David Conrad wrote:
Tony,
On Sep 13, 2007, at 5:29 PM, Tony Hain wrote:
David Conrad wrote:
....
IPv6 _is_ IPv4 with more bits and it is being deployed that way.
No it is not, and you need to stop claiming that because it
confuses people
into limiting their thinking to the legacy IPv4 deployment model.
I'm not particularly interested in getting into a "Yes it is! No it
isn't!" debate. I will merely point out that IPv6 has been
implemented and is being deployed as IPv4 with more bits. As I said,
you can argue it shouldn't be this way, but reality often sucks.
I am not looking for a never-ending debate either. What people are
overlooking is that part of any viable transition plan is to allow people to
deploy the new widget in a way that they understand and are comfortable
with. The fact that people -can- deploy IPv6 the same way they deploy IPv4
is a feature, not a requirement that they actually deploy it that way.
Statements like yours only confuse people because they take it literally
rather than in context that current deployments are not looking at the
protocol differences beyond 'more bits'. When people start from the
perspective that 'the names both start with IP and they are both packet
delivery systems but they are different protocols' then find the
similarities, they are much better off than when they start from the 'just
more bits' perspective.
I might suggest that the reason why major core infrastructures like
the telephony system, utility grids, etc. are often hodgepodges of
hacks and kludges is because the business case to throw out
successful deployment models and existing plants is difficult to
make. And when you do, you generally want to insure a high level of
backwards compatibility so that you don't have to change everything
to make use of the new bits.
Either you need backwards compatibility, or you need the ability to support
both until the old systems die off naturally. There was plenty of time to
support both for a graceful transition, but people seem to want to wait
until they are forced to change before they start, so the actual shift will
be ugly and costly.
There are way too many arguments
(even on this list of relatively smart people) where the fundamental
difference of simultaneous use of multiple addresses is the key to
thinking
differently between the versions.
Can you point to one widely used application, API, or operating
system (that doesn't require manual intervention) that supports this?
The applications you are looking for can't exist or be economically
supported in IPv4/nat, so they have yet to make it to the market place. That
does not mean 'we must restrict IPv6 deployments to match IPv4', even if the
initial deployments are happening that way. There is a strong tendency to
only worry about supporting current applications, but we really need to be
building a framework to allow new applications to appear that failed
economically in the past. While IPv4 is a good protocol, the general
attitude that 'if it can't be done with IPv4 it is not worth doing' needs to
go away.
Tony
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