On 10/8/10 1:02 PM, "james woodyatt" <jhw(_at_)apple(_dot_)com> wrote:
everyone--
IPv6 may have been born with a developmental disability, but
we're not dealing with a corpse yet. The patient is still
alive, getting better, and with a bit of love and proper
care, might yet grow up to make better and brighter music
than IPv4.
Maybe I'm being overly sentimental and using anthropomorphism
inappropriately here, but really folks-- isn't it a bit
unseemly to be arguing over how we went so "wrong" with
IPv6-- and how we could do ever so much better the *next*
time we get to reinvent the Internet if we avoid all the
killing mistakes we made in bringing IPv6 up-- while there
are, today, more people than ever before taking what are
perceived to be enormous risks actually making the v4->v6
transition start to happen?
James, I don't see this as a post-mortem. I still expect to see
IPv6 widely deployed and certainly do not agree with anyone who
thinks it is time to pull the plug on it (or that we should have
done so several years ago). However, I believe that the essence
of competent engineering involves trying to see whole systems,
to understand risk factors and make contingency plans, and to be
sure that we are not responding to transitional issues with
wishful thinking alone. I don't think we are doing some of
those things as well as we need to. I also think we have made
some assumptions along the way that come close to the old
cartoon about how one gets from Step 3 to Step 5 by writing down
"magic happens" or pretending that it is somehow intuitively
obvious.
While I can't speak for anyone else, I see my comments as a plea
that we not try to solve problems by stuffing our heads in the
sand like the proverbial ostrich, hoping that the problems will
have magically disappeared by the time we pull it out. I think
that is important whether one's favorite problem from which to
try to hide is the danger of routing collapse when both IPv4 and
IPv6 addresses need to be advertised; the inability of
applications to meet implicit IPv6 assumptions about choices of
addresses and, through them, routes; our inability to get rid of
NATs or applications-layer knowledge of addresses or to design
better ways to co-exist with them; or something else.
While I wish there were a lot less apparent rancor and "I told
you so" tone in this conversation, I don't believe that the
underlying issues can be dismissed by talking about what is, or
is not, "seemly" or by keeping silent because a lot of folks are
making major investments. My hope is that, by asking these
questions now, we can be certain that all of the other ducks are
lined up to make IPv6 --as seen by the users and those who sign
the checks -- work really well after we get past the stages with
which those investments are involved. And, again, I think that
is ultimately an optimistic message about our finally doing good
and realistic engineering to finish the puzzle of which IPv6
itself is a critical component, not a post-mortem on IPv6.
best,
john
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