On Thu, 28 Jun 2007 12:23:30 -0700 brett watson <brett@the-watsons.org> wrote:
On Jun 28, 2007, at 11:44 AM, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
Whatever -- it exists as a reasonably stable design; starting over would cost us 15 more years that we just don't have.)
Are you saying we (collectively) would take yet *another* 15 years to come up with another and/or better design?
Not so much to design it as to reach this point of maturity. More precisely, I don't see any reason why it would take significantly less. In fact, it can't take much less, no matter what. Figure two years for the basic design, 3-5 years for the IETF (or whomever) to engineer all the pieces (it's more than just the IP header, and until we have a new design we won't even be able to start identifying the pieces), 3 years for design/code/test (in the NANOG world, that includes new ASICs, line cards, etc.), and 3-5 years for much existing gear (routers, end systems, etc.) to be replaced with the IPvN stuff. That adds up to 11-15. I have a lot of confidence in those figures; if anything, I suspect that I'm being too optimistic. IPv6 isn't what I wanted it to be (and I was on the IPng directorate). That said, it's what we have, and I think we *really* need something with a lot more address space. --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb