[LINK] Fwd: Internet Society, World IPv6 Launch

[Karl Auer]

On Thu, 2012-06-07 at 00:07 +1000, Robin Whittle wrote:
> The new normal????
> The IPv6 Internet is a different network, a separate Internet, from
> the IPv4 Internet which everyone uses.  Email is the only application
> which works transparently between them.  Nothing else is directly
> interoperable, since they are different networks, with different
> address spaces.  An connection to the IPv4 Internet cannot be used to
> send or receive packets to or from a connection to the IPv6 Internet.

Robin, I usually have great respect for your IT acumen, but the above is
a mixture of truth and piffle.

Truth: They are different Internets. They cannot send packets to each
other.

Near-piffle: Your use of the term "directly interoperable" is true, but
specious and misleading, since dual-stacked machines do not need the two
protocols to directly operate.

Piffle: Email is the only application that works transparently between
them.

ANY protocol that can be gatewayed or proxied will work transparently
via that gateway or proxy. In particular that includes email, the web,
ftp, instant messaging and so on.

Any protocol that can be dual stacked will work transparently, including
web, email, SMB, IM, ftp, ssh - well, the list is pretty much endless.
That's client-server stuff, but the same is true of peer to peer stuff.

> There is, for all practical purposes, for ordinary users (who need to
> be able to communicate with the hosts of all other users) one Internet
> - the IPv4 Internet.  To talk of these two networks as if they are
> both part of one Internet is misleading.

They run over the same wires. Both provide paths to some data that is
only available via one protocol - but the volume of data accessible only
via IPv4 will decrease, while the volume of data available only via IPv6
will increase. In between, the amount of data available via both
protocols will increase greatly. "It won't happen overnight, but it will
happen."

What you really mean, and thus probably should have said, is that the
data that is important to "ordinary users" is currently mostly
accessible only via IPv4. There is nothing to stop it being accessible
via IPv6 *also*.

Regards, K.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)
http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer

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