On Wed, 28 Apr 2010 17:04:25 -0500 Dave Pooser <dave.nanog@alfordmedia.com> wrote:
IPv6's fundamental goal is to restore end-to-end.
For some. For many, IPv6's fundamental goal is to keep doing what we've been doing without running out of addresses. The fact that the two camps have orthogonal goals is probably part of the reason the rate of growth on IPv6 is so slow.
Well they should realise that end-to-end is what made the Internet the success in the first place. On the Original Internet, when you had an IP address, one moment you could be a client, another you could be a server, or another you could be a peer - or you could be any or all three roles at the same time. What role you wanted to play was completely and absolutely up to you - no third parties to ask permission of, no router upgrades involved. You just started the (client/server/peer-to-peer) software, and off you went. The applications exist at the edge of the Internet - in the software operating on the end-nodes. The Internet itself is supposed to be a dumb, best effort packet transport between the edges - nothing more. That is why the Original Internet was good at running any application you threw at it, including new ones - because it never cared what those applications were. It just tried to do it's job of getting packets from edge sources to edge destinations, regardless of what was in them.