On 7/1/2024 6:37 AM, Livingood, Jason wrote:
(no hats) Isn’t this ultimately a market problem on some level? Meaning that if IPv6 delivered some indispensable features or capabilities to the cloud services marketplace, that the providers would comprehensively support it – rather than individual buyers pushing providers to support the protocol? To improve the market dynamics, are there new protocols that should be IPv6-only – meaning that some new, cool thing would expressly not work over IPv4? What can IETF WGs do to create natural incentives for IPv6 adoption by cloud providers?
I don't think we want to just leave it to "the market". It is clear that there are years of engineering experience on the "IPv4 only" side, and that the natural trend of many service providers if it "works with IPv4" will be to just leave it at that. But as IPv4 addresses become harder to get, services can only provided by those server infrastructures that have sufficient IPv4 addresses. In practice, that drives concentration, and that's not too good for the future of the Internet. The IETF should definitely care about that. So, yes, the RFPs should definitely require IPv6 support.
-- Christian Huitema
