North American Network Operators Group

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RE: North America not interested in IP V6

  • From: Irwin Lazar
  • Date: Thu Jul 31 13:04:49 2003

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michel Py [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2003 12:16 PM
> To: Jeroen Massar
> Cc: [email protected]
> Subject: RE: North America not interested in IP V6
> 
> > Jeroen Massar wrote:
> > It has a timeline (slides 47-50) showing the US falling behind
> > for at least 3 years... come on US show what you are good for :)
> 
> Show me where there is money to make with IPv6 first :-) 
> There are some
> exceptions, but here v6 is somehow like ISDN: I Still Don't Need.
> 
> Michel.
> 
Christian Huitema of Microsoft presented on IPv6 at our Catalyst conference last month.  He noted that Microsoft had a very difficult time creating xBox live due to issues with IPv4/NAT, which is one of the reasons they are pushing for IPv6 as the basis for future collaborative/peer-to-peer applications (for example, 3degrees).  I believe Sony is also IPv6 enabling their products for the same reason.

For these services to truly scale you've got be able to have true peer-to-peer computing.  Right now, I'm not able to directly connect to my neighbor's computer to play a game if we are both on home LANs.  I'm not able to directly connect to my PC at home when I'm on the road.  I can't accept incoming phone calls to my netmeeting client without static configuration of my NAT gateway (same for an IP softphone).  It would be a configuration nightmare to get four Vonage phones each with their own phone number.  Christian provided a wonderful demonstration of a future interactive video application that would be difficult to scale if proxy/NAT services got in the way.   

There are lots of things that just don't work, and lots of opportunities for making money with IPv6.  My own personal opinion is that over the next 5-10 year everything will come out of the box with IPv6 capabilities, making it fairly straightforward to turn on.  I doubt we'll see much acceptance in the enterprise space before then, but there are significant opportunities to bring additional services into the home and serve those on home networks if we can eliminate NAT.

As one person noted in response to Christian's speech.  If there is no addressing shortage, why do I have to pay $75 a month for a DSL connection with a static IP address when a floating IP address only costs me $40 per month?

Just my .02c
irwin