RE: When IPv6 ... if ever?
| The bottom-line appears that everyone is waiting for everyone else to | twitch first, then the shoot-out starts. However, no one is all that | interested in twitching. Also, nobody is willing to get shot! The deployment of IPv6 is going to be EXPENSIVE in terms of real opex and probably real capex as well, it IS going to be visible on the bottom line of every ISP on the planet, eroding whatever margins one has. I can't see the deployment of IPv6 *ever* leading to any but the shortest-term revenue upside (if even that), therefore until the entire aggregate gross revenue of transit-providing ISPs up and down the entire food-chain is threatened, nobody will be deploying v6. The only alternative scenario I can think of is the deployment of IPv6 by a large provider who believes it can trigger a huge consolidation by pushing smaller ISPs it is competing with into an expensive deployment through sheer hype. I am inclined to believe that the second thinking is the REAL reason behind the recent announcements by a monopolistic and internationally expanding ISP in Asia that they will do an aggressive IPv6 deployment. | The real question is whom is benefiting from sustaining the current | situation? Everyone who wants cheap, sustainable Internet transit, with the continuation of plummeting prices combined with soaring available bandwidths. Introducing a whole new protocol requiring massive global operational changes is going to push up consumer prices and stall on investment in available bandwidths. There are only so many people and dollars out there, and one or the other is inevitably spread pretty thin in the current market. The scariest thing to an IPv6-Lover is that an early deployment is not to anyone's advantage because untili there is real uptake by a sizable number of ISPs, the exact changes required on the dynamic routing side are simply not obvious, although the fact that the two protocols will run ships in the night is (e.g. www.microsoft.com works just fine with IPv6 but you see a blackhole with IPv4. ftp.cdrom.com's IPv6 path is much slower and lossier from where your customer is than ftp.cdrom.com's IPv4 path. have fun finding and fixing the square of the number of problems you observe now, kids!) In other words, it's all risk and absolutely no reward, and until it really honestly IS impossible to do hacks around the IPv4 shortage, nobody will deploy IPv6. Now, ironically, in the whole IPv6 selection process in the IETF, there were multiple proposals which paid a considerable amount of attention to the problems of partial, incremental deployment at the initial design level. CATNIP in particular was clever, because it provided not just a new packet format (which is all IPv6 did), but also a strategy to transition to practically ANY new packet format, should the initial assumptions about the pervasiveness of IPX and CLNP be wrong (which they were). IPv6's initial assumptions are WRONG (we will die from routing dynamicism long before we die of IPv4 address depletion), and there is NO mechanism whatsoever to abandon the IPv6 packet format even at the primitive level of curiosity-based microdeployment we see now. Who will take the chance of a huge investment in managing IPv6 deployment, when it is not a given that IPv6 really will be the header networks will use after IPv4? We're talking about stranded assets being the only thing one gets for the money... Sean.
smd@clock.org wrote:
| The bottom-line appears that everyone is waiting for everyone else to | twitch first, then the shoot-out starts. However, no one is all that | interested in twitching.
Also, nobody is willing to get shot!
The deployment of IPv6 is going to be EXPENSIVE in terms of real opex and probably real capex as well, it IS going to be visible on the bottom line of every ISP on the planet, eroding whatever margins one has.
I can't see the deployment of IPv6 *ever* leading to any but the shortest-term revenue upside (if even that), therefore until the entire aggregate gross revenue of transit-providing ISPs up and down the entire food-chain is threatened, nobody will be deploying v6.
The only alternative scenario I can think of is the deployment of IPv6 by a large provider who believes it can trigger a huge consolidation by pushing smaller ISPs it is competing with into an expensive deployment through sheer hype.
<snip>
Sean.
What about wireless IP? Isn't everyone supposed to be forced to adopt IPv6 once billions of mobile units start using it ? http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/news/0,4164,2590226,00.html Regards Marshall Eubanks T.M. Eubanks Multicast Technologies, Inc. 10301 Democracy Lane, Suite 410 Fairfax, Virginia 22030 Phone : 703-293-9624 Fax : 703-293-9609 e-mail : tme@on-the-i.com http://www.on-the-i.com http://www.buzzwaves.com
You know, Sean, take a pill. Here is what you wrote: smd@clock.org wrote:
Also, nobody is willing to get shot!
Unless you're (a) a startup or (b) a VERY big company who can direct the market.
The deployment of IPv6 is going to be EXPENSIVE in terms of real opex and probably real capex as well, it IS going to be visible on the bottom line of every ISP on the planet, eroding whatever margins one has.
This is true.
I can't see the deployment of IPv6 *ever* leading to any but the shortest-term revenue upside (if even that), therefore until the entire aggregate gross revenue of transit-providing ISPs up and down the entire food-chain is threatened, nobody will be deploying v6.
This is false. In the end ISPs will be able to make a wash of it through pricing structures. First there are early adopters, and those are here now. That grows into a small group of networks. Those are likely to be here next year. All it takes are a handful of large ISPs to say, "I'm game", and it's amazing what the shape of the net looks like. Anyone who disputes this is disputing history, since this is precisely what happened with previous improvements, the invention of the FIXes, MAEs and BGP.
The only alternative scenario I can think of is the deployment of IPv6 by a large provider who believes it can trigger a huge consolidation by pushing smaller ISPs it is competing with into an expensive deployment through sheer hype.
You're half right. All it takes are a large providers with a real application.
Everyone who wants cheap, sustainable Internet transit, with the continuation of plummeting prices combined with soaring available bandwidths. Introducing a whole new protocol requiring massive global operational changes is going to push up consumer prices and stall on investment in available bandwidths. There are only so many people and dollars out there, and one or the other is inevitably spread pretty thin in the current market.
I guess the major point your missing is that once a major provider goes the others are going to realize that the Internet isn't going to shrink in size, and so the cost of moving to v6 is only going to go up. Hit critical mass and the party really begins.
The scariest thing to an IPv6-Lover is that an early deployment is not to anyone's advantage because untili there is real uptake by a sizable number of ISPs, the exact changes required on the dynamic routing side are simply not obvious, although the fact that the two protocols will run ships in the night is (e.g. www.microsoft.com works just fine with IPv6 but you see a blackhole with IPv4. ftp.cdrom.com's IPv6 path is much slower and lossier from where your customer is than ftp.cdrom.com's IPv4 path. have fun finding and fixing the square of the number of problems you observe now, kids!)
I don't see this happening. I see a lot of interest in running two separate networks, where they might get merged later.
In other words, it's all risk and absolutely no reward, and until it really honestly IS impossible to do hacks around the IPv4 shortage, nobody will deploy IPv6.
The other downside you fail to mention is the growth of customers. It's still positive, surprise. And when is the problem more manageable? A further downside is the cost of IP address administration that continues to climb. If the assigning authorities can allocate out larger blocks the cost of remaining at IPv4 becomes far more obvious.
Who will take the chance of a huge investment in managing IPv6 deployment, when it is not a given that IPv6 really will be the header networks will use after IPv4? We're talking about stranded assets being the only thing one gets for the money...
As it stands today there are 0 alternatives that are being seriously considered by all parties, so while it's not a sure bet it is a good bet to place some amount of time into and charge a premium for early adopters (remember those)? What do the early adopters get? A chance to reduce the number of times they will need to renumber, a task which today is still quite expensive, even with tools such as DHCP. Bill Manning's dream is still far from reality. Also, while I believe that routing is a very serious scaling issue, the last time I looked, the growth rate in address allocation was picking up. This Is Bad <tm>. This is not to say that I believe IPv6 to be the cat's meow. I think the proponents' marketing has been nearly as bad as your anti-marketing. It would be worse except as of late they seemed to have toned down where you haven't. I think the one area that will give people pause will be the header size. To me that's serious overhead for the often bespoke "killer app." Eliot
On Sun, Sep 10, 2000 at 06:37:36AM -0700, smd@clock.org wrote:
The deployment of IPv6 is going to be EXPENSIVE in terms of real opex and probably real capex as well, it IS going to be visible on the bottom line of every ISP on the planet, eroding whatever margins one has.
I'll buy opex, but not capex. In fact, if it's capex expensive then we are not managing our vendors correctly. New hardware and software being developed today should be designed to support IPv6, it's not that hard. The price increases necessary to support it are small, as long as it's done early on in the process. This insures that boxes deployed 1-3 years from now will be fully IPv6 ready at little or no cost over their inital deployment cost. Sure, when the v6 day comes some stuff will just have to be replaced, and there may well be a few items that just cost more for v6, so it won't be cost free. That said, it shouldn't break the bank. Opex is another story, and at the moment a bit scary. -- Leo Bicknell - bicknell@ufp.org Systems Engineer - Internetworking Engineer - CCIE 3440 Read TMBG List - tmbg-list-request@tmbg.org, www.tmbg.org
participants (4)
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Eliot Lear -
Leo Bicknell -
smd＠clock.org -
Thomas Marshall Eubanks