Comcast, nor the other large MSOs, are not as monolithic as they may appear
from the outside. In most cases the large MSOs are divided into regions that
are more or less autonomous and that doesn't count the outlier properties that
haven't been brought into the fold of the region they are in for various,
usually cost related, reasons so don't expect a large block of any of those
guys to suddenly be at 60% of their users can get IPv6 addresses.
I think you'll be in for a surprise here.
We'll see, I have reasons to be (deeply) skeptical, but I hope you're
right. Care to speculate on a time frame for when we might get a
pleasant surprise?
While Facebook working over IPv6 will be a big deal you won't get all of their
traffic since a significant fraction of that traffic is from mobile devices
which are going to take much longer than PCs to get to using IPv6 in large
numbers. Also, Netflix is even more problematic since the bulk of their
traffic, and the fastest growing segment as well, is coming from Xboxes, Tivos,
other gaming consoles, and TVs with enough embedded brains to talk directly.
Those devices will also seriously lag behind PCs in IPv6 support.
I think you'll be in for a surprise here, too. The 4G transition is already
underway. For the vendors where 4G means LTE, IPv6 is the native protocol and
IPv4 requires a certain amount of hackery to operate.
LTE won't be "real" for the vast majority of subs until the they have an
LTE handset, which won't happen until they replace their existing 3G
phone. That won't happen unless Verizon and AT&T decide to suddenly
give people upgrade credits before their contract would allow. What's
worse the whole LTE isn't really 4G and will be replaced by LTE+ makes
this worse. If you're a phone maker you're likely trying to decide if
you've gone to far to delay your product launch or if you can wait for
LTE+ chipsets before releasing your new phone.
In the WiMax case (Gee, thanks, SPRINT), things are a bit murkier, but, I think
you will see WiMax go IPv6 pretty quickly as well.
Yes, it will take a little longer to retire the 3G system(s) than many other
parts of the internet, but, I think you will see most of it going away in the
5-7 year range.
3G will be around in substantial amounts for at least 10 years outside
of the top 20 metro markets.
You misunderstand how getaddrinfo() works under the hood. The code itself first
does an AAAA lookup and then does an A lookup. DNS does not return both record
sets at once. If there is an AAAA record, it will return first.
Some OS have modified things to resort the getaddrinfo() returns based on the
perceived type of IPv6 and IPv4 connectivity available as an attempt to reduce
certain forms of brokenness. However, even in those cases, you should get the
AAAA first if you have real IPv6 connectivity.
I haven't looked at the code so that it is entirely possible, but I am
more concerned with what the content providers do. Does MS implement
the POSIX function? I don't know, but if not whatever Win(XP-7) does is
much more important to traffic than what all of the BSD and Linux
variants do.
Right now you can have a completely working dual stack set up and if
your ISP's name server isn't on Google's (and a host of others) white
list you'll never get the AAAA record no matter what order your client
resolver code asks for the addresses in.
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-v6ops-v6-aaaa-whitelisting-implications-02
http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2010/03/yahoo-wants-two-faced-dns-to-aid-ipv6-deployment.ars
The point here is that there are multiple hoops that have to navigated
and if any one of them is missed the client will work over v4 and that
will keep the ramp up of v6 traffic modest for a long time to come.
BTW, I don't want to be right here but I know intimately how ISPs, CPE
vendors, and customers behave.
--
Scott Helms
Vice President of Technology
ISP Alliance, Inc. DBA ZCorum
(678) 507-5000
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http://twitter.com/kscotthelms
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