Re: Discussion of the Home/SOHO environment

[james woodyatt <jhw@apple.com>]

On Jan 3, 2008, at 18:25, David Miles wrote:
> While IPv6 supports it, it would be resource intensive for edge  
> routers to support transitioning from one prefix to another with  
> multiple prefixes simultaneously active.

Actually, no it isn't.  The IPv6-enabled Internet gateway my employer  
sells today does this.  Every time the public IPv4 address changes,  
the IPv6 6to4 interior prefix moves.  It was a piece of cake to make  
this work.  I didn't even break a sweat.

> Name services for IPv6 is somewhere we have already begun looking  
> at. In fact, one reason we are considering the target use of DHCPv6  
> in the home is to allow a central location of hosts for DNS  
> updating (either through DHCPv6 FQDN option or web-portal). In this  
> model the DHCPv6 server would update the DNS server.

Why bother?  You're not letting them run servers on their home  
networks anyway.  Why do their nodes need to have names, much less  
names in your DNS zones?  Answer: they don't, so don't kill yourself  
trying to solve a problem you don't have.

> My view is that IPv6 will re-open doors for applications developers  
> that have been long since shut, this will happen gradually and not  
> overnight - after all if you develop an application that leverages  
> IPv6, you need to wonder how many customers you can actually get on  
> the new protocol.

My view is that IPv6 doesn't actually open any doors that are  
currently shut.  All it does, *ALL* it does, is stave off the  
impending scarcity of public IP addresses by injecting enough supply  
into the market that they remain too cheap to bother benchmarking for  
the foreseeable future.  None of the other features of the new  
protocol are visible or ever will be visible to application  
developers in any meaningful sense.


--
james woodyatt <jhw@apple.com>
member of technical staff, communications engineering