On 10/8/10 1:02 PM, "james woodyatt" <jhw@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > everyone-- > > IPv6 may have been born with a developmental disability, but > we're not dealing with a corpse yet. The patient is still > alive, getting better, and with a bit of love and proper > care, might yet grow up to make better and brighter music > than IPv4. > > Maybe I'm being overly sentimental and using anthropomorphism > inappropriately here, but really folks-- isn't it a bit > unseemly to be arguing over how we went so "wrong" with > IPv6-- and how we could do ever so much better the *next* > time we get to reinvent the Internet if we avoid all the > killing mistakes we made in bringing IPv6 up-- while there > are, today, more people than ever before taking what are > perceived to be enormous risks actually making the v4->v6 > transition start to happen? James, I don't see this as a post-mortem. I still expect to see IPv6 widely deployed and certainly do not agree with anyone who thinks it is time to pull the plug on it (or that we should have done so several years ago). However, I believe that the essence of competent engineering involves trying to see whole systems, to understand risk factors and make contingency plans, and to be sure that we are not responding to transitional issues with wishful thinking alone. I don't think we are doing some of those things as well as we need to. I also think we have made some assumptions along the way that come close to the old cartoon about how one gets from Step 3 to Step 5 by writing down "magic happens" or pretending that it is somehow intuitively obvious. While I can't speak for anyone else, I see my comments as a plea that we not try to solve problems by stuffing our heads in the sand like the proverbial ostrich, hoping that the problems will have magically disappeared by the time we pull it out. I think that is important whether one's favorite problem from which to try to hide is the danger of routing collapse when both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses need to be advertised; the inability of applications to meet implicit IPv6 assumptions about choices of addresses and, through them, routes; our inability to get rid of NATs or applications-layer knowledge of addresses or to design better ways to co-exist with them; or something else. While I wish there were a lot less apparent rancor and "I told you so" tone in this conversation, I don't believe that the underlying issues can be dismissed by talking about what is, or is not, "seemly" or by keeping silent because a lot of folks are making major investments. My hope is that, by asking these questions now, we can be certain that all of the other ducks are lined up to make IPv6 --as seen by the users and those who sign the checks -- work really well after we get past the stages with which those investments are involved. And, again, I think that is ultimately an optimistic message about our finally doing good and realistic engineering to finish the puzzle of which IPv6 itself is a critical component, not a post-mortem on IPv6. best, john _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf