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

Hi Jen,

* Jen Linkova <furry13 at gmail.com> [191005 03:46]:
> 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.

I guess you misunderstood what I was trying to say here. For years we
have had the "default network" (dual stack) and the "experimental?"
network (ipv6 + NAT64). And for years some people have asked to make
the ipv6/nat64 network the "default network" and give a different SSID
to the dual stack network, with the intention to see real usage on the
ipv6-only network (which would happen because people are lazy). That
should enable us to find any remaining problems quickly, and should
hopefully show to the users that IPv6 is something that works and is
nothing to be afraid of.
Also for many years, we don't actually do it. And whoever it is that
decides not to do it, is certainly part of the RIPE community. The
only reason I can see is that at least that part of the RIPE community
does not consider IPv6-only + NAT64 to be "production ready".

>> [..]
>> 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.

Seeing that timeslot on the agenda was actually one reason for me to
start this thread, to get discussions started ahead of the meeting.

Greetings,
Wolfgang