On Jul 3, 2011, at 1:23 AM, Lorenzo Colitti wrote: > I think it's clear by now that the vast majority of users don't know what IPv6 is, and that they do not ask for it. No, but they do want their applications to work well. That's constantly getting more difficult in IPv4. The workarounds for NATs and other forms of brain damage in the network keep changing, and each application requires not only its own code but also its own infrastructure to deal with that brain damage. So a solution that allows applications to use IPv6 whether or not all of the networks between the peers support native v6, is very badly needed. We can't wait for ISPs to give everybody IPv6 before applications start using it. And I agree that most users don't know what IPv6 is, at the moment. But if they learn that it will help their apps work better, they'll want it. (I also remember when most people didn't know what the Internet was. And then, almost in an instant, everybody knew, and a cartoon in the New Yorker magazine about the internet and a dog was something everybody could understand. Users will understand IPv6 also, soon enough.) Keith p.s. I often wear a t-shirt that says "there's no place like ::1". Non-computer people ask me what it means, and in response, I tell them it's the address of their own machine in IPv6. So far, nobody has asked me what IPv6 means. Everyone who has asked me about the shirt has heard of IPv6 and understood at some level that it's the next version of the Internet. If anything, there seems to be a disconnect between what "ordinary users" know about IPv6 and what their ISPs are telling them - because for the most part, the ISPs seem to keep publicly pretending that it doesn't exist. _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf