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Re: IPv4 consumption statistics and extrapolations

2004-11-07 10:20:32
    > From: Dave Crocker <dhc2(_at_)dcrocker(_dot_)net>

    >> *IPv6 only exists because of a previous round of FUD about IPv4 address
    >> exhaustion* - one spread by the proponents of yet another protocol
    >> that was going to "replace" IPv4 - i.e. CLNP.

    > Noel, this assertion is just plain wrong.

So what was Kobe and the ensuing Boston Tea party about, then? Look, I'm not
saying there wasn't concern about address space usage rates, and eventual
exhaustion - clearly there was.

(And - and how ironic is this - one of the *earliest* references to comlete
address space exhaustion was in a presentation *I* gave at the 19th IETF, in
December 1990, at Boulder, Colorado - up until then we had mostly been
worried about the usage rate of class B's.)

However, my perception was that the IPng effort was started in response to
concerns raised by backers of CLNP, who did so in an attempt to push adoption
of CLNP. Would we have started work on IPng without those efforts? I don't
think so, but YMMV.


    > the market found a way to route around our non-responsiveness.
    > ...
    > We would probably have had to learn to live with NATs in any case

This I actually agree with, but with a slightly different spin: I think that
even if we had written an IPng spec overnight, the market would almost
certainly still have gone with IPv4+NAT; just less overall hassle, plus the
*other* reasons people deploy NAT (which you list).

        Noel

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