On 05/04/2012 11:35, Margaret Wasserman wrote:
Unfortunately, it is not clear that the market cares enough about
end-to-end transparency to fund the development of NPTv6 or IPv4
NAT-aware end-nodes, because while end-to-end transparency is something
that we in the IETF hold dear, it does not have enough practical value
for Internet-connected enterprises that they have been willing to incur
any cost or inconvenience to maintain it. In fact, in many cases, they
prefer _not_ to have it.
quite the opposite: they view it as an unnecessary liability, a cost
centre. Why should their internal business continuity depend on a business
relationship with an upstream provider which is worth €50 / month, and
which they might decide to change with almost zero notice?
Renumbering is not a solution to this problem because it causes things to
break. The CEO doesn't care about end-to-end transparency, but he does
care about the fact that he can't print his financials 10 minutes before a
tense board meeting because the printer was originally set up using a
hard-coded IP address, because the printer driver was coded to ignore the
DNS because the printer driver manufacturers realised that most SMEs don't
have enough clue to make internal DNS work on their tiny internal network
with 10 PCs, and that if they made their product default to using IP
addresses instead of DNS, their end-users have a generally more reliable
user experience and buy more of their printers in future. And repeat for
basically all LAN services.
You may not like it, but this is the reality for the vast majority of SME,
SOHO and home users out there. If ipv6 causes breakage, then ipv6 will not
happen. End users don't care about the protocol. They care whether their
printer works and whether they can check their email. If the protocol gets
in the way of that, then the protocol is broken.
Speaking as someone who deals with SMEs on a regular basis, and leaving
aside the rhetoric, The Register article basically got it spot on.
Nick