Re: IPv4 Outage Planned for IETF 71 Plenary

IETF Chair wrote:

> How dark is the IPv6 Internet?  Let's find out.
This thread prompted me to ask one of my hosting providers about IPv6
support. I received the following long but entertaining reply, which I
am forwarding on as anonymous feedback from the trenches.

******

I always said that if the day came that I had to use IPv6, I'd quit the
ISP/Connectivity/Hosting/Colo/Internet business.  IPv6 addresses are
ugly.  Type a few out, and then check them for typos.  It's not fun.
You'd think that the people that came up with IPv6 were a bunch of
idiots or something for making the IP addresses... the things that make
the internet what it is... the things that give structure to
chaos......so choatic!  And just so unusable.  Who would make something
so hard on purpose?

IPv6 is a solution to a problem that has changed dramatically since IPv6
was created.  It solves a lot of problems that don't need solving.  It
solves some that shouldn't be "solved."    About the only one it still
solves that they set out to solve when it was created is the "out of
address space problem."  Predicted over and over again, we're still not
at 50% use for the current IP space.  ipv6.org says "IPv4 is over 20
years old!"  So is Ethernet.  And Unix.   But I digress.  IPv6 solves
that problem in a really stupid way.  They wouldn't settle to just make
the IP space 256 times larger by adding another 8 bits, and another
octet of three more numbers to a set of IP addresses... they had to go
for the mother lode!  128 bits!!  With 48 of those bits chewed up 'just
cus we can' by ethernet mac addresses... that no one will actually use
because it's a stupid security hole tagging your IP with what your
ethernet vendor ID is.  But it seemed like a good idea to solve that
problem that way at the time.  Right?

But IPv6 will auto configure a host when they plug in!  Because um...
wait, no that's what DHCP does.... wait, no, but IPv6 will improve
routing!  Wait, no, it'll break routing, because it tries to have the
global routing table basically track every single host on the net (as
opposed to large blocks of hosts that aren't always changing location
like current BGP4 does) and Paul Vixie says computers aren't big enough
to do that yet....  Let alone core routers.

But IPv6 does crypto!  Sort of.  It's got security built right in!
Uh-huh, right.

It's like the IPv6 people were too stupid to even realize that IPv4
works and works well because of how little intelligence is built into
the network.   The motto of IPv4 is "Network elegance through lack of
network intelligence."  So they, the great minds that brought us IPv6,
solved that problem by applying "lack of intelligence" to themselves in
hopes that they'd become elegant in their solution.  And that's how they
came up with IPv6.

I don't do IPv6.  And from my above rant, it should be clear that I'm
not a big fan of IPv6.  However, I would consider doing IPv6 if it means
I can do so without extra cost from my transit providers, and doing
things like upgrading routers.  It would be a fun exercise in the world
of IPv6, brought to you by the same people that brought you IPv4!  Or...
the GLOBAL INTERNET! Or... the world wide web! Wait, no.....not any of
the same people.  So maybe it'd be a fun exercise in "Here's how the
Internet would work if it was designed from the get-go to be badly
broken." That sounds fun, right?

Applying for IPv6 space from ARIN would probably be the easy part here.
 I'm sure they have a nice standard procedure for it.  I'll look in my
"ARIN and You!" 3 ring binder they sent me.  Yes.  It's seriously called
that.  And yes, I'm seriously going to get IPv6 space, just because I
can.  At least I think I can.  Unless they charge me $1,000 per year for
it.  Then I probably won't, because money's expensive.

The first thing I tried was to see if I could get some IPv6 transit.  I
decided to ask Sprint about IPv6.  Anyone want to place any bets as to
what their answer will be?  Spoiler follows:

Their first answer was "Um, we don't sell any IP6 Internet.  Why do you
need IP6?"  That's an exact quote.  And he said it in a really
derogatory way.  I nearly giggled like a little girl.  I had this
flashback to the movie Idiocracy where Joe uses his superior intellect
to get out of jail, and the guard's response is "Dumbass!  You're in the
wrong line!"

My answer was "A customer is requesting it and I'm just looking in to
it."  He went on this tirade (much like I did earlier in this email
before I talked to him...is that karma or what?) about how no one uses
IP6, and you have to have a network to support it before you have
applications that use IP6, and you need applications to use it before
anyone will build a network, and no one wants to break their apps to use
it, but people ask for it because they don't know what they're doing,
they just want IP6 because it's some new catchphrase like web two point
oh..... and how the IP6 college Internet backbone was shut down (at this
point I was glazed over) and he said a lot of other stuff, but that was
what I could remember.

So I decided to put this off and ask someone higher up tomorrow during
business hours when I can be escalated to someone that knows how to say
IPv6 the way it's spelled.

IPv6!  It's what networks crave!  It's got vee!

Another quote from the movie that may apply to IPv6 someday...."Yeah,
but it breaks down all the time because it was built by some really
smart guy a long time ago."

I should really go home now....

******

THE END

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