On 10/12/2010 4:08 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
The community got ambitious
It's interesting that you should say this, because I've always been critical
of IPv6 because, IMO, it wasn't _ambitious enough_ -
I didn't say creative. I didn't say it targeted a new paradigm. I merely meant
that it tried to attack more than the problem at hand. And I didn't say it did
that well.
By the same token, one can and I believe should note that those insisting that a
new paradigm be used were given a 15 year window of opportunity and didn't seem
to pursue it very much...
Quite simply, we did not pay attention to larger issues such as market
incentives and adoption barriers.
The lack of market incentives is, IMO, intimately connected to the lack of
new functionality - functionality which would have meant a more ambitious
design.
yup. however note that companies successfully market products that have no
interesting new features...
I think you're right in a way about the 'too ambitious', in the sense that
the plan supposed not an incremental, interoperable evolvement of IPv4 (such
as the ones you mentioned with "all this transition stuff is fine, but when
it's done, what we'll be left with will be ugly"), but spent most of its
technical energy thinking about a 'clean slate' design; in a way, one could
say it was too ambitious in the 'engineering details', as it were.
ack.
At the same time, I think I'm right in a way about the 'not ambitious
enough', in the sense that the plan supposed pretty much the same
architecture as IPv4; in short, one could say it was not ambitious enough in
the 'architectural big picture'.
there was no mandate to create a new architecture. to adopt a new architecture
would have required making an extremely compelling case, with more detail and
demonstration. and although the formal choice was made early, the actual
failure to deliver 'product' provided a 15-year window, as I said.
Please note that OSI also was committed to early and also failed to deliver...
and was replaced by an alternative that /did/ deliver. So we have a nice
example that this later adoption of a better alternative was feasible.
So, if people will forgive me, I think one can play on one of Jon's
favourite quotations, and say that when contemplating the evolution of a
very-large-scale communication network, one should 'be conservative in ones
engineering details, and liberal in one's architectural vision'.
... but not necessarily at the same time.
incremental evolution is a fine and valid and efficient path. changing
architectural paradigms is massively traumatic and, therefore, needs a more
compelling incentive.
The 'conservative in the engineering details' means that interoperability
and evolution will be maximized, which will minimize adoption barriers; and
the 'liberal in architectural vision' will maximize incentives - thereby
giving one the best possible change of overcoming the adoption barriers which
have so hampered deployment of the stuff currently being discussed.
sounds about right to me.
d/
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
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