[IPv6]Re: Why Is This IPv6 Transition Taking So long?

[David Conrad <[e-mail]>]

Hi Geoff,

On Nov 1, 2024, at 12:22 PM, Geoff Huston <[e-mail]> wrote:
> The Internet is a market economy, not a command economy.

Too black and white and (IMHO) an overgeneralization. There are, of course, parts that are market and parts that are command.  For example, while a market does exist for IP(v4) addresses, the RIR policy regimes distorts that market in a “command” fashion (to the detriment of IPv6 deployment in my view, but that’s a separate discussion). In the case of IPv6 “deployment” (which appears to be the politically correct term rather than “transition” now), I’ve had recent experiences[1] that would appear to suggest some governments, particularly in developing countries, have a very "command economy" view of encouraging IPv6.

I’m not smart enough to judge whether ultimately, your thesis that the world will eventually end up with 1 hop transit to CDNs interconnected with commodity fat dumb pipes (which I thought everybody (well, except the pipe owners) wanted — i.e., dumb network/smart edges) will come true, but I’d observe we’re not close to there yet in most parts of the world and there are numerous factors, including political (see Vietnam’s and the Czech Republic’s plans), economic (e.g., due to IPv4 pricing, in a green field deployment, cost per customer for IPv6+IPv4aaS will likely be lower than IPv4-only or the impact of a single massive player as we’ve seen with Reliance Jio in India), and technical (e.g., the Matter protocol being IPv6-only, the fact the Internet connectivity experienced by most people around the world is provided over mobile networks that are increasingly IPv6-only) that may drive non-linear IPv6 deployment. 

(I’d also argue the data you present on IPv4 pricing post-COVID on slide 29 appears way too noisy to declare pricing stabilization, rather it seems to me to merely be renormalization after a speculative bubble, but that’s a separate topic that’s probably better on a different list)

Regards,
-drc
[1] ITU’s World Telecommunications Standardization Assembly, particularly the discussions around Resolution 64, now titled "Promoting, facilitating and accelerating the transition to and deployment 
of Internet Protocol version 6", was “interesting”.