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

* Philip Homburg <pch-ripeml at u-1.phicoh.com> [191008 20:47]:
>> On the other hand, switching the "default" meeting SSID to IPv6-only/NAT64
>> while still providing the dual stack network as a fallback, preferably
>> combined with a helpdesk staffed by volunteers ready to analyze any
>> problems that attendees might have, strikes me as a pretty good opportunity
>> to raise awareness and to find problems where further work is needed.

>> From a host perspective, NAT64 directly on wifi is not attractive: it will
> require an address translation component in every host to deal with legacy
> applications that handle IPv4 literals.

As I have used the NAT64 network at the last couple of meetings without
any problems, I don't think there are that many applications around that
woukd be used from the meeting network. Switching to NAT64 might help to
get an impression of how widespread this kind of problem really is. 

> NAT64 is also not attractive from a backward compatibility point of view:
> IPv4-only devices and hosts that are dual stack but lack the 464XLAT component
> will fail.

We are still talking about the default SSID at the RIPE meeting, right?
I guess IPv4-only devices will be kind of rare as a client in that network,
but of course that is only me guessing. As for dual-stack hosts: the NAT64
network comes with DNS64, so you will get a synthesised IPv6 address for
IPv4-only targets and connect via that address. Maybe I misunderstood
your point?

> Considering those issues, why does it make sense to subject attendees of a
> RIPE meeting to such a network? Anybody who wants to test can do that in the
> current setup. Why trick other people into connecting to a network that
> they are unlikely to encounter anywhere else?

"Trick other people" is not the intention, of course this would have to
be made public together with the SSID of the dual-stack network still
running as a fallback, and whom to contact in case of problems.

It makes sense because the people interested to test this have already
done so to the point of seeing no problems for themself. But that group
is biased, probably running their services at home like vpn gateways at
dual stack or IPv6-only already and therefore they might simply not
encounter problems that might otherwise still be common. As IPv4 scarcity
is a reality now, public wifi installations might want to use NAT64
networks eventually. So it makes sense to find out what would break
and should be fixed before this is deployed unto an unsuspecting public.
A community of highly qualified networking experts appears to be the
right group of people to have for a test audience.

Wolfgang