Re: [v6ops] Is there a problem? [was: Why enterprises aren't adopting IPv6]

[Owen DeLong <[e-mail]>]

> On Oct 2, 2021, at 03:14 , Philip Homburg <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
>> Eyeball providers are out of IPv4 addresses and acquisition cost
>> exceeds customer value. Eyeball providers need a much larger supply
>> of IPv4 addresses to support IPv4-only content providers than the
>> content providers do.
> 
> As far as I know, eyeball providers have waited until the last possible
> moment with offering IPv6 to customers. For example, my phone got IPv6 address
> (on mobile) just weeks ago.

Depends on where you live.

T-Mo in the US has been v6 for years… Same with VZW and even ATT.

Not sure where SPRINT/Softbank/whatever they became (T-mo?) is now,
but they’ve been trying their best to become irrelevant in the US market for
years now.

MVNOs still lag, but most of them aren’t significant fractions of the market any
more anyway. I think “Metro by T-Mo” is still lagging as well.

> Even then, most countries have less than 50% adoption of IPv6 by eyeball
> providers.

That depends on how you measure. If you just count by number of providers,
that’s probably true because the many many small ISPs are among the biggest
laggards in that market. If you count eyeballs passed, not sure that’s so much
the case, at least in the US. Comcast, AT&T, Cox, and others have all deployed
IPv6 to their eyeball customers. Verizon FIOS is still lagging here, to the best
of my knowledge.

> So it seems like eyeball providers didn't do IPv6 when they had enough 
> IPv4 addresses. And that they are out of address suddenly everybody has
> to do IPv6.

Not at all… But even if they had done IPv6 much earlier (and many of the
larger ones did), until the content providers their customers most care about
reaching are on IPv6, they don’t have the option of running IPv6-only customers.

> Of course, I'm happy that my phone now finally has an IPv6 address.
> 
>> Major eyeball providers could, actually start demanding higher
>> settlements for IPv4 peering than v6 and use that to start pushing
>> some of the V4 costs back onto the content providers.
> 
> I think for a long time, the internet community at large has argued against
> eyeball providers demanding money from content providers.

Not very successfully so far, though that is admittedly changing recently.

> However, in the cases where an eyeball provider is already collecting
> money from content providers, what is stopping them from offloading the
> cost of the CGNAT and IPv4 addresses to the content providers? That seems like
> an easy way out.

There are multiple types of costs and some of them are hard to quantify.
It’s not as simple as one might hope, but yes, this might be possible.

> The classical argument again this is that the customers of the eyeball ISP
> should pay for access to IPv4. They are the ones that want the content.

Which comes back to my argument that eyeball providers should start offering
a discount to customers willing to take IPv6-only services and/or surcharge
customers demanding IPv4 service.

Owen