The answer is obvious: money. [LWN.net]

The answer is obvious: money.

Posted Jan 26, 2011 17:42 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: LCA: IP address exhaustion and the end of the open net by jem
Parent article: LCA: IP address exhaustion and the end of the open net

You need a lot of layers of NAT before it'll be as expensive as IPv6. And to provide NAT64 with IPv6 for the end-user just makes no sense: why will they do that? It'll provide worse experience for larger price.

Actually the US is probably the last country where "white IP" is not considered luxury. In the most parts of the word you must pay extra for it - and I fail to see why exhaustion of addresses will change anything short-term. It'll gradually make these addresses more expensive, that's true, but short-term there will be no change.

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The answer is obvious: money.

Posted Jan 26, 2011 18:33 UTC (Wed) by jem (subscriber, #24231) [Link]

So IPv6 is expensive, but NAT is not? What makes IPv6 so expensive?

That's not my experience, anyway. Of course, there aren't many providers offering IPv6 yet, but the one I know of in my area does not charge anything extra for IPv6. It's part of the package, take it or leave it. Tunnels are free, too.

How do ISPs respond when customers complain they can't reach IPv6-only sites? Sure, this won't happen for a while, but eventually it will.

End-to-end solution is expensive...

Posted Jan 26, 2011 20:44 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

So IPv6 is expensive, but NAT is not? What makes IPv6 so expensive?

I've not said NAT is not expensive. But it's less expensive then NAT+IPv6.

That's not my experience, anyway.

You mean: you have case study where ISP implemented NAT64 and saved money (in comparison to plain old NAT)? Hard to believe, but I'll be interested to hear more about your story.

How do ISPs respond when customers complain they can't reach IPv6-only sites? Sure, this won't happen for a while, but eventually it will.

I think they'll tell you these sites are broken and you should ask for them to be fixed. If you'll press they'll admit that yes, it may be fixed on their said and that they are "investigating it". The answer is the same for the last 10 years, so I doubt it'll change any time soon.

The answer is obvious: money.

Posted Jan 27, 2011 11:18 UTC (Thu) by job (guest, #670) [Link]

That's silly. I had no problem acquiring a class C network for one of my customers in Europe last year. I just filled out the application and that was it, didn't pay anything extra.

The moment IP address blocks will have economic value we'll be stuck in a downward spiral with no escape. Companies would want to "protect their investments" and we'd have no possibility of ever fixing any technical issues with IP ever again.