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

Hi Wolfgang,

On Fri, Oct 4, 2019 at 5:41 AM Wolfgang Zenker <zenker at punkt.de> wrote:
> ... the default network at RIPE Meetings is the dual-stack network, with
> the IPv6-only (NAT64) network as a barely used extra which is "supported
> on a best effort basis". With the effect that almost no-one except a few
> "ipv6 zealots" uses it. This tells me that a significant part of the
> RIPE community does not only consider this setup "not production ready"
> but expects an amount of breakage so huge that it's not acceptable to
> try it out and see what would actually break (while still offering a
> dual-stack network as a fallback, of course).

I'm not sure I can follow the logic here. What you are saying about
'do not consider production ready' would have been true if users made
a decision which SSID to connect every time (and that decision took
into account the protocol version). But it's clearly not the case.
First time attendees connect to whatever SSID is specified in the
booklet and/or has the most intuitive name. Returning attendees let
their laptops/phones connect to SSID their devices remember.

There is an SSID which has been there for years, which is printed on
the booklets etc and it's name matches the meeting name.
And there are other SSIDs - which are not listed in the booklet, their
names are longer (which for MacOS at least might mean that they are
shown *below* the main one in the list) etc. I'm sure that even if all
of them were dual-stack, the main one would have attracted the vast
majority of the userbase.

> ... 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. At the same time, about one quarter of
> participants has no plans for deploying IPv6, with the most common
> reason given as "there is no business requirement for IPv6".

The survey says: "Over half of respondents indicated that they will
need more IPv4 address space in the short term."
I read it as '~50% of respondents do not need IPv4 in the short term".
And only 1/4 do not see the business requirements for IPv6".  Twice
less that I'd have expected then..

Another quote: "A further 44% of respondents who indicate they will
not need more IPv4 stated that their organisation has/will have
deployed IPv6. "
I'd not call it a failure.

>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.

Yet.

> I maybe wouldn't call the IPv6 WG "failed", but it clearly still has a
> long way to go until we can claim "mission accomplished".

I do  not think anyone promised it's going to be easy ;)

On a more serious note, two things:
1) I quickly checked the 2013 survey. It does not even mention IPv6.
Are you still calling it 'no progress' and 'failure'? ;)
2) By lucky coincidence we have  a slot in Rotterdam to discuss the
working group strategy and future. Let's talk about it.


-- 
SY, Jen Linkova aka Furry