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RE: Deployment Cases

2008-01-03 03:32:40
Unless I've missed something recent, the IETF did not do a 
lot of work 
on the scenario where IPv4 islands need to communicate over an IPv6 
Internet, talking to both IPv4 and IPv6 services.

It is called dual-stack.

That seems to simply ignore the issue by saying, let there be IPv4
everywhere for those who need it. But if there are not enough
addresses to grow the IPv4 infrastructure, you can't have IPv4
everywhere.

The big question of course is: what exact problem do you want 
to solve?

An IPv4 island, that is blissfully unaware of the IPv4 address
crunch until far too late, wants to avoid changing their network
but still maintain connectivity to both the IPv6 and the IPv4 
Internet. They may have to connect to an IPv6 ISP (for instance
if their IPv4 ISP goes bankrupt or they move an office location)
or they may connect to an IPv4 ISP who peers with a dual-stack
ISP or 6PE ISP. How do they continue to access all Internet services
from their IPv4 island, regardless of whether or not the services
are using IPv6 only?

Note that this is rather similar to the question raised regarding
the IPv4 outage at an IETF meeting. How does an IPv4 laptop user
continue to function without interruption when only IPv6 Internet
access is available at an IETF meeting? Assume that IPv4 wifi is
functioning and that the user does not change anything on their
laptop to accommodate the fact that connectivity is via IPv6. And
include the scenario where the IPv4 user successfully accesses an
arbitrary protocol server which is IPv6 only and has no A records
in its DNS.

Stating "I want to connect from IPv4 to IPv6", can mean a lot 
of things, is this HTTP? SMTP? or do you really want a 
generic solution?

A generic solution that will work for all TCP and UDP protocols.

I don't believe that there is an IETF solution for this scenario
which I expect to be a very common scenario specifically because 
transition to IPv6 is being triggered by an IPv4 address shortage
whose effects will be felt first in the network core and ripple
outward from there.

--Michael Dillon

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