[ipv6-wg] Thought for World IPv6 Day

Hi again Dmitri, and IPv6-wg

sorry for double-post (though different content), I want to elaborate
on a point Dmitri brought up.

On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 12:11 PM, Dmitri Gribenko <gribozavr at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think that most users don't really care about how IPv4/v6 works,
> they just want "the Internet" to work.

I think this premise is a bit false.  I can chose several ways to
exemplify what I think. I will try the following:

Judging by how automatic IPv6-transition methods have in the IETF now
by pretty near consensus been judged in-adequate for IPv6 access, I
think it's quite fair to say that the IPv4 and the IPv6 internet are
two completely separate networks.  At the very least the IPv4
internetwork as a whole does *not* connect to the IPv6 network.
Individual hosts may via manually configured connections do so, such
as you explain in your debian-administrator's article, but the network
as a whole does not.  They are for all intents and purposes
disconnected networks.

IPv6 advocates presumably advocate for IPv6 deployment in order to
preserve the 'pure' end-to-end principle of the Internet.  Many of us
think users don't care about being behind a NAT, but another many do
realize the limits this sets on applications to interact freely and
how necessary and useful the principle is for the continued success of
a, IMO desirable, 'prosumer' Internet of the future.

My point is, if (more) end-users actually knew the benefits of IPv6
(because there are benefits (right?)), and the risks of not getting
IPv6 in the future, they may well be more inclined to wish for it,
which may unlock another business decision problem at service
providers (no user demand). I'm not expecting 'my grandmother' to
care, but I do think a good measure of success of someone explaining
the difference between IPv4 exhaustion/CGN and IPv6, is that my
grandmother understood the difference, *at some level*. :)

(**Not** saying this is the way to do it: I do have an analogy with
vehicle registration plates which works in Sweden at least, because
there they are of a fixed size, [A-Z]{3}-[0-9]{3).
They've been issued serially, in increasing lexicographic order, and
are about to run out. All cars are required to have a unique serial
number to drive on the roads. (Some old cars have been scrapped which
does free up their number, but the demand is still going to surpass
the supply.) Since going by bus limits your freedom where you can go
on the roads, the vehicle registration agency has to figure out a way
to make the plates wider.  I have used this analogy on 'laymen'
several times and it seems to do a good enough job.  The question of
perceived immediate benefits for a typical user is harder to address,
because the applications that really take advantage of IPv6 are few
today, but this is about the future and your freedom to not travel by
bus.)

So I do think, much in same way the Chrome article goes about
explaining things most users did not knew about a web browser, the
benefits of a IPv6 Internet over a IPv4 CGN Internet *could* be
explained.

Just my 0.00042 grams of gold.

Cheers,
Martin