Hi Jeff, > It's far past time to worry about architectural purity. We need people > deploying IPv6 *NOW*, and it needs to be the job of the IETF, at this > point, to fix the problems that are causing people not to deploy.
I partially agree with you. If people have learned how IPv6 works, deployed IPv6 (even if just in a lab) and came to the conclusion that there is an obstacle then I very much want to hear what problems they ran into. That's rarely the case unfortunately. Most of the time I hear "we don't want to learn something new". If the choice is between the IETF having to change standards vs some people having to learn something new then sorry, they will have to invest some time and learn.... IPv4 != IPv6. You have to keep learning, that's part of the job. Where we should focus our efforts is on making that learning process as easy as we can. That is an area where we have been failing horribly. Especially for enterprises. The mindset in enterprises is very different from that in ISPs, and we have been assuming for too long that documentation and best-practices for an ISP also work in an enterprise. I see a lot of enterprises that just don't know where to start, how to best run their networks with IPv6, with concerns about management, privacy, security etc. Changing standards isn't going to solve that (except to give them a false sense of security because it starts looking a lot like IPv4 on the surface). Besides: the time it takes to change standards and get new code deployed everywhere would be a bigger obstacle in getting IPv6 deployed soon anyway. So yes, people have to deploy IPv6 as soon as possible, but it's not the job of the IETF to fix all of the obstacles. There are definitely obstacles that the IETF needs to fix. But I don't think this is one of them... This one is better solved by showing how to make good use of all the nice features that IPv6 offers. Cheers, Sander
