Re: [fun] [homegate] HOMENET working group proposal

[Keith Moore <[e-mail]>]

On Jul 3, 2011, at 4:29 PM, Kenneth Voort wrote:

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> On 11-07-02 9:31 PM, Doug Barton wrote:
>> On 07/01/2011 14:17, Keith Moore wrote:
>>> On Jul 1, 2011, at 4:13 PM, Doug Barton wrote:
>>> 
>>>> This is an area that we very clearly do not need to get involved in
>>>> because it will solve itself due to market forces. Right now there
>>>> is no IPv6-only content that anyone cares about. When that changes,
>>>> users will start demanding that their provider give them access to
>>>> it, or vote with their feet.
> When that happens, the end-to-end (or perhaps site-to-site) model of the Internet will be broken. I
> would argue that the Internet is more about "reachability" than "content" or "conversation". When
> the day comes when it is no longer technically possible to reach any Internet-connected host who
> wants me to reach it, from anywhere, the Internet will be broken. While IPv6 has the promise to fix
> a great many things, it also carries with it the threat of breaking that fundamental assumption upon
> which the Internet is built.

Maybe I'm missing something.  How does IPv6 threaten that model?  

If what you're worried about is that IPv4 and IPv6 can't talk to each other: My take is that there will be considerable economic pressure to reduce support costs associated with IPv4 once IPv6 support is widespread.  And I don't actually believe there will be any significant amount of "content" that will be accessible only via IPv6 until 99% of Internet users have IPv6.  

(There may well be applications that only work with IPv6 long before that.  But unless there's some easy, general way to run IPv6 over IPv4 that works pretty much everywhere, those applications will be limited to niche markets.)

People didn't stop sending email just because BITNET fell into disuse.  They just switched to using Internet email addresses.

Keith