Subject: IPv6 standard?

From: Iljitsch van Beijnum <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 2009 17:24:54 +0200

Hi,

It occurs to me that a small but potentially meaningful thing that the  
IETF could do to push IPv6 adoption is move RFC 2460 from draft  
standard to standard.

Iljitsch

---

From: JORDI PALET MARTINEZ <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 2009 19:46:41 -0400

For this and other RFCs, we started some years ago the work at
http://www.ipv6-to-standard.org

Just waiting for the IESG to take on it ...

Regards,
Jordi

> From: Iljitsch van Beijnum <[email-masked]>
> Reply-To: <[email-masked]>
> Date: Fri, 11 Sep 2009 17:24:54 +0200
> To: IETF Discussion <[email-masked]>
> Subject: IPv6 standard?
> 
> Hi,
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Ietf mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

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From: Dean Willis <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 2009 14:19:49 -0500

On Sep 11, 2009, at 10:24 AM, Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:

> Hi,
>
> It occurs to me that a small but potentially meaningful thing that  
> the IETF could do to push IPv6 adoption is move RFC 2460 from draft  
> standard to standard.
>

But it's not obsolete yet. How can we possibly make something that  
isn't already obsolete a full standard?

Perhaps we should introduce IPv8 as "work in progress", declare IPv6  
to be the current obsolete "standard", deprecate IPv4, and stop  
referencing IPv4 completely in any new work? We could even require  
"considerations for IPv8" sections in all standards-track drafts, as  
we know that such a requirement causes forward-thinking in the writing  
of the draft.

--
dean

---

From: Iljitsch van Beijnum <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 2009 09:49:25 +0200

> Just waiting for the IESG to take on it ...

So? What's the holdup?

---

From: "David Harrington" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 11:19:32 -0400

Hi,

As part of declaring IPv6 a full standard, would we also declare IPv4
obsolete or Historic?

dbh 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On 
> Behalf Of Iljitsch van Beijnum
> Sent: Friday, September 11, 2009 11:25 AM
> To: IETF Discussion
> Subject: IPv6 standard?
> 
> Hi,
>

---

From: "Dave Nelson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 11:26:58 -0400

David Harrington writes...

> As part of declaring IPv6 a full standard, would we also declare IPv4

Given the sheer number of IPv4 nodes in active use in the Internet, that
move would seem premature, at best.

---

From: IETF Member Dave Aronson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 11:36:53 -0400

> As part of declaring IPv6 a full standard, would we also declare IPv4

Given IPv6's rate of adoption so far, how soon do you think IPv4 will
*really* be in so little use as to be obsolete or historic?  With the
growth rate of the Internet and home/office networking, and IPv6's
adoption rate, I'd be willing to bet that the number of IPv4
installations is *growing* per year, not shrinking, and that that
trend will continue for at least the next several years, barring any
highly unusual events.

-Dave

-- 
Dave Aronson, software engineer or trainer for hire.
Looking for job (or contract) in Washington DC area.
See http://davearonson.com/ for resume & other info.

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:43:11 +0200

Historic is appropriate when we want to make a statement about the
appropriateness of the technology.  However, we probably enter a huge
bureaucratic entanglement of what happens to all of the docs that
normatively reference 791, 792, and 793.  And that's another question,
what precisely DO we make Historic?

Eliot

---

From: Steve Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 11:49:28 -0400

We're some distance away from deprecating IPv4.  Maybe 20 years, maybe  
50 years.  For a very long time, IPv6 and IPv4 will co-exist.

Steve

---

From: Arnt Gulbrandsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:53:48 +0200

> what precisely DO we make Historic?

In five years, someone who shows up in a WG saying that so-and-so 
doesn't work with NAT will be met with relieved smiles, and someone 
will say "that's history" ;)

Arnt

---

From: David Kessens <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 09:14:52 -0700

Dave,

> trend will continue for at least the next several years, barring any
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Like running out of easily available/cheap IPv4 address space ?  
  
David Kessens
---

---

From: IETF Member Dave Aronson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 12:40:35 -0400

> On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 11:36:53AM -0400, IETF Member Dave Aronson wrote:
...
>> I'd be willing to bet that the number of IPv4

Yes, I'd say that would be highly unsual.

It was predicted long ago.  Steps were taken that had far more
immediate effect than the effort to develop and deploy IPv6.  The
crisis has been averted, at least temporarily.  I don't think the
problem will be back up to anywhere near crisis-level any time in "the
next several years".

Ten years out, who knows?  Maybe.

However, even then, that will affect almost exclusively devices with
*public* IP addresses.  The gazillions of devices behind NATs may also
need to speak IPv6 when connecting to the outside world, but will have
little to no need to give up IPv4.  Neither will those on completely
private networks.

-Dave

---

From: Masataka Ohta <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 01:46:42 +0900

Eliot Lear wrote:

> And that's another question, what precisely DO we make Historic?

IPv6 and all the RFCs reffering IPv6, of course.

						Masataka Ohta

---

From: Iljitsch van Beijnum <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 03:15:13 +0200

> little to no need to give up IPv4.  Neither will those on completely

What's the point of running IPv4 when you can do everything you need  
to do over IPv6? (Note that it works the other way around, also...)

IPX, DECnet, AppleTalk etc disappeared from view pretty quickly as IP  
conquered the world.

But before the bury IPv4, it would be a good signal to make IPv6 a  
full standard.

---

From: "Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 08:36:26 +0200

"Steve Crocker" <[email-masked]> wrote:

> We're some distance away from deprecating IPv4.  Maybe 20 years, maybe  50 
> years.  For a very long time, IPv6 and IPv4 will co-exist.

I know you wrote those figures to be provocative, Steve. :-)
I mean, 50 years? That's like saying "computers will still run on valves in 
50 years' time" in 1950.

Of course this is a matter of appreciation, and frankly, does it really 
matter how long IPv4 will be around?

Let's worry at the future, not the past.

Kindest regards,

Olivier

-- 
Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond, PhD
http://www.gih.com/ocl.html

---

From: IETF Member Dave Aronson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 07:21:21 -0400

...
> What's the point of running IPv4 when you can do everything you need to do
> over IPv6? (Note that it works the other way around, also...)

Inertia.  Lots of people are already running IPv4, with little to no
incentive to switch their machines over.  Even when they get a new
one, IPv4 is what they're used to.  As long as IPv4 is still
supported, and especially when it's the default, IPv4 is what most
people will use, both at home and in business.

> IPX, DECnet, AppleTalk etc disappeared from view pretty quickly as IP

...and provided incentive via connection to the rest of the world.  In
order to play on "teh Intarwebs", they had to speak IP... and once
they're doing that, there's less incentive to keep running something
else on internal nets.  In order to be be connectable directly to the
Internet, more and more machines started supporting IP.  This made it
easy to go IP internally as well, for those businesses (and the
occasional home) that had an internal network.

I don't see anywhere near as strong an incentive to go to 6.  The
average user, even the average business, does not care that the IPv4
address space is endangered... until of course it means that their
IPv4 address is more expensive.  Nor do they care about the added
features; heck, they probably don't even *understand* most of the
added features!

> But before the bury IPv4, it would be a good signal to make IPv6 a full
> standard.

Agreed.  That's *part* of what needs to happen, and in fact one of the
first major pieces.

Here's how I see it playing out (omitting further IPv4-supporting workarounds):

 - IETF declares IPv6 a full standard.

 - More ISPs start offering IPv6 to end-users (be they homes or
businesses).  Broadband ISPs can play a major role in this, by issuing
cable/DSL/FIOS/whatever modems that support IPv6 (at least on the ISP
side), and making that the default.  IPv6 service *may* be cheaper
than IPv4 at this point, due to larger address supply.  (Anybody know
about relative pricing now?  I don't.)

 - Hardware and software makers offer more items supporting IPv6, and
more fully (in the popular parts), due to customer demand.

- Prices (hardware, software, and service) drop due to economy of
scale, and competition.  Soon, IPv6 should be at least not more
expensive than IPv4.  Eventually, it will probably be cheaper, though
I'm having a hard time articulating why I think this is so certain.
This will be the tipping point.

 - Businesses and homes start switching their ISP connection to IPv6.
Due to economic incentive, this should happen fairly quickly after the
previous item.

 - Businesses and homes start switching their *internal* networks to
IPv6, due to not wanting to support multiple styles of IP.  Some will
stay with IPv4 and NAT, some will go to IPv6 but still use NAT, and
some will use an external address per device.

 - Some ISPs stop offering IPv4.

 - IEFT declares IPv4 historic/obsolete/whatever.  My point is, I
don't think this point will come within the next "several" years, as
the preceding items put together will take longer than that.

 - More ISPs stop offering IPv4.

 - More homes and businesses stop using IPv4 internally, though still
probably not quite all.

 - US Government gets serious about requiring that products support
IPv6.  Maybe they'll also want stuff coded in Ada, too.  ;-)

-Dave

---

From: Steve Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 09:29:52 -0400

There are hundreds of millions of IPv4 computers and perhaps millions  
of individual IPv4 transport networks, large and small.

Here are some useful points along the way from pure IPv4 to pure IPv6.

A. Every new computer is able to talk IPv6

B. Every transport is able to talk IPv6, i.e. every network from tier  
1 ISPs down through wifi hot spots and every internal corporate network

C. Every major service, e.g. Google, CNN, Amazon, is reachable via IPv6

D. Every new computer is not able to talk IPv4

E. A substantial number of transports are unable to talk IPv4

F. A substantial number of major services are not directly accessible  
via IPv4 (but, of course, will be accessible via gateways)

I haven't included supporting details like DNS and gateways between  
IPv4 and IPv6.

We're basically at A.  Give some thought to the dates you'd assign to  
B through F.  Feel free to disagree that these are significant steps  
along the path, but if you do disagree, please propose other  
reasonable and measurable mark points.

I didn't include the bitter end of this process, i.e. the complete  
disappearances of IPv4.  If we get through steps A through F, the rest  
won't matter much.

I have trouble believing this will all happen in less than 20 years.   
I do not have trouble imagining it might take much longer.

I don't have any stake in the outcome.  It's fine with me if it  
happens faster.  However, the mechanisms for interoperability between  
IPv4 and IPv6 are still being worked out and the products to do the  
work, i.e. application gateways, are not yet plentiful.  Moreover,  
even when the first products appear, there's a long maturation cycle.   
As one example, two years ago the ICANN Security and Stability  
Advisory Committee (SSAC) looked at the products in the security area  
-- firewalls, etc. -- to see whether the feature sets for IPv6 were  
the same as for IPv4.  The good news was the products did actually  
support IPv6.  The bad news was the feature sets were noticeably poorer.

Our report, SAC 021, http://www.icann.org/committees/security/ 
sac021.pdf , concluded with:

> IP version 6 (IPv6) transport is not broadly supported by commercial  
> firewalls. On average,
> less than one in three products support IPv6 transport and security  
> features. Support among
> the firewall market share leaders improves this figure somewhat.
>
> Support for IPv6 transport and security services is available from  
> commercial firewalls for
> all market segments, however, availability of advanced security  
> features is lagging in
> SOHO and SMB segments and strongest in the LE/SP segment.
>
> Overall, relatively little support for IPv6 transport and security  
> features exists. However,
> some form of traffic inspection, event logging, and IP Security  
> (IPsecv6) are commonly
> available among products that support IPv6 transport and security  
> services.
>
> Internet firewalls are the most widely employed infrastructure  
> security technology today.
> With nearly two decades of deployment and evolution, firewalls are  
> also the most mature
> security technology used in the Internet. They are, however, one of  
> many security
> technologies commonly used by Internet-enabled and security-aware  
> organizations to
> mitigate Internet attacks and threats. This survey cannot  
> definitively answer the question,
> "Can an organization that uses IPv6 transport enforce a security  
> policy at a firewall that is
> commensurate to a policy currently supported when IPv4 transport is  
> used?" The survey
> results do suggest that an organization that adopts IPv6 today may  
> not be able duplicate
> IPv4 security feature and policy support.
>
> The observations and conclusions in this report are based on  
> collected survey results.
> Future studies should consider additional and deeper analyses of  
> security technology
> availability for IPv6. Such analyses are best performed by  
> certification laboratories and
> security assessment teams. Before attempting further testing and  
> analysis, the community
> must alter the perception among technology vendors in general (and  
> security vendors
> specifically) that the market is too small to justify IPv6 product  
> development.

The situation is probably better now, but I would guess there's still  
some distance to go.

Imagine the decision process for the CIO or network architect of a  
medium or large company.  A security policy exists and it's  
implemented with a collection of commercial products -- firewalls,  
routers, intrusion detection systems, etc. -- all configured and  
managed to support the company's security policy.  Further imagine the  
both the transport and the individual devices are all capable of  
supporting and using IPv6.  How quickly will the CIO or network  
architect decide that it's time to switch everyone over to IPv6?   
Among other things, he will likely want to make sure he can continue  
to implement the company's security policy.  As of two years ago, he  
couldn't buy products that would function at the same level.

IPv6 is definitely necessary and we should all do everything we can to  
move in that direction.  I'm just noting that even when IPv6 is widely  
available and in broad use, there will be a long tail before IPv4  
fades from the scene.

Steve

On Sep 17, 2009, at 2:36 AM, Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond wrote:

>> We're some distance away from deprecating IPv4.  Maybe 20 years,  
>> maybe  50 years.  For a very long time, IPv6 and IPv4 will co-exist.
>
> I mean, 50 years? That's like saying "computers will still run on  
> valves in 50 years' time" in 1950.
>
> Of course this is a matter of appreciation, and frankly, does it  
> really matter how long IPv4 will be around?
>

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:37:36 +0200

Steve,

My recollection was that there were barely ANY deployments of SNMPv3
when it was made a full standard and SNMPv1 was deprecated.  And again,
I think this discussion is academic.  So far as I can tell, given our
somewhat convoluted process, we don't even know how to deprecate v4.

Eliot

---

From: Jeff McAdams <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:16:26 -0400

Steve Crocker wrote:
> There are hundreds of millions of IPv4 computers and perhaps millions of 
> individual IPv4 transport networks, large and small.
> 
> B. Every transport is able to talk IPv6, i.e. every network from tier 1 
> ISPs down through wifi hot spots and every internal corporate network
> 

> We're basically at A.  Give some thought to the dates you'd assign to B 
> through F.  Feel free to disagree that these are significant steps along 
> the path, but if you do disagree, please propose other reasonable and 
> measurable mark points.

I think there's an additional step in there.  I'll call it C.5.

C.5.  Effectively all Internet resources are reachable via IPv6.

> disappearances of IPv4.  If we get through steps A through F, the rest 

I'd say that anything beyond my C.5 above won't matter much.

And once we reach C.5, the same incentives that pushed IPX, DECNET, etc. 
out of the picture will also push IPv4 out of the picture at about the 
same sort of rate.

Getting to C.5 is *hard*, clearly, but once there, I see IPv4 dieing off 
very quickly, probably in single-digit years.  But, like I said, it 
doesn't really matter at that point, just like getting rid of IPX et all 
really didn't matter to the health of the Internet, but it happened 
rather quickly in any case.

-- 
Jeff McAdams
[email-masked]

---

From: Gordon Lennox <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 17:12:13 +0200

2009/9/17 Steve Crocker <[email-masked]>:
> B. Every transport is able to talk IPv6, i.e. every network from tier 1 ISPs
> down through wifi hot spots and every internal corporate network

I would suggest C before B.

My machine has been able to "talk IPv6" for a long time. The more
recent changes have been related to the fact that it can now "talk
IPv6" in different environments. Give it IPv6 and it will use that.
Give it only a public IPv4 address and it will attempt 6to4. Give it a
private/NATted IPv4 address and it will do Teredo. For IPv6 to be
interesting I have to be able use it where I am.

And Google at least is already there...

And transport will follow. Some time back an ISP person asked me if
they should offer IPv6 - nobody was asking for it. I suggested that he
start by looking at how much tunneled IPv6 he was already carrying.

> F. A substantial number of major services are not directly accessible via
> IPv4 (but, of course, will be accessible via gateways)

Of course it would be nice for legacy services to remain accessible in
the same old way for a long, long time. But the reality is that a lot
of this business just does not work that way. I just do not expect
other people to invest in gateways for me.

But again that is not for tomorrow and maybe people will change.<g>

> Imagine the decision process for the CIO or network architect of a medium or
> large company.  A security policy exists and it's implemented with a
> collection of commercial products -- firewalls, routers, intrusion detection
> systems, etc. -- all configured and managed to support the company's
> security policy.  Further imagine the both the transport and the individual
> devices are all capable of supporting and using IPv6.  How quickly will the
> CIO or network architect decide that it's time to switch everyone over to
> IPv6?

But he will not decide to "switch everyone over". No enterprise-level
flag-day. The more interesting question for him is which bit of the
organisation he decides to enable first. And anyway some of them will
be still using IPv6 before then.

> IPv6 is definitely necessary and we should all do everything we can to move
> I'm just noting that even when IPv6 is widely available
> and in broad use, there will be a long tail before IPv4 fades from the
> scene.

I am not so sure about the relevance of the "long tail". Anybody on
this list using a laptop which is ten years old? Five years old? How
often to you renew bits of your home network? I of course don't know
where the tipping point is but I suspect that it could tip in fewer
years than one might have imagined. Still years. But less than ten
rather than more than twenty?

Gordon

---

From: Arnt Gulbrandsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 17:58:27 +0200

> I do not have trouble imagining it might take much longer.

There is one thing that makes me think it'll happen more quickly:

1. I assume that there'll be a market in IPv4 addresses.
2. And that people will want to tradel smallish blocks.
3. And that random ISPs won't be inclined to stop filtering small BGP 
announcements.
4. So, to combat point 3, IPv4 will be increasingly tunnelled, and 
thereby more fragile and unreliable than IPv6. Much like how the IPv6 
tunnels have made IPv6 unreliable and fragile in the past.

Arnt

---

From: Bill Manning <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 09:15:26 -0700

a standard does not deployment make.  There are networks still 
running DECNETpV, Chaosnet, X.25, and even XNS.   If there ever
is a time when IPv4 -not- running somewhere, it is likely to be
after 2038 - there is no "pure" IPv4 today and it is doubtful there
will ever be a "pure" IPv6 Internet.

--bill

On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 09:29:52AM -0400, Steve Crocker wrote:
> >Olivier MJ Cr?pin-Leblond, PhD

-- 
--bill

Opinions expressed may not even be mine by the time you read them, and
certainly don't reflect those of any other entity (legal or otherwise).

---

From: Dean Willis <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 12:35:42 -0500

On Sep 17, 2009, at 8:29 AM, Steve Crocker wrote:

> There are hundreds of millions of IPv4 computers and perhaps  
> millions of individual IPv4 transport networks, large and small.
>
> B. Every transport is able to talk IPv6, i.e. every network from  
> tier 1 ISPs down through wifi hot spots and every internal corporate  
> network
>
> F. A substantial number of major services are not directly  
> accessible via IPv4 (but, of course, will be accessible via gateways)
>

You've missed a couple of  key points:

* IETF declares IPv4 historical
* IETF declares IPv6 a full standard
* IETF further reduces focus on IPv4 in new protocol work (perhaps  
addressing it only through gateways?)
* IETF stops referencing IPv4 in new protocol work
* ... and probably a few more along these lines

These can arguably be done in several orders, and there's an open  
question as to how they interleave with your points.

Remember that the IETF cannot directly influence your checkpoints. The  
only ones we can really control are the ones that determine how the  
IETF behaves.

To paraphrase my friend who is a psychotherapist: "We can't control  
how the world feels about IPv6. At best, we can control how we feel  
about it."

--
Dean Willis

---

From: "Tony Hain" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:37:13 -0700

Steve,

I have no issue with your list of steps, other than it leaves out
significant cost factors related to the exhaustion of the IPv4 Free Pool,
and implies that each requires completion of the previous before it can
start. 

A) has been true for what people call 'computers' for a long time now (~5-6
years). The place that is lacking and being corrected during the 4G rollouts
is in the mobile handset space. 

B) is not strictly required, because most of them already tunnel IPv4 over
foo, so tunneling IPv6 over foo works fine and still means that the
transport network has no clue about what the clients are really doing. 

C) is the real problem child in the story here. Until someone in the LTE
space stands up and publicly says that the mobile eyeballs are going to be
connected IPv6-only, they have no motivation because they refuse to see the
costs of IPv4 rising. This is also where your list falls flat. As the pool
of freely available space is exhausted, the source of IPv4 addresses will be
eBay. The open market will decide what block sizes get traded, and all
historical controls over routing table size will vaporize. While the
engineering side of the house will whine about table growth and try to
maintain filters on prefix lengths, we saw in the CIDR deployment that the
business side of the house will win every time and engineering will be told
to "make it work". As the routing table grows at an unconstrained rate,
every major content provider will also have to deal with the costs to
upgrade their public facing routers. At the same time, to avoid paying
market price for IPv4 addresses, every ISP will be deploying multiple layers
of nat, increasing their cost and complexity, while breaking what few apps
their customers have that are able to work today by signaling the local cpe
based nat. This rising cost of maintaining IPv4 will be passed on to all
existing customers because doing otherwise would distort the pricing models
and drive potential customers away. 

D-F) are irrelevant, because it doesn't matter if a device/protocol/... can
speak IPv4 if it is not being provisioned that way due to cost constraints.
The LTE community as a whole has collectively decided that the economics of
provisioning IPv4 makes no sense, even though the handsets and
infrastructure could do it. 

While I agree there will be IPv4-only device around in 20 years (embedded
controllers die slowly), the majority of the world won't care because they
will live at the edge where local economics make different decisions. In the
public space, pricing will drive out IPv4 fairly quickly, and that only
accelerates as the end systems prefer IPv6 whenever it works. We have
already seen several instances of 5% traffic shift between the versions
overnight as AAAA records are added to DNS, and that is while it is still
fairly difficult to get ISPs to get out of the way and just let IPv6 work
even when they aren't actively supporting it. 

As the costs issues for maintaining IPv4 become widely understood, the
demand for fully functional IPv6 products will pick up, and the parity
issues you refer to will be resolved. It is unfortunate that most of the
world has chosen to be 'next-quarter' focused, so they won't see the problem
until it is acute, and then will be reacting in a panic. There was no need
for interworking gateways if the world has deployed dual-stack in parallel,
and moved the apps gracefully long before the ability to maintain IPv4
became costly. Unfortunately that didn't happen, so now the world is looking
for IPv6-only to IPv4-only solutions to deal with the results of their
shortsightedness, and it will be the most costly confusing mess of a
deployment one could possibly imagine. 

Either way, it is appropriate for the IETF to declare IPv4 to be historic,
and given how long it will take to decide what that means, we should start
now. I seriously doubt we could get consensus on that before 2015, but
waiting until then to start means it will be 2021 before we get past IPv4,
and the world will have long forgotten what the debate was about. IPv4 was a
fine experiment that escaped the lab, and now it is time to stand up and
tell the world that we need to move to a production version.

Tony

From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of
Steve Crocker
Sent: Thursday, September 17, 2009 6:30 AM
To: Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond
Cc: IETF Discussion
Subject: Re: IPv6 standard?

I haven't included supporting details like DNS and gateways between IPv4 and
IPv6.

We're basically at A.  Give some thought to the dates you'd assign to B
through F.  Feel free to disagree that these are significant steps along the
path, but if you do disagree, please propose other reasonable and measurable
mark points.

I didn't include the bitter end of this process, i.e. the complete
disappearances of IPv4.  If we get through steps A through F, the rest won't
matter much.

I have trouble believing this will all happen in less than 20 years.  I do
not have trouble imagining it might take much longer.

I don't have any stake in the outcome.  It's fine with me if it happens
faster.  However, the mechanisms for interoperability between IPv4 and IPv6
are still being worked out and the products to do the work, i.e. application
gateways, are not yet plentiful.  Moreover, even when the first products
appear, there's a long maturation cycle.  As one example, two years ago the
ICANN Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) looked at the
products in the security area -- firewalls, etc. -- to see whether the
feature sets for IPv6 were the same as for IPv4.  The good news was the
products did actually support IPv6.  The bad news was the feature sets were
noticeably poorer.  

Our report, SAC 021, http://www.icann.org/committees/security/sac021.pdf ,
concluded with:

Support for IPv6 transport and security services is available from
commercial firewalls for
all market segments, however, availability of advanced security features is
lagging in
SOHO and SMB segments and strongest in the LE/SP segment.

Overall, relatively little support for IPv6 transport and security features
exists. However,
some form of traffic inspection, event logging, and IP Security (IPsecv6)
are commonly
available among products that support IPv6 transport and security services.

Internet firewalls are the most widely employed infrastructure security
technology today.
With nearly two decades of deployment and evolution, firewalls are also the
most mature
security technology used in the Internet. They are, however, one of many
security
technologies commonly used by Internet-enabled and security-aware
organizations to
mitigate Internet attacks and threats. This survey cannot definitively
answer the question,
"Can an organization that uses IPv6 transport enforce a security policy at a
firewall that is
commensurate to a policy currently supported when IPv4 transport is used?"
The survey
results do suggest that an organization that adopts IPv6 today may not be
able duplicate
IPv4 security feature and policy support.

The observations and conclusions in this report are based on collected
survey results.
Future studies should consider additional and deeper analyses of security
technology
availability for IPv6. Such analyses are best performed by certification
laboratories and
security assessment teams. Before attempting further testing and analysis,
the community
must alter the perception among technology vendors in general (and security
vendors
specifically) that the market is too small to justify IPv6 product
development.

The situation is probably better now, but I would guess there's still some
distance to go.

IPv6?  Among other things, he will likely want to make sure he can continue

IPv6 is definitely necessary and we should all do everything we can to move
in that direction.  I'm just noting that even when IPv6 is widely available
and in broad use, there will be a long tail before IPv4 fades from the
scene.

Steve

Kindest regards,

Olivier

---

From: Steve Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 19:06:56 -0400

Tony,

Thanks for your comments.  I guess I don't understand the nominal  
criteria for declaring something to be historic.  I assumed it was  
when it was no longer in common use, but I gather from your comments  
and others that it's sometimes used as a leading edge, i.e. to lead  
people toward tapering off the usage.

Re the metrics and milestones I listed, even though I used a lettered  
sequence, I did not mean to imply they had to happen in that order.   
Each could have its own date, and the dates might not be strictly  
increasing.

Nor would I insist on those specific metrics, even though they seem  
good to me.

The main point I wanted to make is that bringing IPv6 into full use  
and advancing the associated specifications along the standards track  
did not, at least for me, imply deprecating IPv4 standards.  In  
practice, the two technologies are going to co-exist for quite a  
while.  Today, one can pretty much count on IPv4 connectivity around  
the world, and one can also count on being to reach almost any service  
(Google, Amazon, CNN, etc.) via IPv4.  What's the estimated date when  
those two statements stop being true?  Even if you tighten the  
criterion to using native IPv4 transport, i.e. not tunneled via IPv6,  
I believe it will be many, many years before the general IPv4 fabric  
starts showing any significant rips and tears.

Steve

On Sep 17, 2009, at 6:37 PM, Tony Hain wrote:

> millions of
> tier 1 ISPs
> accessible via
> IPv4 and
> happens
> features is
> features
> (IPsecv6)
> also the
> many
> used?"
> not be
> analysis,
> medium or
> maybe  50

---

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:19:09 -0600

Steve Crocker <steve at shinkuro dot com> wrote:

> while.

And in fact, tying the "success" of IPv6 to the complete demise of IPv4 
seems like a sure-fire way to guarantee that IPv6 will never be declared 
a "success."

--
Doug Ewell  |  Thornton, Colorado, USA  |  http://www.ewellic.org
RFC 5645, 4645, UTN #14  |  ietf-languages @ http://is.gd/2kf0s

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 06:35:12 +0200

> And in fact, tying the "success" of IPv6 to the complete demise of
> IPv4 seems like a sure-fire way to guarantee that IPv6 will never be
> declared a "success."
>
> -

That's right!  It needs no help in failing all on its own!

;-)

---

From: Arnt Gulbrandsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 10:15:15 +0200

Steve Crocker writes:
> Today, one can pretty much count on IPv4 connectivity around  the 
> world, and one can also count on being to reach almost any service  
> those two statements stop being true?

When colo vendors start renting 6-only servers cheaper than 4+6 servers. 
Amazon and other well-known servers will still provide IPv4, but a 
first few game servers and private/secret warez depots will not.

Arnt
(original ftp admin of the great warez site langnese.nvg.unit.no)

---

From: "Tony Hain" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 12:00:42 -0700

> people toward tapering off the usage.

I have no expectation that anything the IETF says will in any way impact
usage. What I would hope is that we can stop wasting IESG time on new warts
to keep IPv4 running, when it should be clear that just creates a bigger
mess to clean up, besides being more expensive than just moving on. 

> Nor would I insist on those specific metrics, even though they seem

They are certainly the metrics I frequently get asked about, along with 'how
much IPv6 traffic is there?', but people are fundamentally resistant to
change, and readily take the position of 'I will wait until metric X has
been passed before starting'. We have been stuck in that mode for 10 years,
and the only way to get out is for people to recognize that the change is
imminent and inevitable so they will stop waiting for others to go first. 

> did not, at least for me, imply deprecating IPv4 standards.  

I agree those are separable events, and the only reason they have come
together in time is that the IPv6 to full standard event has been delayed to
the end of useful IPv4.

> In

At the edge absolutely... In the core, economics would argue otherwise.

> Today, one can pretty much count on IPv4 connectivity around

Well depending on how you define 'reach a service', it stopped being true
when 1918 was published, and has only gotten worse over time. As a simple
example, at a hotel in Sydney I was unable to get to the IPv4 address for
the IPv6-over-IPv4 tunnel service because the hotel was blocking UDP for one
mode, and I was only being offered a private IPv4 address which prevented
the other mode. Yes I could get to cnn.com over IPv4, but as I told the help
desk when they said I didn't need IPv6; "I get my email via IPv6, and
preventing access to specific IPv4 services while actively avoiding IPv6
deployment is a denial of service attack by the ISP". 

When will the major content providers stop offering IPv4 access? As soon as
the traffic level drops below the nominal value relative to the cost of
continuing to support it. As ISPs offer native IPv6 to their customers,
OS-X, W7, current *nix will just use it and stop using IPv4 for sites that
offer both. This will result in a substantial and rapid shift, so economics
would argue for a relatively short timeframe where both are offered. This is
not an issue of how long it will take for users to choose to move, because
they should never know it happened. As soon as a AAAA shows up, the IPv4
traffic should stop from every IPv6 capable client. Native connectivity
makes that service better, but should not be required as long as the ISP is
not getting in the way of the tunneling functionality.

> Even if you tighten the

We can agree to disagree over this point, as it has been steadily chipped
away at by nat at the edge, and will be seriously shattered as the
currently-in-high-demand CarrierGradeNat devices get rolled out over the
coming 12 months. Yes the core of BGP will still exist for many years to
come, and I believe we will see a working routing system at > 1M entries in
the DFZ, so you could declare the 'IPv4 fabric' intact, but from a 'service
viability' perspective we are long past the point of no return.

Tony

> > Our report, SAC 021,
> http://www.icann.org/committees/security/sac021.pdf
> >  ,
> > concluded with:
> >
> collected

---

From: Masataka Ohta <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 19 Sep 2009 05:00:00 +0900

Steve Crocker wrote:
 
> Today, 
> one can pretty much count on IPv4 connectivity around  the world, and 
> one can also count on being to reach almost any service  (Google, 
> Amazon, CNN, etc.) via IPv4.  What's the estimated date when  those two 
> statements stop being true?

That's not a true problem. The problem is that, IPv6 only server can
be reached by IPv4 only clients only through legacy NAT between IPv4
and IPv6, which practically means that IPv6 only servers can offer
services which dose not require end to end transparency.

So, there is no need to deploy IPv6 merely because it will restore the
end to end transparency.

On the other hand, with NAT, which can be end to end transparent,
IPv4 capable servers can be reached by IPv4 only clients, optionaly
with end to end transparency.

							Masataka Ohta

---

From: "Tony Hain" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 14:48:13 -0700

> with end to end transparency.

Nat is not end to end 'transparent' no matter how you define it, and will
break all the stuff you claim works when it is operated by a third party.
Nat in the core will be nothing like nat at the edge, and all the
assumptions people make about how wonderful life would be with 'just more
nat' are going to end up wondering how to get rid of the CGN mess once it
gets deployed. 

Be careful what you wish for, it just might come true...
Tony

---

From: Masataka Ohta <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 19 Sep 2009 14:02:46 +0900

> Nat is not end to end 'transparent' no matter how you define it, 

I did think so. So, I tried to prove so directly from the end
to end argument of Saltzer, Reed and Clark only to find out that
NAT can be end to end transparent. See draft-ohta-e2e-nat-00.txt.

NAT is end to end transparent, if a NAT GW translates destination
address (and IP checksum, but not port nor transport checksum) of
incoming packets and end hosts translate the address back to the
original. The packet is now identical to the original packet
in the public Internet and integrity of transport checksum is
restored.

After the reverse translation, the NAT is equivalent to port-wise
routing (an end host is identified and located not only by an
address but also by a port number) and is obviously end to end
transparent.

Like port-wise routing, end hosts must restrict port numbers
they use to those assigned to them, of course (in_pcb.c (and
more if you want to use SCTP) needs to be modified).

> and will

The stuff works, unless the stuff requires fixed port numbers not
assigned to end hosts, which is no different from port-wise routing.

For example, end to end NAT is implemented and ftp active mode with
PORT commands is working with it.

> Nat in the core will be nothing like nat at the edge,

They are same, as long as end to end NAT is used and end hosts are
informed of NAT configuration information (shared public addresses
and port number range of the end hosts etc.).

> the CGN mess

Fully agreed.

						Masataka Ohta

---

From: "Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2009 11:05:02 +0200

Steve et al.

thank you for your interesting comments. Being some kind of IPv6 
"evangelist", I'll admit it, I do need to gain a feeling of points of view 
from people who are in the know, and the range of replies in this short 
thread has been interesting indeed.

"Steve Crocker" <[email-masked]> wrote:

> The main point I wanted to make is that bringing IPv6 into full use  and 
> advancing the associated specifications along the standards track  did 
> not, at least for me, imply deprecating IPv4 standards.  In  practice, the 
> two technologies are going to co-exist for quite a  while.

The matter came up in an IPv6 discussion ISOC Chapters teleconference call 
last night. We reached a burning question which nobody could answer 
factually:

Is a dual stack IPv4-IPv6 likely to be more unstable than pure IPv4 or pure 
IPv6?

The rationale behind this comes from the consumer's point of view. If a 
consumer has problems using Internet services after turning on IPv6 on their 
computer, they are likely to blame IPv6 for the fault and to turn off IPv6 
altogether, thus slowing down adoption.
I've heard countless anecdotal stories of that happening, and I wonder 
whether anybody could point me to a source of information, some kind of 
repository of anectodal or researched evidence of problems encountered when 
turning to dual stack IPv4/IPv6.

With such problems being encountered with dual stack, would it make sense to 
deprecating IPv4 standards ASAP in order to shorten the time for use of dual 
stack and this shorten the likelyhood of consumers being turned off IPv6?
Or on the other hand, do you think that the dual stack problems are only 
small quirks which will be ironed out in time and a stable dual stack 
IPv4/IPv6 system will soon be possible across all devices?

Kindest regards,

Olivier

---

From: Bill Manning <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2009 03:25:49 -0700

> Is a dual stack IPv4-IPv6 likely to be more unstable than pure IPv4 or pure 

	Empirical evidence (as documented in the network operational
	lists over the past 10 years) indicates that dual stack is 
	clearly more unstable.

	about 3 years ago, I moved my entire dual-stack network to
	single stack (v6) - with two exceptions... the IVI gateway
	and the DNS/DHCP server.

--bill

---

From: IETF Member Dave Aronson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2009 09:24:31 -0400

> Is a dual stack IPv4-IPv6 likely to be more unstable than pure IPv4 or pure

Just from a pure software-engineering standpoint, with no reference to
the stability of current stacks nor the exact tasks at hand, it seems
quite likely.  More code, doing more stuff, generally means more
things that can go wrong.

-Dave

---

From: Mark Andrews <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2009 23:51:49 +1000

In message <[email-masked]>, IETF M
> things that can go wrong.

It also depends on how you turn it on.   If you only have local
IPv6 connectivity it is more problematic than if you have global
IPv6 connectivity.

Dual stack also tends to discovers all the applications which really
don't support connecting to multi-homed machines correctly.  This is
more true when you only have local connectivity.

That being said I've run dual stack for the last 5 years without
much in the way of problems.  My IPv6 connectivity is a tunnel
across the Pacific and when the tunnel goes down about the only
thing I notice is slower connections which would probably go if I
was to run a routing protocol over the tunnel.

Mark
 
-- 
Mark Andrews, ISC
1 Seymour St., Dundas Valley, NSW 2117, Australia
PHONE: +61 2 9871 4742                 INTERNET: [email-masked]

---

From: Masataka Ohta <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Sep 2009 08:52:43 +0900

Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond wrote:

> Being some kind of IPv6 
> "evangelist", I'll admit it, I do need to gain a feeling of points of 
> view from people who are in the know, and the range of replies in this 
> short thread has been interesting indeed.

Given that IPv4 address space can be extended with port numbers
still preserving the end to end transparency, why do you insist
on IPv6?

> With such problems being encountered with dual stack, would it make 
> sense to deprecating IPv4 standards ASAP in order to shorten the time 
> for use of dual stack and this shorten the likelyhood of consumers being 
> turned off IPv6?

Not at all. Instead, deprecating IPv6 makes sense.

							Masataka Ohta

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 24 Sep 2009 01:28:18 +0000

Just for the record, I continue to object to / humbly disagree with Mssr. Ohta's position.

While the case for "transparent NAT" may be valid, I believe IPv6 to also be a valid and valuable technology for the continued growth and expansion of the Internet.  

(Even eliding the amount of change required to implement "e2e NAT", and how this comes close to the amount of work (in many regards) as deploying IPv6, w/o all of the same capabilities.)

And FWIW, I also continue to believe 'the world' agrees with IPv6 being 'the solution' ... Based not upon current traffic volumes (of course), but rather the number of deployments I know are happening now'ish (6 large carriers that I have personal experience with in North America ... Including a few of the largest 'residential ISPs' in the US.  This reinforces my belief that not only is IPv6 in little to no danger of being deprecated, but that in fact the opposite is (yes, finally) happening.  And not to mention (ahem) 'little content providers', like Google ... Or the US federal govt's re-invigorated push towards IPv6 ... )

/TJ
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

-----Original Message-----
From: Masataka Ohta <[email-masked]>

Date: Thu, 24 Sep 2009 08:52:43 
To: Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond<[email-masked]>
Cc: 'IETF Discussion'<[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: IPv6 standard?

							Masataka Ohta

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:37:40 +1200

On 2009-09-23 21:05, Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond wrote:
...
> 
> Is a dual stack IPv4-IPv6 likely to be more unstable than pure IPv4 or
> pure IPv6?

Apart from the software engineering principle that more of almost
anything is less reliable, there is a specific problem that if your
computer believes it has IPv6 connectivity, but actually doesn't,
*and* if your DNS service returns AAAA records, then you will see
long delays in connecting to dual-stack servers while the application
tries IPv6, times out, and finally tries IPv4.

But of course some sort of flag waving exercise such as deprecating
RFC 791 would have no effect on this in the real world. Running out
of IPv4 addresses, and discovering that both nested NAT and port-based
address sharing are horrible, will do it for us.

   Brian

---

From: Masataka Ohta <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Sep 2009 13:51:08 +0900

[email-masked] wrote:

> While the case for "transparent NAT" may be valid,

A+P and other technologies may also have end to end transparency.

> I believe IPv6 to also be a valid and valuable technology forthe
> continued growth and expansion of the Internet.  

> (Even eliding the amount of change required to implement "e2e NAT",

FYI, end to end NAT is already implemented and is running (several
hundreds lines of code, essential part of which is 10 lines for
forward/reverse translation and 100 lines for port number restriction).

Because end to end NAT can be implemented with upward compatibility
to legacy NAT, it can be deployed smoothly. NAT GW may be upgraded
to end to end NAT, which is not visible to legacy end hosts. End
hosts may be upgraded, which will start working after an end to
end NAT gateway is installed.

> and how this comes close to the amount of work (in many regards)
> as deploying IPv6, w/o all of the same capabilities.)

If it comes close to, it means it has failed totally, just as the
amount of effort to deploy IPv6 is an evidence that IPv6 deployment
has totally failed. As for capabilities, IPv6 is no better than IPv4
(with or without end to end NAT).

> And FWIW, I also continue to believe 'the world' agrees with IPv6
> being 'the solution' ... Based not upon current traffic volumes
> (of course), but rather the number of deployments

IPv6 failed because of lack of not only deployments but also
an essential feature.

The objectives of IPng are to extend address space and to aggregate
routing table aggressively.

However, as has discussed recently on renumbering, IPv6 lacks the
capability of renumbering, which makes aggressive aggregation
impossible.

> Or the US federal govt's re-invigorated push towards IPv6 ...

Do you know that USG pushed towards CLNP?

						Masataka Ohta

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:56:36 +0000

Masataka - yes, you have voiced your e2e arguments - thank you for your work.

We obviously disagree here, on a fundamental basis.  I (and many others) disagree that IPv6 'has failed' and are in fact aggressively deploying it *right now* (across a spectrum of ISPs, content providers, enterprises).  

WRT aggregation, PI space excepted, there is an IPv6 advantage - the allocations are large enough (the more bits part) and meant to be expandable (policy) so you wouldn't need 31 non-aggregatable /16 blocks (real world example, BTW) - you would have one block.

Anyway, I question the value of us going back and forth (again) as we both believe we are right.

Yes, GOSIP was a now-laughable effort ... 

/TJ 

-----Original Message-----

Date: Fri, 25 Sep 2009 13:51:08 
To: <[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: IPv6 standard?

						Masataka Ohta

---

From: Masataka Ohta <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Sep 2009 21:47:28 +0900

> Masataka - yes, you have voiced your e2e arguments - thank you for

Thank you for your acknowledgment that you can't voice against my
work.

> We obviously disagree here, on a fundamental basis.  I (and many
> others) disagree that IPv6 'has failed' and are in fact
> aggressively deploying it *right now*

It has been so for more than these 10 years. So, maybe, within next
100 years, IPv6 maybe fully deployed.

> WRT aggregation, PI space excepted, there is an IPv6 advantage
> - the allocations are large enough (the more bits part)

You obviously don't understand the fundamental problem against
route aggregation, which is multi-homing, against which large
allocation size is of no help.

> Yes, GOSIP was a now-laughable effort ... 

Thank you again for let us remember the true meaning of governmental
support.

But, IPv6 has been laughed at for more than 10 years.

							Masataka Ohta

---

From: "Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 2009 00:26:11 +0200

> 100 years, IPv6 maybe fully deployed.

History will tell. For the sake of saving IETF list readers from another 100 
(repetitive) posts on the subject, shall we mutually agree to continue this 
discussion 10 years from now?

Kind regards,

---

From: Arnt Gulbrandsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:34:08 +0200

There is another question, which isn't nearly as thoroughly discussed.

Clearly, IPv4 processes are allocated as part of a number of different 
processes. Chain X opens the 16001st outlet and wants that to have 
exactly the same computer/network setup there as in other 16000. Telco 
Y adds another UMTS customer and needs another IP address for that. And 
so on, and so forth.

Once there aren't any more IPv4 addresses (on terms acceptable to the 
people involved) these processes have to change in some way. I'm not 
interested in _how_ they have to change. My question now is instead: 
What are the processes that are responsible for most allocation at the 
moment? Has anyone surveyed that?

Arnt

---

From: Behcet Sarikaya <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 2009 08:21:28 -0700 (PDT)

----- Original Message ----

> To: [email-masked]
> Cc: [email-masked]
> Sent: Friday, September 25, 2009 7:47:28 AM

Why not set a flag date? 
Setting the flag date together with Y2K would have solved this problem years ago.

> But, IPv6 has been laughed at for more than 10 years.

Not sure how the late Itojun would have reacted to this remark.

--behcet

---

From: "Tony Hain" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 2009 10:13:12 -0700

Arnt,

Look at http://www.nro.net/ for the current process. Look at
http://www.ebay.com/ for the process once the IANA & RIR pools are
allocated. There are misguided fantasy discussions about controlling the
market in the RIR context, but given that their charters explicitly say that
they make no statement about the utility or routing of any allocation, they
have absolutely no leverage on whatever transactions a market might produce.
Look to the CIDR deployment filtering wars to see that the business side of
each ISP will beat down the technical side every time, so expect that the
routing system will routinely carry /28-29 IPv4 prefixes in a few years.

Tony

> Arnt Gulbrandsen
> Sent: Monday, September 28, 2009 5:34 AM
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: IPv4 addresses eaten by... what? (was: IPv6 standard)
>

---

From: Danny McPherson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 2009 12:48:21 -0600

> have absolutely no leverage on whatever transactions a market might  

Since we're in the process of providing references, look at
how the work in the SIDR WG might be leveraged to invalidate
this statement in the future.

-danny

---

From: "Tony Hain" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 2009 12:29:31 -0700

Exactly how far into the future???

Secure Inter-Domain Routing (sidr)
Last Modified: 2009-04-02 
...
Goals and Milestones: 
... 
Aug 2007    Evaluate progress, recharter with new goals or shutdown  

Seems that progress is glacial even by the WG's own plans, while the burn
rate on IPv4 remains on its accelerated rate. The WG should really be shut
down, because by the time work completes, products are built & shipped,
deployments happen, and inter-provider agreements worked out, we will be
long passed the end of the IPv4 free pool. What is the point of developing a
lock once the horse has left the barn?

Tony

> Danny McPherson
> Sent: Monday, September 28, 2009 11:48 AM
> To: IETF Discussion
> Subject: Re: IPv4 addresses eaten by... what? (was: IPv6 standard)
> 
>

---

From: Shane Kerr <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 10:19:12 +0200

Tony,

[top-posting since that's what you did]

AIUI, the intention is not for the RIRs to be "controlling the market",
but rather to provide the same value they do now: a location where I can
see who is responsible for a given address.

I think the RIRs all have a transfer policy now. So when a prefix is
sold, what amounts to a transfer of deed needs to happen, the same as if
you buy or otherwise acquire land. This is not control of IP sales any
more than the local town deed registry controls the real estate market.

--
Shane

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:30:49 +0200

Shane,

It's been clear to me for a while that the RIRs have conflicting goals,
and they interpret that conflict in differing ways, based on their
respective memberships' input.  Just in case others are interested (I'm
fairly certain that Shane and Tony already know), there is a mailing
list for each of the RIRs, and let me point out that the policies
involved have been and will be debated ad infinitum on those lists.

For those interested,

RIPE:

http://www.ripe.net/ripe/wg/address-policy/

ARIN:

http://lists.arin.net/mailman/listinfo/arin-ppml

APNIC:

http://www.apnic.net/community/participate/join-discussions

LACNIC:

http://www.lacnic.net/en/lists/

AFRINIC:

https://lists.afrinic.net/mailman/listinfo.cgi/rpd

Eliot