The way people have been thinking about internetworking them is via NATs and tunnels. and this has prompted the discussion about the evilness of NATs. But whether you internetwork with IPv6 and NAT, or just keep IPv4, NAT will not go likely go away. The "math" below works out because 9 billion people don't each need a unique IP address. The vast majority of those people will be serviced via NAT, as cable and dsl providers are starting to do now. Whether this is replaced by IPv6 inter-networks sooner or later is probably irrelevant to the kinds of services offered to the people behind the NATs. The problem of course, is that once you go the NAT route, you don't really need IPv6 as much. Then it becomes a cost issue and a support issue, and it becomes something of a luxury rather than a necessity. The other problem is that the entire world can't be converted at once, so there is significant business in the IPv4 side, that the IPv6 side can't abandon or lose connectivity to. Those cable and DSL customers presently using NATs might not be able to handle IPv6 addresses, so the Cable and DSL companies can't utilize IPv6 addresses. It would be like losing the ability to contact your bank and make deposits if you upgrade to the new version of the accounting software. You can't do that. And the bank can't upgrade because then it would lose the people who haven't upgraded. Thus, legacy software is frozen in place, until it is no longer useful. This is why most of the software written, is still written in Cobol. It is likely that Cobol, and IPv4 will still be in use in 2050. I think IPv6 would get faster deployment if the cost structure of IPv6 address space were different (free, or $35/yr registration fee), and one tried to get a specific new industry to adopt it like a proprietary protocol that just isn't propietary. My company, Av8 Internet, doesn't have IPv6 address space because it costs too much money for a plaything, and for many years to come, it is just for play. The vast bulk of the 30,000+ isp's are in the same boat. Making the address space free, and getting a lot of it assigned, could lead to more use, even if that use isn't really anything other than horseplay by ISP admins. But let's say that NOC's are interconnected by IPv6, with an IPv6 instant messaging application or IRC--noncritical, but we're just playing around. It then becomes much easier for those ISPs to delegate v6 space to customers, who just want to play. Then it becomes easier for those customers to create some initially insignificant v6 application, that grows in importance, and in turn, provides a pathway for migrating legacy applications. Someday, then, those dsl customers can be migrated to IPv6. You observation that IPv6 is more than just expanded address space is good, but when given the chance to create a new protocol, people put all kinds of improvements in. These improvements increase the complexity somewhat, but I'm not sure they change the overall problem very much. Given the cost of the change, one would kind of want some significant improvement besides address space. --Dean On Thu, 15 Jan 2004, Yuri Ismailov (KI/EAB) wrote: > If the number of addresses would be the only concern it would be much > easier to expand IPv4 adddresses to 16 bytes and use the rest of IPv4. > There are many more things in IPv6 besides address size. IPv6 or > whatever besides IPv4 is needed. My point is not what is better, it is > about how to internetwork both of them and this where layering comes > into place. The logic is simple: IP was designed to internetwork > networks. Once there is more than one IP network, let's internetwork > them in a proper way as well. Not more simple than that. Given that, > pure IPv6 hosts do not need to use v4 and the other way round. > > I'm running IPv6 network with IPv6 DNS since two years ago. It works > fine for me, however I want to see both v6 and v4 in action. Do not > mind to add private v4 here but internetworked with public v4 and v6 > in the same way as v4 to v6 - internetworked but not hacked with the > NATs. This is my "math". > > -----Original Message----- > From: Iljitsch van Beijnum [mailto:iljitsch@xxxxxxxxx] > Sent: den 15 januari 2004 15:03 > To: Yuri Ismailov (KI/EAB) > Cc: 'Keith Moore'; IETF Discussion > Subject: Re: dubious assumptions about IPv6 (was death of the Internet) > > > On 15-jan-04, at 12:48, Yuri Ismailov (KI/EAB) wrote: > > > I share pretty much the views expressed on the page. > > I don't share all of them (9 billion people in 2050, 3.7 billion usable > IPv4 addresses, show me some math that makes this work) but where on > this page is there a point being made? It seems more like a fairly > random collection of statements. > > > Small addition to that would be the fact that current "transition" > > proposals are killing the possibility of transition as such. IPv6 is > > strongly dependent on IPv4 through various "ipv4 compatible" > > addresses, which are essentially private IPv6 addresses, i.e. not > > globally routable. > > ??? Which kind of IPv4-related addresses would a host with native IPv6 > connectivity and IPv6-enabled applications need? > > > BTW, not the only private v6 addresses in this sense. This basically > > means that it will be nearly impossible or at least extremely hard to > > wash out IPv4 from the implementation. Personally I think that > > removing IPv4 can not be justified. > > Removing IPv4 from the code would be a peculiar idea to say the least. > But running IPv6-only works for the most part. I tried this on the most > recent version of MacOS and it's very easy to disable IPv4 for all > interfaces except loopback. If you manually configure a nameserver > that's reachable over IPv6 and use IPv6-capable applications, no > problems whatsoever. People do give me weird looks when I say that I > want to test running IPv6-only, though. > > > Instead of introducing two networks internetworked in a proper way, > > there are two networks tightly coupled to each other. Besides all, > > such approach nearly exclude the design of yet another network, which > > can be naturally internetworked with existing networks. Are there many > > believers that IPv6 is the last one and forever? > > Forever is a very long time. IPv6 is far from perfect, but none of the > issues are such that replacing the protocol because of them makes > sense. If we're going to see something new it will probably be a > niche-only thing for a very long time. But since a simple lack of > address space won't be an issue in IPv6 (of course this leaves the > complex lack of address space) it is almost certain that it will be > possible to translate back and forth between the new protocol and IPv6 > in a way that's compatible with existing IPv6 implementations, so > deployment won't be an issue. > > > The power of layering was heavily underestimated if not ignored. Isn't > > it clear enough that we would be nowhere if bridging of link layers > > would take over internetworking of networks. > > Talking about power, where are you going to find the power to run those > 16 million+ entry CAMs at 10 Gbps+ without a network layer? > >