On 2 jan 2008, at 17:16, Hallam-Baker, Phillip wrote:
Another difference with IP is that the IETF is competing with its past success. What made IPv4 successful is also the reason that end users are reluctant to change. There is a major difference between reseach and development. IPv4 was the result of pure research. To succeed IPv6 must be a development, an incremental enhancement on the legacy base. The deployment case for IPv4 was clear: there was no effective, non-proprietary alternative established so the choice was between the Internet and no Internet.
It's the job of the IETF to develop a protocol like IPv6, not to deploy it. The lack of need to deploy it (which we won't be able to judge for another decade or so, we still have a billion unused IPv4 addresses currently) doesn't imply a lack of need to develop it. IPv4 wasn't meeting projected future goals. The only resposible thing the IETF could do was develop (something like) IPv6. And that's what the IETF did. Success, we all go home early today.
Now it may turn out that not deploying IPv6 is seen as more attractive than deploying IPv6 by the users of the internet. However, there was no way to authoritatively predict that 15 years ago, so NOT developing IPv6 would have been irresponsible.
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