At 4:53 PM -0800 12/2/99, Yakov Rekhter wrote:
>Consider an alternative where the client decides to use IPv6. Granted,
>the client could get enough IPv6 addresses for all purposes, regardless of
>whether these purposes essential or not. But then in order for that
>client to communicate with the rest of the folks, the client would
>likely to use NAT (as the rest of the folks would still use IPv4). So,
>the cost of using NAT wouldn't go away. But in addition, this alternative
>would cause the client to swallow the cost of transition from IPv4 to IPv6
>in its infrastructure.
Yakov,
There are costs to be swallowed either way, and I believe the costs of
*not* transitioning will be much higher in the end than the costs of
transitioning. If we don't manage to get the majority of long-haul
communication converted to using bigger addresses before we run out of
global IPv4 addresses for those things that need them even with current
NAT (those things being the "public" side of NAT boxes, and devices that
need to be targets of externally-initiated communication, like IP-based
telephones, pagers, individual monitors, more numerous servers of all
kinds, and devices we haven't imagined yet), then the next level of
"solutions" (NATs between ISPs, routing protocols for DNS names,
recursive RSIP,...) will make today's NAT look benign, in terms of
complexity, interdependency, fragility, insecurity, unmanagability,
and lost functionality. And if RSIP is part of the "solution", we'll
still end up bearing the costs of upgrading all the hosts anyway, costs
that would be better spent upgrading to IPv6 and actually *solving* the
address shortage problem instead of building an increasingly elaborate,
fragile, and dysfunctional system of work-arounds.
In other words, it's really a question of whether we (the Internet
users, providers, and vendors) expend effort to climb out of the hole
we're in, or keep digging deeper. We can't avoid expending effort,
because more and more people are jumping into the hole and they won't
all fit.
(And to really milk this metaphor: yes, the first few people who climb
out of the hole still have to pass messages down into the hole to
communicate with those still down there, but at least they can enjoy
the fresh air and wide open space of address abundance.)
Steve
