(More quoting than usual for me. Oh well.)
Hector Santos writes:
I hope I can get an honest discussion here about IPv6 and hears IETF
and mail system overall thoughts on the subject. I know it is all
subjective and will probably get different feelings here and among
other groups, but unless I am off base, I think it might be healthy
to discuss it here if only to serve as an increasing awareness and to
help in the adoption process.
Frankly, I did more in the last 3-4 days learning about the status of
IPv6 and from I am seeing, it seems to be the epitome or height of
IPv6 was around 2005
?
and most of the work and implementation in outside the US.
Indeed.
I have seen a few presentations that suggest or summarizes the
following highlights or key points:
...
(All true AFAICT.)
In my impression, the key status of IPv6 is that it's now viewed as
unavoidable and not yet a profit opportunity.
A few years ago there were still lots of people who thought NAT would
make IPv6 unnecessary, but I don't see that any more. Instead the news
is a slow drip of little events like
http://www.icann.org/announcements/announcement-04feb08.htm
Profitability hasn't arrived. There will be a day when people will pay
extra for a software upgrade to get IPv6, or replace their little
Linksys boxes with D-Link boxes that supports IPv6, but that day isn't
yet. (Substitute other vendor names.)
Other items I have learned that I have not seen discussed here or missed:
- RFC 2874 or the A6 resource record.
"DNS Extensions to Support IPv6 Address Aggregation and
Renumbering"
Why has this not been discussed as an alternative to AAAA? It would
seem to me that A6 which has type value of 38 is a reasonable item to
be discussed if we also going to discussed lookups for AAAA records.
A6 is dead. It was proposed, the proposal didn't carry through. (IMHO A6
was a stupid misoptimisation.)
Overall, I think IPv6 is an overwhelming concept which have not yet
put in enough time to consider for 2821bis, even if its just about
one part regarding IMPLICIT MX.
SMTP and IPv6 is in not common use, but it's old already. I got IPv6 in
early 2003 and the software I used wasn't new then.
Are we going to make the right decision?
We know one thing - SMTP IPv4 operational behavior with a score of
years of time tested engineering behind it.
I vote to NIX the whole IMPLICIT MX consideration for IPv6 for 2821bis
and I hope the IETF cogs and a champion among us can take us into the
next era with a new IETF chartered WG effort to see how to move SMTP
into the IPv6 era, or even the feasibility of this effort. Maybe
that was already done, I don't know.
It was.
But it sure sounds to me, this is big mountain to climb for many.
Of course, this is one person's opinion only.
And this answer is just my two cents.
Arnt