Saku Ytti wrote:
What if many/most large CDN, cloud, tier1 would commonly announce a
plan to drop all IPv4 at their edge 20 years from now? How would that
change our work? What would we stop doing and what would we start doing?
I cant see how it would change or do anything IPv6-related for myself
for at least 19 years. And I suspect most others would fall somewhere
between that and never.
However, such an announcement would actually signal that we should do
all those things now to IPv4 that will take 10 years to be useful,
because then they will be useful for at least another 10 years.
Seriously, we have already had this sort of experiment play out numerous
times, both with a governing body and without. We already know how it goes.
With a governing body: lack of progress right up until the deadline,
gnashing of teeth ensues until deadline is extended, more often than not
comprehensive conversion finally completes, later than scheduled.
Without: lack of progress right up to deadline, teeth gnashing, deadline
is arbitrarily extended, nothing much changes and deadline is forgotten.
When IPv4 is properly obsoleted, we will see many of those announcements
and some will matter and most wont. As it should be. However
proclamations are not going to obsolete IPv4. As we have already seen.
I dont think advocating for large players to band together to form their
own internet-ops standard body is going to save IPv6 and the internet.
More likely it will doom both as we know it.
Here is an equally unlikely thought experiment.
What if many/most large CDN, cloud, tier1 would commonly announce a plan
to compatibly extend IPv4, citing a lack of progress in IPv6 deployment
and resulting IPv4 elimination as well as a stagnant stalemate on any
such efforts within the would-be-relevant standard bodies?
Joe
