P.S. At this point, the IPv6 transition has failed, unlike the Y2K transition, and
For certain values of "fail." The odds of a dual-stack transition as initially envisioned by the IETF are vanishingly small, but IPv6 will be a significant part of the coping strategies once RIRs allocate their last blocks of IPv4.
it'd be interesting to hear michael's reasoning behind 'transition has failed' (to me at least). I agree it doesn't seem like it's moved along as anyone would (aside from Todd) have hoped, but it is moving along.
In January 2000, there was no IT crisis as the result of Y2K rollover. A few companies had a few problems that were mostly sorted out within days. With IPv6, I believe that after IPv4 exhaustion we will have an unavoidable period of chaos that will affect a large number of ISPs of all sizes. The window of opportunity for being well-prepared has been missed. In fact, some of the fallout from this will impact ISPs who have done a lot of preparation, for instance vendors who haven't implemented IPv6 support because so few customers were asking for it.
Currently the only real alternative to ipv6 at the end-user (in ~2yrs) will be giant-CGN-NAT-things or ... that's about it :(
Middleboxes mean increased instability, higher support costs, and wierd problems where customers can't reach a site even though the middlebox is handling traffic correctly, because too many users are sharing the same IP address and it is triggering some kind of traffic shaping at the other end. Middleboxes are a symptom of failure since they force operators to pay for the middleboxes, for training staff on how to operate and scale them, for customer support, and still pay for the normal native IPv6 transition. It will hurt the longer term balance sheet for anyone who is forced down that road, when compared to their competitors who don't have to implement as many or as complex middleboxes.
I don't think we'll have (nor would we have in 2005 even) gotten an ipv7/8/9/10 up and spec'd/coded/wrung-out before ~2 yrs from now either. So, given the cards we have, ipv6 isn't all bad.
On this we agree. The problem is not IPv6, it is the failure to deploy IPv6 soon enough. Not enough trained people, not enough testing, not enough bugs shaken out. --Michael Dillon