Yet another stupid rant. [LWN.net]

Yet another stupid rant.

Posted Jan 28, 2011 1:10 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: Facts are ignored as usual... by bojan
Parent article: LCA: IP address exhaustion and the end of the open net

Amazing. So, tell me, how does my software vendor enable "32bit syscall emulation" on my IPv6 stack to use my IPv4 address there? They can't. There is no way to do it.

Actually there is a way to do it just like there are ways to use old 32bit drivers with 64bit OS. You need new 64bit drivers (in case of AMD64) and new IP number (in case of IPv6), but then you can use virtualization (in case of AMD64) or ecapsulation (in case of IPv6) to use your old driver or your old IP. In both cases there are a limitation: you can only use USB drivers (in case of AMD64) or TCP (in case of IPv6), but the similarity is stricking.

I didn't have to touch a thing to use my old 32-bit software on 64-bit or 32-bit Linux/Windows/whatever on amd64.

It's not your task, that's right.

This was done by software upgrades (or not even that if I stayed on 32-bit OS) and other automatic means. Red Hat, Apple, Microsoft etc. did this for me and everyone else.

Yup. They were supposed to provide new 64bit drivers which were needed to talk with old hardware (old 32bit drivers were pretty useless for that) - and they did that (eventually - see below). ISPs were supposed to privide new 128bit IP addresses - but they failed to provide them. Note that it took quite a long time before 64bit drivers become available: 64bit XP was and is pretty useless piece of crap.

In contrast, if I want to have currently useless IPv6 connectivity, I have to get an address (or more than one), reconfigure my DNS, my firewalls, my services etc. And now multiply this by a few billion and you'll get the amount of effort required for IPv6 setup around the world. Then, I have to maintain these two in parallel for some time to come. Oh, and this is just so I get to the exactly same functionality I have right now on IPv4. And, I'm going to make a whole heap of mistakes in the process (it's a new thing), which will cause a whole heap of unforeseen problem on my networks.

Let's compare it with Windows XP x64, shell we? You needed new 64bit drivers (but these were often not available), you needed replacement for all your 16bit programs, you often needed changes on network - all these just to keep the same level of functionality as with Windows XP. And now multiply this by a few million and you'll get the amount of effort required for 64bit transition. And it was not easy to setup all that at all.

Yeah, exactly like my amd64 transition. Not.

Well: yes and no. AMD64 transition was exactly like IPv6 transition before Windows Vista. After Windows Vista it suddenly become much easier. What happened? Monopoly power happened: Microsoft refused to certify vendors with only 32bit drivers so everyone was forced to support Windows x64. So yes, monopoly may be used to reduce transition pain - there are no doubt about it. But it does not work with IPv6 today: the only monopoly power which may force ISPs are governments (may be via FTC, may be some other government structure) and they are not interested. Yet. When/if they'll decide to mandate IPv6 support - it'll exactly like AMD64 transition.

Black is white. Worse is better and so on.

This is your tactic. You are trying to show that plan with 0.0% adoption rate is somehow better then plan with 0.3% adoption rate. Sure, 0.3% is pitiful adoption rate, but 0.0% is much worse no matter which way you are looking on it.

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Yet another stupid rant.

Posted Jan 28, 2011 1:44 UTC (Fri) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

> This is your tactic. You are trying to show that plan with 0.0% adoption rate is somehow better then plan with 0.3% adoption rate. Sure, 0.3% is pitiful adoption rate, but 0.0% is much worse no matter which way you are looking on it.

It's not my tactic. It's what happened. You know, a historical fact.

The common sense proposition (the one of backward compatibility) did not get accepted, ergo it never became "the plan" or "a plan" for IPv6 transition. This proposition did not get accepted by the same people that achieved the current 0.3% penetration, so the outcome of 0.0% counts against what they did too, which gives them a total score of 0.3%.

From my perspective, this is more like zero. My ping still doesn't work.

Your expose (or some of it) about various tribulations with OSes during the 64-transition is the stuff we should have been talking about in the last 10 years during the real IPv6 transition (i.e. stack upgrades). You know, real world problems that got solved, so that it would be really easy to upgrade today when the address crunch is upon us. As you've shown with the Windows example, it can be done so that it eventually becomes easy.

I love it when people keep avoiding simple, fundamental questions. There is always an elaborate, sophisticated, technical explanation, usually many pages long. In the end, the simple question asked at the beginning remains unanswered: why do people connected already cannot just stay connected?

Failure to answer that question leads to the current non-adoption of IPv6.

Yet another stupid rant.

Posted Jan 28, 2011 2:55 UTC (Fri) by cesarb (subscriber, #6266) [Link]

"For every problem there is always a solution that is simple, obvious, and wrong." -- Albert Einstein

"Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. [...] ( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once" -- http://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt

> There is always an elaborate, sophisticated, technical explanation, usually many pages long. In the end, the simple question asked at the beginning remains unanswered: why do people connected already cannot just stay connected?

The short answer to "why do people connected already cannot just stay connected" is "because the IPv6 network is a different network".

Of course, this is not the question you meant. What you mean to ask is, if I am understanding the massive sprawling thread forest (but please correct me if I am wrong), is something like "why could not a transition plan be made which would allow for the IPv4->IPv6 transition with no loss of connectivity at any moment". With an implied "if everyone followed DJB's plan, it would have worked".

Leaving aside DJB for a moment, this is NOT a simple question. It is also VERY technical. Either you use a heavy amount of jargon, which can be impenetrable to anyone who does not have a deep knowledge of the Internet architecture, or you use a simpler (but still very technical) language and your answer becomes quite long. To make things worse, most of it would be showing hypotheses of possible plans or parts of plans and explaining where they fail.

As to DBJ's plan, here is why it would not work: "Once these software upgrades have been done on practically every Internet computer, we'll have reached the magic moment: people can start relying on public IPv6 addresses as replacements for public IPv4 addresses."

With DJB's plan, we could only START using IPv6 addresses after PRATICALLY EVERY INTERNET COMPUTER had been upgraded to understand IPv6!

Yet another stupid rant.

Posted Jan 28, 2011 3:54 UTC (Fri) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

> "because the IPv6 network is a different network"

Aha. The real problem right there.

> With DJB's plan, we could only START using IPv6 addresses after PRATICALLY EVERY INTERNET COMPUTER had been upgraded to understand IPv6!

As compared to now, when we cannot start using IPv6 addresses at all as well. Because not all of our computers understand IPv6 (tiny minority, not the real problem, easy to fix) _and_ they are not configured for IPv6 as well (vast majority, the real problem, will take lots of effort to fix).

Now, if we were able to deliver parallel, but not configured IPv6 stack to almost everyone, surely we could have delivered integrated, fully configured IPv6 to almost everyone already connected with IPv4.

> "For every problem there is always a solution that is simple, obvious, and wrong." -- Albert Einstein

Completely agree. A good example is the current IPv6 transition plan.

> "Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. [...] ( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once"

Also agree. Essentially, everyone has to cooperate by reconfiguring their networks with brand new IPv6 addresses, DNS, firewalls, daemon configurations etc. End result? 0.3% penetration months away from IPv4 address exhaustion.

Right. DJB plan failed. Other plans have minimal success.

Posted Jan 28, 2011 12:01 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

> This is your tactic. You are trying to show that plan with 0.0% adoption rate is somehow better then plan with 0.3% adoption rate. Sure, 0.3% is pitiful adoption rate, but 0.0% is much worse no matter which way you are looking on it.

It's not my tactic. It's what happened. You know, a historical fact.

Yup. DJB plan failed - it's historical fact. You still can change the history. You know: go out there, start producing new hardware and software, etc. Prove it's better. But till that happens we should accept DJB's plan as utter failure and our correct plan as moderate disaster.

I love it when people keep avoiding simple, fundamental questions. There is always an elaborate, sophisticated, technical explanation, usually many pages long. In the end, the simple question asked at the beginning remains unanswered: why do people connected already cannot just stay connected?

You seem to like "simple, fundamental questions". Here is the one for you. Ok, suppose I accept the crazy idea that DJB plan is "a way to go". Why DJB's plan failed? In other cases when the "committee in charge" produced unworkable standards and someone produced better non-standard alternative it quickly gained acceptance. Think SVG vs Flash for vector graphic or even TCP/IP vs OSI framework architecture for internetwork architecture. If DJB's plan was so perfect then why was it was only accepted by crazy fanboys on the internet forums and not by industrial players?

Right. DJB plan failed. Other plans have minimal success.

Posted Jan 31, 2011 16:40 UTC (Mon) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]

For fuck's sake, will you stop fucking trolling with your inane shit?

*plonk*