NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Jason_Livingood@cable.comcast.com: Re: [IP] ars technica: "Trading in IPv4 addresses will end in tears"
Jason is Executive Director, Internet Systems at Comcast. I have separated out his responses below to make clearer where my original text is vis-a-vis his comments. --Lauren-- NNSquad Moderator ----- Forwarded message from "Livingood, Jason" <Jason_Livingood@cable.comcast.com> ----- Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2011 01:07:13 +0000 From: "Livingood, Jason" <Jason_Livingood@cable.comcast.com> Subject: Re: [IP] ars technica: "Trading in IPv4 addresses will end in tears" To: Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>, ip <ip@listbox.com>, "lauren@vortex.com" <lauren@vortex.com> Accept-Language: en-US A reply inline below (for IP and/or NNSquad if it is interesting) -- Jason Livingood From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com<mailto:lauren@vortex.com>> ---- Lauren: Do you know what would happen if I called up my service providers and "asked for IPv6 addresses"? I've done it. It takes an hour to reach anyone with even the remotest idea of what I'm talking about. And then they say, essentially, forget it. ---- Jason: Given that IPv6 is not yet widely deployed, it is not surprising that you'd find customer care agents untrained on IPv6. As ISPs begin to deploy IPv6 this should change (when that will be is the million dollar question). ---- Lauren: We are in a dandy box. IPv6 is going to take ages to widely deploy to end users. The ISPs' plans for "carrier grade NAT" are a nightmare for anything other than, essentially, simple Web browsing. ---- Jason: Widespread IPv6 deployment is contingent not just on ISPs enabling v6 in their access networks but also in users upgrading their equipment and software. That means operating systems, home gateway devices, and other devices (PS3, Xbox, Roku, Slingbox, etc.). For the foreseeable future I expect you'll see home gateway devices function much as they do today even once IPv6 is there, even though you could eliminate NAT and make more end-to-end communications possible (see the IETF's nascent 'homenet' effort for example). But the industry in general has many years of assuming a shared addressing model in the home (1 public IP, then NAT with private IPs like 192.168.1.1) - which is a tough design model to break out of – so don't underestimate the psychology involved. This will undoubtedly take time, and perhaps quite a lot of it. As you note, ISPs who are not yet ready for native IPv6 or who run out of IPv4 addresses will indeed need carrier grade NAT (aka large scale NAT / LSN). By the way, 'carrier grade' just means expensive, but I digress. ;-) Anyway, I think one can expect a LSN to potentially break some applications and cause others to be slower than if the communications were direct. LSNs won't be fun to use or to operate, but some networks may find it unavoidable in the short-term. ---- Lauren: Trading IPv4 addresses will probably buy us some time, including some of the enormous blocks allocated to organizations that will never use them. I don't advocate forcible repatriation, but rather financial incentives to accomplish this when possible. But overall, it's a massive mess. ---- Jason: If the transition were easy it would have happened years ago. Buckle up – the road ahead could be a bumpy… JL ---- Lauren: --Lauren-- ---- ----- End forwarded message -----