North American Network Operators Group
Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical

Re: Creating demand for IPv6, and saving the planet

  • From: Daniel Senie
  • Date: Wed Oct 03 22:54:56 2007

At 08:04 PM 10/3/2007, Stephen Sprunk wrote:

Thus spake "Daniel Senie" <[email protected]>
A number of people have bemoaned the lack of any IPv6-only killer-content that would drive a demand for IPv6. I've thought about this, and about the government's push to make IPv6 a reality. What occurred to me is there is a satellite sitting in storage that would provide such content:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triana_(satellite)

Al Gore pushed for this satellite, Triana, to provide those on earth with a view of the planet among its scientific goals. The
Republicans referred to it as an "overpriced screen saver," though
the effect even of just the camera component on people's lives
and how they treat the planet could be considerable.

By combining the launch of Triana with feeding the still images and video from servers only connected to native IPv6 bandwidth, the government would provide both a strong incentive for end users to want to move to IPv6, and a way to get the people of this planet to stop from time to time and ponder the future of the earth.

Here's a simple question that applies to every "killer app" that's been proposed for IPv6: if you're going to the trouble of making a killer app and giving/selling it to the public, why wouldn't you include support for IPv4?

The US Government has stated an intention to have all equipment supplied to it be capable of IPv6, and networks to run IPv6. (http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/egov/b-1-information.html#IPV6) That being the case, this would be an opportunity for the government to use something to push that goal along. Clearly there's nothing about a screen saver image from L1 that requires IPv6, but the government owns Triana, and the government wants to push IPv6 (OK, so the government also pushed OSI in the form of GOSIP, and we all know how well that worked out).


Virtually every "unique" feature of IPv6, except the number of bits in the address, has been back-ported to IPv4. There is simply no other advantage left, and thus no room for apps that "require" IPv6.

Agree all the way around. There's no technological reason to tie these items together. There is a political reason, as it fits with the agenda of the government to push IPv6 development and deployment.

How the government would prevent proxying of this content into IPv4, well, that's another matter. Perhaps the IPv6 evangelists will be able to convince Congress to outlaw that at the same time as they approve the launch of Triana and provide for the server farm to serve the images.

BTW, thanks for bringing this thread back to the question of creating demand for IPv6. There's plenty of anti-NAT activity on other threads. Some constructive discussion over ways to create incentives to deploy IPv6 is worthwhile. The most common argument for deployment of IPv6 is fear, as in "the sky is falling." Yeah, we all heard that, and have for a decade. Got it. Now, is there some POSITIVE reason to push IPv6? Fear is not a positive force.

Dan