Re: 6bone - was PPPoE (was RE: [PLUG] DSL, Bell Atlantic, and Me)

["William H. Magill" <magill@isc.upenn.edu>]

>   On Tue, Oct 17, 2000 at 06:50:47PM -0400, William H. Magill wrote:
>   > [some stuff about IPv6 and the 6bone]
>
>   Bill, could you tell us what is so compelling to the user, even the
>   technical user, about having native IPv6? Aside from freeing numbers,
>   and so enabling lots of IP devices in my home, I don't know why I
>   would care.
>
Today, it's just fun being on the bleeding edge.

However, if various industry prognosticators are correct, we will all be
using IPv6 "exclusively" in about 2 years. I say "exclusively" simply
because there will "always" be pockets of IPv4 that don't covert. For the
longest period of time they will be in all kinds of imbeded devices, that
are simply not upgradeable. But they will be able to "tunnel" through IPv6,
just as IPv6 can tunnel through IPv4 today.

Longer term, IPv6 will solve the problem that you don't know you have --
quality of service... which you will also be billed for. Even in George
Gilder's world of "Infinite and Free" (infinite bandwidth at no cost)
somebody has to pay something somewhere to cover the costs. So if you want
to do Voice over IP, then you will get to pay for it, but you will also
get in return a guarantee that your packets will arrive in sequence and
in a timely manner. The same will hold true for video on demand and similar
types of services.

Then of course, there is the routing issue. Today routing tables are
growing out of hand, and getting worse.

Despite the mis-guided notion that NAT is an effective firewall technique,
IPv6 eliminates the need for NAT.

The we get into the nitty-gritty. IPv4 has no security. Oh, it has random
things which you can do to implement some, but IPv6 mandates security.

The pressure for IPv6 is not coming from within the United States, except
just recently from the Army and Navy. It is coming from the fastest growing
part of the Internet -- that which is outside the Continental United
States. So most of the justifications and benefits will in fact accrue to
those outside the US first, simply because they do not have a vested
interest in an IPv4 infrastructure. The "big boys" -- the router
manufacturers, the backbone carriers -- all know this and have begun to act
accordingly.

And the main thing about IPv6 -- it is surprisingly transparent to the end
user. If you run a dual-stack machine, and your ISP converts, you could be 
converted to V6 and never even notice! Static IPs become a thing of the
past, because the address is automatically constructed from the MAC
address. You will retain your same "V6" address across ISPs!

In the short-term-long-run, native IPv6 users will be the only ones able to
utilize the native IPv6 features and applications, like QOS related 
real-time stuff. Tunneled IPv4 or IPv6 folks won't be able to set the
appropriate header information. You'll get to be the "first on your block!" 

-- 
                        www.tru64unix.compaq.com
                              www.tru64.org
                             comp.unix.tru64
                        
T.T.F.N.
William H. Magill                          Senior Systems Administrator
Information Services and Computing (ISC)   University of Pennsylvania
Internet: magill@isc.upenn.edu             magill@acm.org
http://www.isc-net.upenn.edu/~magill/


______________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group       -      http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements-http://lists.phillylinux.org/mail/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion  -  http://lists.phillylinux.org/mail/listinfo/plug