Date: Sat, 3 Feb 2001 23:56:17 -0800 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Cliff Sarginson" <cliff@raggedclown.net> Cc: "Tim McMillen" <timcm@umich.edu>, "G D McKee" <freebsd@gdmckee.com>, "freebsd-questions" <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: IP6 Message-ID: <006801c08e7f$f3e907a0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <20010203215937.A5437@raggedclown.net>
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Hmmm... Now why do you want one for your cat? Don't roaming users generally use DHCP? ;-) I'm not holding my breath to see IPv6 implemented. It seems that every decade has some fantastic networking technology that everyone is going to switch to. 20 years ago it was the ill-fated ISO protocols. A lot of people put a lot of impressive work into it, they all use the technology as great material to write doctoral dissertations and thesises with, we generate a bunch of PhD's, and then after 10 years it becomes obvious that the new technology isn't going to happen and people all lose interest and start working on something else. People tend to forget that the strength of backwards compatibility in large networks is so powerful that you can still take a telephone that was produced 100 years ago, attach it to a modular jack, and plug it into the phone network and get dialtone. IPv6 has a tremendous achilles heel that is so large most people forget it is there. It is simply that the single most major argument to moving to it is that it will allow everything, such as your toaster, microwave, coffee mug, and cat, to have an IP number assigned to it. There is an implicit assumption by it's designers that everyone _with_ and IP number just automatically wants a _public_ IP number. Thus, a crisis exists because the supply of IPv4 numbers is obviously finite. However, if you look at the assumption that everything with an IP number actually needs a public, reachable IP number, I think you will find that it's very, very shaky. With current trends in security, people are actively working out ways to _avoid_ this very thing. From running NAT overloaded onto a single public IP number, to PPP-over-TCP in the cable modem crowd, to PPP-over-ATM on the DSL crowd, the trend is to either assign devices private numbers or to not permanently assign them numbering at all. Once you take away the assumption that everything that's TCP/IP needs a public IP number, it almost totally guts all reasoning to switch to a new IP numbering system. Instead, there are tremendous compelling arguments for organizations to implement IP number conservation. Consider that companies like Microsoft have entire class B public subnets assigned to them. Yet, do you really think that most of the 60 thousand IP numbers that this subnet represents are actually reachable from the Internet? Of course they aren't. It's highly unlikely that Microsoft has more than 200-300 devices that are authorized to accept incoming TCP connections initiated from hosts on the Internet. All they really need is a couple of legal class C subnets assigned to them and they can put the rest of their systems behind a NAT/firewall. And considering how embarassing some of their recent break-in's are, they better be thinking like this if they know what's good for them. Today, ARIN is charging the equivalent of 15 cents a year per IP number for organizations like Microsoft. For the average Internet user at home behind a DSL line that's a static IP number, this is nothing. There's a tremendous amount of room for improvement here. If Arin raised the cost to $10.00 per year per IP number, and the ISP's all passed the cost along to their users, this would still represent nothing to that DSL user with a static IP number. But, it would jump the cost of holding on to that class B from a miserable $5K a year to over $600,000.00 a year. This would result in tremendous IP number conservation by the organizations that are the worst abusers, and it would solve the problem of a shortage of IPv4 numbers. Switching to IPv6 will mandate a costly renumber by everyone. Raising the price of IP numbers will only mandate a costly renumber by the worst abusers, the people that efficiently utilize IP numbers won't be punished. (because they will be able to pass along the cost to the end users) Either way you do it, the abusers are going to have to renumber, if they aren't on private IP numbering. The problem with these engineers that dreamed up IPv6 is they are living with a 20-year old image of the Internet where IP numbering was free and anyone who wanted to plug in could do so, and everyone wanted to make love to everyone else. Well, the Internet was like this back in the days of NSF-net when the US Government was paying the bills but it ain't like that today. The Internet is a commercial network now and you can't make engineering decisions on it that don't take into account business and commercial issues, such as Return on Investment and least cost solutions. We aren't going to see IPv6 stuffed down our throats until the cost of IP numbering becomes a significant part of doing business, and at the rate that Arin (and the other numbering registries) are going, I'm going to be an old man with my beard down into my boots before that happens. Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com > -----Original Message----- > From: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG > [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of Cliff Sarginson > Sent: Saturday, February 03, 2001 1:00 PM > To: Ted Mittelstaedt > Cc: Tim McMillen; G D McKee; freebsd-questions > Subject: Re: IP6 > > > On Sat, Feb 03, 2001 at 12:44:58PM -0800, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: > > I support IPv6 wholeheartedly! I just got word that > > the parties responsible for it have agreed to renumber the > > ten thousand some-odd IP addresses that I'm responsible for! > > > > Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com > > Yippee ! I want one for my toaster, my microwave, my cat, > my coffee mug .. pleeze.. > > Cliff > > p.s. I am reading (and enjoying) your book, a few constructive > comments will be winging their way when I finish it... > > > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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