Robin,
Robin Whittle wrote:
Nothing has changed in the last 15 years or more:
Although I agree with most of what you wrote and won't comment on it (not worth
the time going back into our collective past mistakes in detail), I do not
agree with you on that one sentence:
Robin Whittle wrote:
Nothing has changed in the last 15 years or more
A lot has changed.
- 15 years ago, there was all this capital money pouring down from the sky if
you could barely spell "Internet". Gone with the dotcom bust. Darn. Can't make
millions from the IPO of an obscure startup that has nothing but vaporware.
Dang, a get-rich-quick idea, anyone?
- 15 years ago, IPv6 had a solution for problems that don't exist anymore, such
as autoconfiguration. Not saying that DHCP is perfect, but the bottom line is
that today anyone can walk into any cybercafé in the world with a WiFi laptop
and get connected to the Internet without knowing anything about IP. The most
annoying part to me is that, in some countries, they ask for your passport. If
there was such thing as a license to operate a computer, many patrons at
McDonalds or Starbucks would not pass it (not regarding _our_ criteria of
computer geeks). Geez, they can't install the operating system or write a
script on their own. They're out there now.
- 15 years ago, IPv6 could scare the heck out of deciders by predicting the end
of the world because of a shortage of addresses. Hey, it worked with Y2K. No
more; IPv4 addresses have mostly expired, the world did not end, and these days
not only people are not adopting IPv6 but they are gearing towards GCN instead.
-15 years ago, some people started to pile up IPv4 addresses. They're laughing
their bottom off right now. 10 bucks a pop, got a class A to sell? 160 million
bucks. Smaller player, a class B. Still 6 million bucks. A class C from the
swamp? Too small. But for $10K plus fees, one can find a /22.
-15 years ago, IPv6 was all about getting rid of NAT. Now there are countless
IPv6 NAT mechanisms, much more than IPv4.
-15 years ago, some people thought that some level of US government backing
would insure deployment success. How do you define success? GOSIP? ADA?
-15 years ago, IPv6 promised a small DFZ because it would have a better
multi-homing mechanism (my favorite) (don't get me started on that one).
-15 years ago, nobody would have doubted that IPv6 would be (today, end of
2013) the main protocol in use and we all believed that IPv4 would be in the
same league as IPX, Appletalk, Decnet, and so on.
So, 15 years after, IPv6 is nowhere for the reasons you described. One more
paper about why IPv6 failed is not going to deploy it. Everyone has tried for
the last 15 years, and everyone has failed. Why waste more energy on this? Move
on.
It is going to take another 5 or 10 years before the IETF finally acknowledges
that IPv6 is a failure. But your IVIP thing is not worth jack crack. You are
not even to the point where you realize why. When you have something more that
yet-another-miracle, come back to us.
Michel.