[LINK] IPv6

[Damien Miller]

On Thu, 29 Mar 2001, Rankine, Alastair wrote:

> I'm preparing a chalk-talk on IPv6, would be interested on yours and
> other Linkers' opinion on the adoption of this protocol.
>
> I agree that one of the main drivers for IPv6 adoption will be the
> installation of consumer broadband internet services. The benefits
> of increased address space and auto-configuration promised by IPv6
> are too much for ISPs to ignore, I would have thought.

Mobile Internet devices have been the suggested "killer app" for IPv6.
There are likely to be huge numbers of them which want some level of
unique addressing (though one could argue whether this needs to occur
at the network level).

> By the same token, the adoption rate may be less for enterprises
> than carriers. The increased address space and auto-configuration
> are less beneficial for enterprise networks. Coupled with the
> complexity of migration (applications, operating systems, routers)
> to the new protocol may mean it will be less widespread on these
> networks, at least initially.

There is little incentive to migrate to IPv6 internally. Organisations
are doing fine using RFC1918 space and NAT now. Most of the benefit
for switching to IPv6 will only be realised when a majority of external
sites are IPv6 reachable.

-d

-- 
| Damien Miller <djm@mindrot.org> \ ``E-mail attachments are the poor man's
| http://www.mindrot.org          /   distributed filesystem'' - Dan Geer