[clug] IPv6 Australia?

[Robert Edwards]

Sam Couter wrote:
> Michael Still <mikal at stillhq.com> wrote:
>> I guess the thing is that IPv6 connectivity isn't very useful until
>> there is IPv6 accessible content. My experience indicates that there is
>> very little of that at the moment.
> 
> There's no content because there are no viewers and it costs extra for
> content hosts to maintain the IPv6 infrastructure. Extra cost, no
> benefit => no action.
> 
> There are no viewers because there's very little content and no IPv6
> enabled home routers and it costs extra for ISPs to maintain the IPv6
> infrastructure. Extra cost, no benefit => no action.
> 
> There are no IPv6 enabled home routers because there are no consumers
> willing to pay for them and it costs extra for device manufacturers to
> include IPv6 support. Extra cost, no benefit => no action.
> 
> I really want to see IPv6 succeed because I hate NAT, and it comes with
> IPSEC features for free. It has cool factor and useful features for
> nerds but very little commercial benefit. I think it'll take the
> inevitable IPv4 address crunch to motivate anyone, and even then it may
> not happen. If the Internet becomes a predominantly broadcast medium like
> TV, only broadcasters will need real addresses and the rest of us plebs
> can live behind NAT and keep viewing like good little consumers.
> 

When the IPv4 address crunch comes, all that will happen is that a
market will open up for IPv4 address space. Those large corporations
etc. sitting on several class A's will make some money breaking them
up and flogging off the unused addresses as class C's.

For example, the ANU has two class B's, a total of over 131,000
addresses - I reckon they could easily live with 32,000 addresses
(including plenty of slack for the future) so could potentially, one
day, sell off a whole class B and a hundred or more class C's to the
highest bidders. If they adopted NAT for all non-IPv4-service-providing
machines (ie. all desktops, laptops, VoIP phones etc.), then the IP
requirements of the whole ANU could easily fit into about 1 class C,
in my opinion (note: I am not speaking for the ANU, just using ANU as
an example).

Unlike Sam (and many others), I think that NAT is cool and don't hate
it at all. All properly designed protocols work fine with NAT, so why
not? IPSec is a pain. Most everything else that IPv6 can do (other than
the newer form of IP mobility), IPv4 can do as well these days.

So no compelling advantage for IPv6 other than more address space (to
defend against in your firewall scripts/blacklists etc.) and bigger
addresses (takes more CPU to hash when connection tracking and more
memory to store etc.). DNS for IPv6 is a real doozy (esp. reverse DNS!).

Cheers,

Bob Edwards.