IP Convergence: Beyond VoIP, Beyond Cost Savings

In this comment on one of my earlier blogs on IPv6, the person directed me to a blog by Todd Underwood, who recently spoke at the TelecomNEXT show.  His blog is worth a read, and I would draw your attention to the presentation he gave at TelecomNEXT.

It's no wonder that it caused a great stir, babbling all this nonsense that IPv6 would never be deployed and that organizations would be better off for ignoring it.  His presentation makes some great points, however, and I think drawing the conclusion that maybe you shouldn't be concerned about IPv6 for a while is quite valid.

So, when should you worry about deploying IPv6?  The latest statistical analysis from Geoff Huston estimates some time around 2013 we will run out of addresses in the unused pool, and through returns and other trading of IP addresses (black market for IPv4 space?) we could get along until 2023.  These results were corroborated by the guys at JPNIC, Japans IP allocation office, in this article at ipv6style.

I did some of my own searching on IPv6 deployment, it's obvious to me that the existing IPv6 deployment is SMALL.

How do you know the IPv6 deployment is so small, Dave?  Well sir, the fact that you can build a map of it that doesn't look like a large ink blot would be your first clue!  Granted, you're not going to be able to read any of the text because the font is too small, but that's probably just a gimmick to make your little space in the IPv6-verse feel small in comparison to the rest.

There is this one little issue that Todd speaks to that really grabbed my attention.  Todd suggests that we should get to work on a better next generation protocol right away, one that is backward compatible with IPv4 for starters.  I don't think this is realistic in the slightest.  First of all, there was a guy that tried to come up with something better, but unfortunately his IPv8 ideas were met with laughter in the engineering and operations community to the point that many people (myself included) procmail'd the poor fella into /dev/null (Unix-geek-speak for deleting the his emails automatically upon receipt).  I think that if you did get people to think about a new protocol, that they would just redesign something almost identical to IPv6 anyway.  Afterall, it solves the main problems we have remaining...it provides virtually unlimited address space and has what amounts to a variable and extendable header size that makes it almost infinitely future-proof from a feature perspective.

Oh, and then there is the small issue of time. The IETF, while up to the task, does not work especially fast.  It is not like a standard product development cycle in that you can deliver requirements and get a next generation protocol for the worlds communications that will last the next 50 years in a years time.  It will take some time, maybe 5 or more years.  Then you have the unenviable task of getting all the router vendors and all the operating system vendors to  implement your protocol.  How easy is that going to be to convince them to implement it when you also have to convince them that they wasted all money integrating IPv6 functionality?

No, I think the opportunity to create an alternative to IPv6 has passed us by, so suck it up people and put IPv6 migration on your calendar.  In another 5 years, it'll already be everywhere you want to be (just like your Visa), and if you've put it off that long, migration shouldn't be too painful.