[97642] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: The Choice: IPv4 Exhaustion or Transition to IPv6
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steven M. Bellovin)
Thu Jun 28 16:01:29 2007
Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 15:55:25 -0400
From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <smb@cs.columbia.edu>
To: brett watson <brett@the-watsons.org>
Cc: nanog@merit.edu
In-Reply-To: <CC48B006-F1A0-4EA9-8D2B-55F1FF4AF238@the-watsons.org>
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
On Thu, 28 Jun 2007 12:23:30 -0700
brett watson <brett@the-watsons.org> wrote:
>
>
> On Jun 28, 2007, at 11:44 AM, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
>
> > Whatever -- it
> > exists as a reasonably stable design; starting over would cost us 15
> > more years that we just don't have.)
>
> Are you saying we (collectively) would take yet *another* 15 years to
> come up with another and/or better design?
Not so much to design it as to reach this point of maturity.
More precisely, I don't see any reason why it would take significantly
less. In fact, it can't take much less, no matter what. Figure two
years for the basic design, 3-5 years for the IETF (or whomever) to
engineer all the pieces (it's more than just the IP header, and until
we have a new design we won't even be able to start identifying the
pieces), 3 years for design/code/test (in the NANOG world, that
includes new ASICs, line cards, etc.), and 3-5 years for much existing
gear (routers, end systems, etc.) to be replaced with the IPvN stuff.
That adds up to 11-15.
I have a lot of confidence in those figures; if anything, I suspect
that I'm being too optimistic.
IPv6 isn't what I wanted it to be (and I was on the IPng directorate).
That said, it's what we have, and I think we *really* need something
with a lot more address space.
--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
