Re: [v6ops] draft-ietf-v6ops-6to4-to-historic WGLC

[Lorenzo Colitti <[e-mail]>]

On Wed, Jan 28, 2015 at 4:42 AM, James Woodyatt <[e-mail]> wrote:

> I hate to be That Guy, but I can't keep myself from wondering aloud if we
> might see measurable *intentional* usage of 6to4 [RFC 3056] in the wild for
> as long as we still see IPv4 in the wild.
>

Personally I doubt it. I think the reason we still have nonzero 6to4 usage
is because a) MS made it "a requirement" for some versions of Windows, b)
some CPE manufacturers included it and turned it on by default, and c) some
OSes prefer it to IPv4. That was all long ago, but old hardware dies hard.
I just saw a bug report from a Nexus Player user where the CPE was not only
announcing a default route 6to4 prefix with a 10.0.0.0/8 IPv4 address, but
a *link-local address as DNS server* (that was a new one even for me).

These days, if you're an enthusiast, you're more likely to use a configured
tunnel, and if you're a CPE manufacturer, you're likely to go for parity
with other CPE feature sets, which are essentially DHCPv6 PD and/or 6rd
(and declaring RFC3056 will help here). As the old hardware ages out, 6to4
will slowly disappear.

  When I'm feeling especially depressed about this topic, I wonder if we
> might see 6to4 as the *last* major application of IPv4 before we turn off
> its lights in the default free zone.
>

If we could agree on a definition of "major" that was measurable, I'd take
a bet against that. :-)