[Gllug] IPv6

[John Edwards]

On Sun, May 06, 2012 at 12:07:34PM +0100, Keith Edmunds wrote:
> John Edwards wrote:
>> How did you work that one out?
>> 
>> Google and Facebook were part of the IPv6 test day last year:
>> 	http://www.worldipv6day.org/
>> 
>> And will be part of the permanent launch this year:
>> 	http://www.worldipv6launch.org/
> 
> I didn't say that they weren't interested in IPv6 connectivity: I know
> they are. What I said was that it was in their interests "to delay the
> general rollout of IPv6 as long as possible". 

If they wanted to delay IPv6 then it would seem very strange that they
pushing for it's adoption.


> At the moment, the big Internet companies have good IPv4 connectivity and
> improving (sometimes already good) IPv6 connectivity. The next
> Facebook/Amazon/Google/Twitter/Youtube will also be able to get good IPv4
> and IPv6 connectivity, but there will come a time (maybe some way off)
> when the next YouTwitFace can't get sufficient IPv4 connectivity. How
> popular will that site be if it's only accessible via IPv6? So it is in
> the interests of the not-yet-even-a-sparkle-in-the-eye future major
> Internet companies to have IPv6 roll out as soon as possible, but for
> exactly the same reasons it is in the interests of the established
> players to have the IPv6 rollout (particularly to the masses) take as long
> as possible.

Facebook/Amazon/Google/Twitter/Youtube are not the ones with the huge
blocks of IPv4 addresses. They didn't even exist when the large IPv4
blocks were allocated.

The organisations sitting on the large blocks of IPv4 are the old
"pre-dotcom" Internet companies, universities and gov/military:
	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assigned_/8_IPv4_address_blocks

Getting those people to give up IPv4 addresses is almost impossible.


The Google+others companies have a rapidly increasing need for IP
addresses and IPv4 addresses are a finite resource. Basic economics
will show you that is going to be a rising cost. To reduce it requires
moving the rest of Internet to IPv6. It's not enough to have IPv6
yourself, you have to get other people to use it.

The interests of "not-yet-even-a-sparkle-in-the-eye future major
Internet companies" are pretty much irrelevant. Bigger companies have
much more effective ways to deal with them than playing games with
IPv6, including legal battles over patent and other dirty tricks. But
I can't see any evidence that they are delaying IPv6.


You could make an more effective argument that large ISPs (such as BT)
have delayed IPv6 rollout, because of those reasons. BT have lots of
IPv4 address, and because they control the ADSL backbone they can stop
other ISPs that use their service from providing IPv6 addresses and so
force them to use private IP addresses.

I don't think that it is the main reason for BT were slow at providing
IPv6, especially after they took part in last year's world IPv6 day.
Management slugishness and the cost of replacement network kit are
more likely reasons.

See Andrews and Arnold's problems with IPv6 over ADSL in 2008:
	http://aaisp.net.uk/news-ipv6.html


-- 
#---------------------------------------------------------#
|    John Edwards   Email: john at cornerstonelinux.co.uk    |
#---------------------------------------------------------#
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 205 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: <http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/gllug/attachments/20120506/05c0f590/attachment.pgp>
-------------- next part --------------
--
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at gllug.org.uk
http://lists.gllug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gllug