[156534] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: The Department of Work and Pensions, UK has an entire /8
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jo Rhett)
Wed Sep 19 13:44:18 2012
From: Jo Rhett <jrhett@netconsonance.com>
In-Reply-To: <50598664.9020302@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2012 10:42:30 -0700
To: Alex Harrowell <a.harrowell@gmail.com>
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
On Sep 19, 2012, at 1:46 AM, Alex Harrowell wrote:
> To be provocative, what on earth is their excuse for not using IPv6 =
internally? By definition, an internal network that isn't announced to =
the public Internet doesn't have to worry about happy eyeballs, broken =
carrier NAT, and the like because it doesn't have to be connected to =
them if it doesn't want to be. A lot of the transition issues are much =
less problematic if you're not on the public Internet.
Because next to zero of the common office equipment supports v6, or =
supports it well. And honestly it's a cost facter that nobody has any =
incentive to pay. Every enterprise I have spoken with has the exact same =
intention: IPv4 inside forever to avoid cost they don't need to pay. NAT =
to v6 externally if necessary.
Obviously when IPv6 has a larger footprint and their staff has the =
experience this will change, but asking the enterprise to pick up this =
ball and run with it is wasting your time.
And second, have you ever worked on a private intranet that wasn't =
connected to the internet through a firewall? Skipping oob networks for =
equipment management, neither have I.
> Perhaps the military have a lot of weird equipment that is IPv4 only - =
in fact it's a racing certainty - but DWP is a gigantic enterprise data =
processing organisation. They also have some big Web sites, but =
obviously those aren't on the private network. (If they had enough =
workstations to need the whole /8, we wouldn't need DWP as the =
unemployment problem would have been definitively solved:-))
As a giant enterprise data processing center that works today, what =
possible motivation do they have for disrupting that?
You've got to shake this silliness out of your head. I started my career =
when there were dozens of networking protocols. The industry eventually =
shook out by 1992 around IPv4, however many businesses were running some =
of the obsolete, dead, unsupported protocols well up and past 2000, long =
long long after IPv4 had become the one true protocol. Even if we flip =
the entire Internet over to IPv6 next week, enterprises will be running =
IPv4 internally well into the 2020s. Because they have no gain in paying =
the cost to change, and massive risk in making the change.
Obviously some businesses will need to upgrade and will have the =
motivation. But don't expect people who don't need to upgrade, don't =
need to change, to undertake a massive infrastructure upgrade so that =
you can get more IPv4 addresses.
--=20
Jo Rhett
Net Consonance : net philanthropy to improve open source and internet =
projects.
