Pete Resnick wrote: > On 12/18/07 at 1:32 PM -0500, John C Klensin wrote: > > >Reporters come to our meetings and attend plenaries. > >There are members of the reporter community, or their editors, > >who like only those stories that they can sensationalize. For > >them, this little "outage" results in one of two possible > >headlines: > > > > (i) Not even IETF can get IPv6 to work seamlessly. > > (ii) IPv6 is so complicated that only the IETF experts, > > struggling mightily, can get it to work in a drop-in > > environment. > > Simply reporting on this thread would lend itself to some interesting > headlines, with minimal sensationalization: > > "Proposal that the IETF use IPv6 exclusively for 60 minutes causes > widespread panic" > > I really don't have a strong opinion on the proposal itself; I can > live without network connectivity for an hour (or I can cheat and use > my EVDO card for an hour :-) ). But this entire conversation has been > exceedingly informative: Exactly my thoughts as I read the thread (though I have made a point of having AAAA in my host file for the things I care about, so I am not worried). It is really bizarre to watch the reaction to the thought that we might 'need to be serious about using IPv6'. If we could only get the IESG to get serious about killing off working groups that are still focused on IPv4 ... ;) > > a) As an Apps guy, this talk does not bode well for how seriously > IPv6 has been taken in getting basic infrastructure issues solved > such that applications can run. While you are concerned about infrastructure, I am -much- more concerned about lack of app support. If is fairly easy to fix a handful of root servers, but it is much more difficult to find apps that are capable of working in an IPv6-only environment, let alone get them widely distributed. > > b) As a user who runs my own little corner of the network, this > doesn't make me sanguine about being able to get my basic services up > and running under IPv6 anytime soon. > > I'm somewhere between depressed and amused. I have all but given up on any kind of smooth transition. The ongoing stand-off between the ISP's and Content Providers over who will move first ensures that this will be an ugly last-minute fiasco. The lack of wide-spread app support further ensures that there is no way to avoid having the consumer be very aware of which version of the protocol they are running, and what each product supports. Here again this thread is very instructive. If the app community had built agnostic apps years ago, the agnostic stacks in the current laptops would transparently deal with the outage (assuming the roots get fixed). Instead there is a panic by people (scanning the list mostly in the apps community) that should have been serious in the past, but have procrastinated. So for that I applaud the announced outage for disturbing the cozy corner of ignorance that people have been hiding in, but ... as much as I want to see IPv6 in wide-spread use, I have to agree with John, Dave, and Eric, this is not the right experiment. It is not right because it does nothing positive, other than the threat -maybe- spurring some action. A more realistic experiment would be to run the entire week with a double-nat for IPv4 (and nats between the access points to simulate consumer-to-consumer configurations), where the most public one has absolutely no provision for punching holes (because realistically an ISP is not going to punch inbound holes for its customers, or allow them to). Also make sure that there is only 1 public IPv4 address so the issues of port overloading & exhaustion are completely exposed. The IPv4-forever crowd will see the failings of their claim that; n-layers of nat will just work because n=1 does for a limited subset of applications when the end user has control over hole punching. The resulting headline would be something like: The IETF tried to live in the upcoming world of multiple layers of IPv4 nat and failed ... Those that didn't want to suffer that fate used IPv6 enabled apps and moved into a better future. I am not opposed to doing an IPv6-only network, but that should be well planned (~ 1 year in advance), and have the expected outcome of IPv6 as a success, rather than the known outcome of the upcoming meeting where more than half would just be cut off without IPv4. It should have happened a couple of years ago so the IESG would know the state of the world, but better late than never so tell people now that Fall-08, or Spring-09 will have a significant portion of the network as IPv6-only, giving them sufficient time to do real preparation, rather than just panic work-arounds. Leave IPv4 up only for the external audio feeds, and one AP near the support desk for dealing with a day-job crisis. With enough time to do real prep, the result of the experiment will have some meaning. Otherwise it is just going to create negative headlines. Tony _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf