Re: IPv6 woes - RFC

[Bjørn Mork <bjorn () mork no>]

Saku Ytti <saku () ytti fi> writes:

> On Tue, 7 Sept 2021 at 19:51, Owen DeLong <owen () delong com> wrote:
>
> > Hopefully this idea that “you need to do IPv4 anyhow” will die some day soon.
>
> Fully agreed, I just don't see the driver. But I can imagine a
> different timeline where in 2000 several tier1 signed mutual binding
> contracts to drop IPv4 at the edge in 2020. And no one opposed,
> because 20 years before was 1980, and 20 years in the future IPv4
> wont' anymore be a thing, it's clear due to exponential growth.
>
> And we'd all be enjoying a much simplified stack and lower costs all
> around (vendor, us, customers).

I started wondering if there are areas where we can disable IPv4 today.

Ideas like Tore documented in RFC 7755 are certainly possible without
any negative effects, and hopefully with reduced costs compared to a
full dual-stack environment. But it is still based on the assumption
that any interface facing the Internet must be dual-stack.

The next thought was SMTP and authoritative DNS servers.  Running IPv6
only in a real production environment should be possible as long as you
keep IPv4 on at least one of the servers.

But you don't have to look far before you hit snags like this:
https://www.norid.no/en/om-domenenavn/regelverk-for-no/vedlegg-f/

So although I techincally could run IPv6 only on all but one of the DNS
servers, this would violate current policy.  Oddly enough, running IPv4
only on all servers is allowed.  Go figure.

> Why is this not possible now? Why would we not sign this mutual
> agreement for 2040? Otherwise we'll be having this same discussion in
> 2040.

Signing such a contract would be pretty stupid from a commercial pov.
The growth isn't exponential anymore.  It's linear at best.  You can
probably run just fine with an IPv4 only network after 2040.  Not so
sure about the IPv6 only network.


Bjørn