Originally posted by: Goosemaster
Larry, please re-write everything you wrote except that this time take into account the financial aspects of such a changeover, and who will fit that bill. Then we'll talk.
But that's *exactly* my point. Organizations are only looking at this from a direct, immediate, profit/loss perspective, and are totally failing to see the bigger picture. I suppose, given the charter of most "public corporations", that's understandable, since their simple mandate is legalized greed. I wouldn't expect them to understand the larger issue of "community development", unless their corporate directors were rather "enlightened" about the issue.
(As an aside, the same issue exists today - instead of investing in their communities to find qualified and talented, and not-overpriced help, by starting internship programs with local schools, companies these days are offshoring entry-level jobs by the thousands, and still paying to train those workers, including teaching them proper english! Instead of seeing the "bigger picture", and enriching their communities, which in turn indirectly benefits them as well, by providing a better, local, talent pool from which to hire - instead, they dump money overseas. I hope that you wouldn't sincerely argue that the second solution is the better or more appropriate one, even though it is technically "cheaper" in the short-term.)
Originally posted by: Goosemaster
Businesses are NOT communities. Businesses are massive beheammoths that have a liability to their investors. As an investor in Company B, I would not take kindly to having it implement IPv6 at the cost of $4.3 million dollars if it doesn't provide a substancial ROI or isn't crucial to the companies immediate existance.
Again. Pure greed. May I point out, that businesses today, were able to start reaping the benefits of being part of the internet *community*, that was already existant at the time that they joined it? The internet, when it was allowed to go commercial, already existed, and was stably-deployed. Therefore, the businesses that came onboard en-mass, were allowed to reap the benefits of being part of that community, without having been burdened with the initial development costs.
Basically, that situation is
no different, than a company that rapes the environment in search of profit, without re-investing into ecological renewal programs to offset the damage that they have done.
They are stealing profit from that which they did not create, and therefore are not entitled, IMHO.
Now, I am not going to be so foolish as to suggest that businesses have never invested in developments that have led to infrastructural upgrades. But the motivation behind such, and the business reasoning, was never one of community development, only of "what do we need", and "who do we pay, and how much". It's a very short-sighted viewpoint.
What they entirely fail to see, is that if *everyone*, that could potentially help increase IPv6 adoption and deployment, took this stance of not being able to see any direct, immediate benefit (because others in the community have likewise not chosing to adopt IPv6), then IPv6 will truely *never* be adopted. And that would be a crying shame. The IPv4 internet would never have bootstrapped itself, if it were up to businesses to see that it was built and deployed from the ground-up. It took education, research institutions, to seed and develop the initial internet. Why? Because they could look past the end of their noses and their pocketbooks, and see what future potential that it might hold. The same needs to happen with IPv6 deployment, for its adoption to be sucessfully bootstrapped, IMHO.
Originally posted by: Goosemaster
Hmmm......By that notion, the gasoline engine will "break" when the worlds oil reserves run dry in 73 years, so we might as well switch to Hydrogen fuel cells tommorow, however crued they may be.
Seriously though, NAT is an innovation that is definitely not the garbage that you portray it as.
In addition, this whole "borrowed time" and "limited connectivity" is hogwash, or at the least, not as critical as you make it out to be. Basically, NAT'd networks will become larger and larger, but that will not be the end of the world.
Yes, it is. Some on the IETF have even said likewise. NAT breaks the internet. At least, "the IPv4 internet that we once knew". If everyone ends up on (duplicated) private, non-routable IPs, because of severe addresss shortages, then what is the point of the internet as a whole? We should all just go back to BBSes and private, unconnected, networks. That is starting to happen, right now, as several "internet" providers, are only providing their subscribers with private, non-routable IPs. Welcome to the "3rd world" of the internet. The individual many-to-many internet is falling apart, breaking down.
Originally posted by: Goosemaster
[Seeing as how you stated that you were an at-home networker, I'll speculate that you might not have commercial-experience(forgive me if that is a mistake). ]
NAT, Classless IP addressing, Trunking, and a myriad of technologies are very useful today because they provide accountability and the ability for both geographic and logical grouping.
That was simply an anecdotal example, but yes, I'll admit that I have not overseen any commercial IPv6 rollouts. I am however well-versed in the technical aspects of IP networking, at least as far as IPv4 goes. My low-level technical knowledge of IPv6 is still somewhat incomplete.
I am personally a bit curious how IPv6 routing table sizes are going to end up, especially given the provisions for IPv6 Mobile IP features.
Originally posted by: Goosemaster
Basically, when used correctly and with adaquately capabable devices ( we are not talking about your Dlink consumer router here), NAT and PAT, although tedious to setup, are very useful. In fact, my main issue with IPv6 is grouping. Because EVERY IP under that structure will be a public IP, it will make transitions in the security sector confusing for many, as even then, they might have to use NAT. Then, in the end, what will they gain from a single IPv6 address and NAT'ing their private network, if the same can be done today without an additional investment.
I don't quite understand why NAT is somehow essential for security, wouldn't the requirements be just as well-served with an internally-routed IPv6 address and a firewall, as a NAT'ed IPv4 address?
I also thought (although this is delving into my nebulous area of IPv6 knowledge) that there were provisions for site-local non-routable IPv6 addresses as well? The assumption being that you would not need NAT for this. I need to research this area a bit more before I make any concrete statements about it though.
Originally posted by: Goosemaster
Hell, I'll go as far as to say that NAT and PAT are a bitch to setup and modify (moreso because of so many ACL's) but that by NO MEANS they are crap.
Well, that was one of the things that I was referring to - that the existance of NAT makes configuration, and even the protocols themselves, overly complex, for no good reason. This is a subtle but important reason why the existance of NAT is bad for the internet as a whole, as it tends to embed extra complexity into things that should be more streamlined.
Originally posted by: Goosemaster
In conclusion, IPv6 is a nice idea, but it requires implementation at infustructure levels before businesses or even consumers will ever see it as a viable option. WIthout such a prior implementations, the infustructure will be using the old IPv4, voiding the addressing abilities of the IPv6 system.
But that's [blink]EXACTLY[/blink] my point.
Without businesses interested in undertaking part of the *responsibility* of being part of the internetworked community, and contributing to the overall deployment of IPv6, then it will never happen.
Effectively, they are just sitting around waiting for the benefits of IPv6's adoption to drop into their lap, and they don't want to spend a dime on making that happen. Pure, unadulterated, selfishness and greed. They need to take responsibility, take charge, and champion IPv6 adoption for it to happen, especially if they want to (eventually) see the benefits of it.
(IMHO, businesses are *not* somehow above, or aside from, the communities in which they exist. They not only have a financial duty to their stockholders, but also a *responsibility* to their community, by virtue of their corporate existance itself, within that community. Any corporation that does not clearly recognize that, should be put to death. Yes, I am quite serious.)
Another idea: as much I dislike "big gov't", perhaps an infrastructural-improvement tax is needed. Why not, since we plebs have to pay such a thing for our telco and ISP connectivity anyways. It makes sense, businesses are already taxed, to support such infrastructural things such as schools and public works projects in their communities. Why should the electronics communication infrastructures be any different? (Glossing over the fact that today, such are mostly completely privately-owned, although the long-distance and local telco networks are also privately-owned, but highly-regulated, and I'm sure probably taxed as well. So there is ample precidence there, even though I'm not so sure that example is one of a good thing, as the federal telco regulations are a bit.. bloated, as I understand it.)
Summary: In the end, it seems as though businesses recognize potential benefits of IPv6-based internetworking, but are not willing to assume the costs and responsibilities necessary to ensure its eventual deployment. Infrastructural gridlock ensues, and meanwhile, public IPv4 allocation gets sparser, and entities, both business and individuals, lose their right to be full citizens on the internet.