> From: Jon Allen Boone <ipmonger(_at_)delamancha(_dot_)org
> In my experience, if a technology hasn't been readily adopted
> within a decade of it's creation, it's not going to be. It appears
> that time is rapidly approaching for IPv6.
Ah, you need to adjust your clock, or calendar, or whatever. SIP (what we
now call IPv6) was created in 1992 (it was presented to the ANTF meeting
in August '92), and was adopted as IPng at the 30th IETF in Toronto, in
July 1994. That's already more than 10 years.
Just to give everyone a sense of what that really means, here are some
things to jog our memories. In 1994:
- The WWW had about 2,700 sites, total.
- The current Microsoft operating system was Windows 3.1
Think about that for a minute.
It's pretty clear by now that IPv6 is just not going to reach its stated
goal - which is to ubiquitously replace IPv4. Even many IPv6 proponents
are now speaking of an essentially indefinite period of co-existence.
Which essentially voids the original basic argument *for* IPv6...
And don't give me any of that "oh, we really needed to have the X system
available, now we've got that it'll really take off next year". We've
been hearing this exact excuse for years - I have a whole file full of
them.
Yes, there is going to be some deployment of IPv6. (With the amount of
money that's been spent on it, it'd be totally astonishing if there
*weren't*. If I were a barn manufacturer, and had the kind of budget
that's been spent on IPv6, half the airline passengers today would be
flying around on jet-propelled barn doors.) It will see some use in
discrete areas of the network, particular networks that utilize IPv6.
It may even find a certain amount of utility as an end-end naming layer
(which is incredibly ironic, but that deserves a rant in itself); but
again, that not the original goal - which was to be the ubiquitous packet
layer.
Look, I really do understand Brian's point - that the current situation
is not good.
But acting like IPv6 is going to magically save us - when we have year after
year after year after year of actual experience that is telling us "no, it
isn't" - is not the way to fundamentally improve the situation.
The IETF needs to seriously face the reality of the network that's really
out there, not the network some of us wish were there.
To put it another way (and mangle a well-known phrase in the process), if
life gives you lemons, you can either sit around with a sour look on your
face, or make lemonade. NAT's make me look sour too, but I'd rather make
lemonade.
Noel
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