[ipv6-wg] IPv6 only network at RIPE 68

In your letter dated Sun, 18 May 2014 10:37:47 +0200 you wrote:
>This would be having a double standard, though. I believe we should be
eating our own dog food and ourselves do voluntarily what we are
>essentially forcing others to do. If we cannot start breaking our
>dependency on IPv4 at the RIPE meeting itself, how can we expect others
>to do so? Making the primary ESSID IPv6-only would be sending the right
>message, and demonstrate by example that what we are asking others to
>do, indeed can be done. (Hopefully! If we on the other hand are unable
>to do so, perhaps we need revise the entire «deploy IPv6» message.)

Note, I'm talking about the proposal to make the detault meeting network
support 464XLAT. I don't think there is any proposal to make the default
meeting network IPv6-only (i.e. without any support for IPv4)

In this context, I don't think 464XLAT is eating our own dog food. It is 
for the small group that defined the 464XLAT specs, wrote the implementations,
and are responsible for operating system integration.

But for the rest of us, just about all people at the meeting, 464XLAT provides
access to IPv4 like any other NAT implementation. Anyone who is still firmly
stuck in supporting just the legacy protocol will have no problems with
such a network. It does not encourage any of the RIPE members to do anything.

Worse, suppose someone has spend a lot of time making sure that his network
supports IPv6 in every possible way, shows up at a RIPE meeting with an Android
phone and finds that he doesn't have network access. Not because of some IPv6
issue. No, because the network is deliberately set up in a way that is 
incompatible with Android. Not good.

Now it would be eating our own dog food if there were a RIPE BCP publication
that states that the best way to provide IPv4 on a modern wifi is NAT64.
However, as far as I know, there is no such document, no plans for it, and
I would be surprised major wifi hotspot would want to move to 464XLAT. But
you never know.

Until then, 464XLAT is just one of the many ways of providing IPv4 next to
IPv6. With some advantages, but also many disadvantages.