[ipv6-wg] Have we failed as IPv6 Working Group?

> Wolfgang Zenker wrote :
> ... the results of the RIPE NCC survey published today lists the scarcity of IPv4
> addresses as one of the largest challenges facing the participants in the survey.

The participants in the RIPE NCC survey are not representative of the market.
Here in the USA we have a saying : "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink".
As well as in the ARIN region, the strategy of the IPv4ever camp has been for quite a few years that the IPv6 zealots are doing a better job to discredit themselves. People will get tired of the failed FUD. We don't do anything to torpedo IPv6, you are digging your own grave.

You have not failed as a working group. The failure was not yours.
As I once did, you have done your best to promote IPv6.
I did IPv6 20 years ago, and now I don't do it anymore.
I was on the 6bone. I taught IPv6 at the University of California 15 years ago.
I had my own ASN at home to multi-home with 2 tunnels. On aDSL.
And now I'm IPv4 only. Why ? it does not do any good to me.
None of my customers have it. None of my supply chain have it.

The failure is in the original design of IPv6, the FUD that has been going on for 20 years, and the lack of an actual problem to solve.
For the established ISPs, IPv4 scarcity is not a problem, it's a blessing. Besides other difficulties, IPv4 favors a monopoly of established players, who have been doing everything to keep it that way.

The failure of the IPv6 design was that it did not understand market forces nor money incentives.
IPv6 cannot succeed when more than half of the big players actively torpedo it to preserve their monopolies.


> "there is no business requirement for IPv6".

There is none for me or my company. Dual-stack is a nightmare that I don't have the resources to implement.
Why should I bring it to the C-level, while I do not see any ROI for 10 years ?

The RIRs and the ISPs do not decide for the market. Large ISPs may influence which protocol they force-feed to their residential suppliers, but not to the enterprise.


> This tells me that a significant part of the RIPE community does not view a migration
> to IPv6 as a useful way to deal with the shortage of available IPv4 address space.

For one good reason : they understand that NAT466464 requires as much logging as plain old NAT444, so why bother ?


> I maybe wouldn't call the IPv6 WG "failed"

You have done good, but the deck was not stacked into your favor.
If you are smart, you will understand that IPv6 is not going to replace IPv4 in the next 20 years.
We are in the end of 2019, I live and work in California, and my ISP does not offer IPv6.
Why ? because nobody asks for it.

In the ARIN region, we ran out of IP addresses in 2015, 4 years ago than you guys are about to get to.
The Internet has not stopped. In 4 years, in the RIPE region, after you run out, it will still be up, too.

Oh, and now some troll food :

> Jens Link wrote :
> after now almost 12 years using, working and teaching IPv6 I've
> come to the conclusion that IPv6 is a mistake and will not work.

I'm afraid that I have to agree with this.

Your ideas are technically flawed, that being said. And you are not taking it to the right place.
Try the IETF.

Michel.