| I have resisted adding anything to this debate about the IPv4 outage because people have already stated many of the good points. I particularly agreed with the points made that from a PR point-of-view this was not a great idea. Let me, though, add another perspective. What about all the newbies? What are they going to do during this time? At IETF 70, there was a question raised in one of the plenaries asking "How many of you are here for the first time?" and a significant number of hands went up. So let's look at this proposed IPv4 outage *during the plenary* from their perspective. Now, these newcomers may or may not have been subscribed to IETF mailing lists. They may or may not have attended the Sunday "intro to IETF for newcomers" session. They may or may not in fact be technical folks. They are probably still trying to figure out how all this works and why these people are humming, etc. So now we go into one of the plenary sessions and it is announced that "we will now shut down IPv4 and use only IPv6". The newcomer notices that: 1. A good percentage of the audience now dive into their laptops and become engrossed in diagnosing how their system works with IPv6. Side conversations are starting everywhere and occasional shouts of "Aha!" emerge from random groups. 2. Another percentage gets up and leaves in search of cookies. 3. Some percentage who missed reading the emails are suddenly upset because they lost their IPv4 connectivity. 4. Some percentage pops in their EVDO/EDGE/whatever cards and continues along as they were before doing their work and completely ignoring the plenary speakers. 5. Some percentage never showed up at the plenary because they went to join Richard Shockey at a local steak house. 6. Non-technical users or others who did not subscribe to IETF mailing lists are sitting there dumbfounded with a deer-caught-in-the-headlights look wondering what the heck is going on and if this has anything to do with the hums. 7. NO ONE is paying attention to the speaker(s) in front of the room during this part of the plenary. Now maybe the newcomer is all excited about IPv6 and so plunges into the technical troubleshooting. Maybe they go look for cookies or steak. Maybe they sit there dumb-founded. Probably they are left wondering what the point of this IETF "plenary" session really was. I don't dispute that such an exercise could be an interesting experiment in IPv6 connectivity (and one in which I would join), although in many cases I think we can already know the outcome. I just question the wisdom of doing it during the *plenary*. It would seem to me to be a great exercise to do at some other point during the week when the people who care can attend and identify issues, work through them, etc. Or we do as Ted suggested and just run an entire event with only IPv6 wireless. (and count how many people are using EVDO/EDGE cards!) It goes back to a more fundamental question - what is the purpose of the plenary? What information do we want to get across to attendees to the session? (And if we *do* plan an IPv4 outage, what is going to be talked about during the time of the outage?) My 2 cents, (now worth less than when I lived in Canada) Dan-- Dan York, CISSP, Director of Emerging Communication Technology Bring your web applications to the phone. Find out how at http://evolution.voxeo.com |
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