Why DJB's plan fail

Posted Jan 27, 2011 23:10 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

But guess what, right now, all these supposed routers have _nothing_ to route, because nobody even has an IPv6 address.

Sure they have. They have many IPv6 addresses. One comes from EUI-64 via MAC address in your Ethernet card, another via 6to4 assignment, etc. They all are equally useless if your ISP does not support IPv6.

Should the other plan been followed, _everyone_ would already have one (i.e. their old IPv4 address) and _everyone_ would be capable of sending such packets (current situation where I have unconfigured, parellel IPv6 stack means nothing - I cannot use it as is).

Sure it's capable of sending packets! You can easily do that right now. The problem is: nobody is listening. How exactly addition of yet-another-useless-IPv6-address was supposed to solve the problem is mystery to me.

And even if they do have an IPv6 address now, it's useless - there is nothing to see with IPv6.

Bingo! And DJB's plan does not change anything. Actually it's easy to see why DJB's plan is epic fail. The most IETF (or any other organization) can do is publish some specifications. I can do the same, you can do the same, everyone can write them. The question after that becomes the following: will anyone implement them or not. Guess what: noone implemented DJB specifications so they failed. It's as simple as that. I still wonder what we are discussing here. Government intervention? You don't need DJB's plan for that. Government may simple mandate switch to IPv6 by the given date. Voluntary cooperation? Does not work - DJB's plan was not implemented, right?

In the alternative scenario, ISPs have an _incentive_ to be able to route IPv6 - all of their current and prospective _customers_ are on it. Right now, they don't.

What alternative scenario? One where DJB's plan is published under IETF name? Where is the evidence that plan rejected when it was published on DJB's site will be accepted under IETF's name? Magical letters I E T F were unable to push other plans - why do you think they may push DJB's plan?

So, of course they would have made sure that every single router can route. What better alternative would they have? Build layers of NAT when everyone already is on IPv6? What the hell for?

To make customers happy? Why do you think all these TCP/IP networks were built when everyone was on IPX? The answer is simple: these IPX addresses were unroutable. Guess what: these uberperfect DJB's magic addresses are just as unroutable today... well, some of them are routable: the ones which belong to IPv4 namespace. And to use them all these layers of NATs are built.

Also note that issuing IPv6 addresses to new customers is a no brainer.

Interesting idea. How come it's "no brainer"? As long as you have IPv4 addresses you don't need IPv6 in any shape or form: exist IPv4 infrastructure works just fine. But how to assign these "no brainer" DJB's IPv6 numbers when there are no more IPv4 addresses?

> Suppose you have a "new" host sending to a host with an "old" address. It has no way of knowing the host with the "old" address can understand "new" packets

Of course it has. Everyone has been upgraded already.

Blatant lie. DJB published his rant. Noone upgraded. End of story.

Any destination that didn't (there would be no reason for them not to - they would get all this as part of regular updates) would be simply unreachable for "new" hosts.

Ah... so you just ignore these poor souls who's ISP decided to ignore IPv6. Ok.

The amount of those would be very small indeed.

if 99% is "very small indeed" then 99.7% is simply "small" so we can consider IPv6 transformation finished. Somehow I don't feel like it's the case.

Should IPv6 have been "the" thing, people with networks that "do" things (i.e. not ISP) would automatically care for it.

How do you propose to do that? By writing rants on different sites? Does not work - as your own experience shows. And IETF does not have the power to enforce anything.

It would be their one and only network, they spent all of their time building. You think they would not want their ISPs to route this?

I don't think they'll not want to route this. I know they'll not route this. ISPs routinely ignore advances in the network technology unless they are under extreme pressure from customers. Think ECN. They are in business of making money, they are not in business of network advancement.

routinely fail to support existing protocols like stop thing like SMTP or CIFS from working over the Internet. Why will they want to support some weird useless yet resource sucking extension? They don't - and this is just as true today without IETF endorcement and it'll be true in the alternate history with IETF endorcement. DJB's plan has failed - it failed to attract even few IETF developers so it never had any hope of success. In some alternate universe where people's brains are wired differently and where all members of IETF are enthusiastic endorsers of DJB's plan it may work, but in our universe it's doomed.

DJB (who I am not particularly big fan of) wrote his piece 8 years ago as a reaction to a disastrous plan unfolding right in front of his eyes.

Viewed as bit of fiction it's interesting work. Viewed as real plan it's utter failure. The very fact that DJB is rare supporter of it's plan shows how little hope there was for it's success.

Sure, sometimes people miss obvious thing and it's enough for one person to find it - and then it's enthusiastically endorsed and changes the world. DJB's plan does not belong to this category - so it failed.

At least everyone would have their host configured for IPv6 _right_ _now_, even if routing wasn't done yet.

How can this change anything? Try simple experiment: type "ipconfig" on any Windows system and press Enter. You'll see many IPv6 addresses assigned to your system. You can even use them to connect with some other systems on the same network. What you can not do is to use them to talk with other systems over the Internet - and DJB's plan can not change it.

At least there would be an incentive to turn the pressure up on ISPs, so that the problem gets solved.

Today I have 3 IPv6 addresses (because I have three network adapters on my Windows system). DJB's plan will give me 6. Why do you think I'll want to use the last 3 more often then the first three? Note that three IPv4 address I have are 192.168.1.1, 192.168.42.3 and 10.0.0.4 so DJB's plan will give me something like 0::c0a8:101, 0::c0a8:2a02 and 0::a00:4 - and these same IPv6 addresses will be assigned to thousands (if not millions) computers in the world. What kind of use can I expect from these addresse?

Precisely because all of the edge (where the value is) would be done and ready.

The edge is in pretty good shape today. Not perfect, but good. 90% of nodes are ready to use IPv6. But without changes in core all this is pointless. DJB's plan failed to change anything there.

Current plan produced no such incentive. That's exactly why ISPs are talking of layers of NAT and what not.

They are not talking. They are implementing them. In fact in most countries around the world NATs were part of the life lond before pointless DJB rant. DJB sceme gives these users only pointless numbers which are not useful at all.

Yeah, unfortunately in this case, it's not you or anyone else commenting here, but rather folks supposedly in charge of making things work.

There are no such folks. There are folks which are guessing how it all should fit together, but there are noone "in charge" - that's why DJB's plan is so pointless: if someone is in charge - all that compatibility cruft is not needed, if noone is in charge it does not do anything useful at all - it just gives me useless numbers like 0::c0a8:101 which can not be used with IPv6 in any shape or form. And in both cases it's useless.