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RE: dubious assumptions about IPv6 (was death of the Internet)

2004-01-15 08:47:20
If the number of addresses would be the only concern it would be much easier to 
expand IPv4 adddresses to 16 bytes and use the rest of IPv4. There are many 
more things in IPv6 besides address size. IPv6 or whatever besides IPv4 is 
needed.
My point is not what is better, it is about how to internetwork both of them 
and this where layering comes into place. The logic is simple: IP was designed 
to internetwork networks. Once there is more than one IP network, let's 
internetwork them in a proper way as well. Not more simple than that. Given 
that, pure IPv6 hosts do not need to use v4 and the other way round.

I'm running IPv6 network with IPv6 DNS since two years ago. It works fine for 
me, however I want to see both v6 and v4 in action. Do not mind to add private 
v4 here but internetworked with public v4 and v6 in the same way as v4 to v6 - 
internetworked but not hacked with the NATs. This is my "math".

-----Original Message-----
From: Iljitsch van Beijnum [mailto:iljitsch(_at_)muada(_dot_)com]
Sent: den 15 januari 2004 15:03
To: Yuri Ismailov (KI/EAB)
Cc: 'Keith Moore'; IETF Discussion
Subject: Re: dubious assumptions about IPv6 (was death of the Internet)


On 15-jan-04, at 12:48, Yuri Ismailov (KI/EAB) wrote:

I share pretty much the views expressed on the page.

I don't share all of them (9 billion people in 2050, 3.7 billion usable 
IPv4 addresses, show me some math that makes this work) but where on 
this page is there a point being made? It seems more like a fairly 
random collection of statements.

Small addition to that would be the fact that current "transition" 
proposals are killing the possibility of transition as such. IPv6 is 
strongly dependent on IPv4 through various "ipv4 compatible" 
addresses, which are essentially private IPv6 addresses, i.e. not 
globally routable.

??? Which kind of IPv4-related addresses would a host with native IPv6 
connectivity and IPv6-enabled applications need?

BTW, not the only private v6 addresses in this sense. This basically 
means that it will be nearly impossible or at least extremely hard to 
wash out IPv4 from the implementation. Personally I think that 
removing IPv4 can not be justified.

Removing IPv4 from the code would be a peculiar idea to say the least. 
But running IPv6-only works for the most part. I tried this on the most 
recent version of MacOS and it's very easy to disable IPv4 for all 
interfaces except loopback. If you manually configure a nameserver 
that's reachable over IPv6 and use IPv6-capable applications, no 
problems whatsoever. People do give me weird looks when I say that I 
want to test running IPv6-only, though.

Instead of introducing two networks internetworked in a proper way, 
there are two networks tightly coupled to each other. Besides all, 
such approach nearly exclude the design of yet another network, which 
can be naturally internetworked with existing networks. Are there many 
believers that IPv6 is the last one and forever?

Forever is a very long time. IPv6 is far from perfect, but none of the 
issues are such that replacing the protocol because of them makes 
sense. If we're going to see something new it will probably be a 
niche-only thing for a very long time. But since a simple lack of 
address space won't be an issue in IPv6 (of course this leaves the 
complex lack of address space) it is almost certain that it will be 
possible to translate back and forth between the new protocol and IPv6 
in a way that's compatible with existing IPv6 implementations, so 
deployment won't be an issue.

The power of layering was heavily underestimated if not ignored. Isn't 
it clear enough that we would be nowhere if bridging of link layers 
would take over internetworking of networks.

Talking about power, where are you going to find the power to run those 
16 million+ entry CAMs at 10 Gbps+ without a network layer?