguments for adoption of CLNP (which was, by then,
clearly failing to take off) - and as such, much was made of those
concerns by those who backed CLNP.

I merely claim that we probably wouldn't have had the IPng process
without the FUD about IPv4 raised by CLNP backers. Clearly, this is an
assertion which it's basically impossible to prove or disprove, and
therefore not worth going around and around over.

        Noel

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