Robin Whittle wrote: [..]
Can you point to one or more instances where ordinary end-users are paying for an IPv6-only service? Or for a dual protocol IPv4 and IPv6 service?
I have been for the last 4 years or so. Note IPv6 is just an 'addon' as the ISP in question (bit.nl) just provides me with full Internet connectivity, this thus includes IPv4 and IPv6 over the same link.
Both free.fr and nerim.fr do provide IPv6 on a large scale too, next to that: http://www.sixxs.net/faq/connectivity/?faq=native
Check http://www.ipv6style.jp/en/statistics/services/index.shtml for a list of Japanese providers doing IPv6+IPv4 over the same link. Also there is apparently wide availability in .kr & .tw. In all cases you just get "Internet", thus both IPv4 and IPv6 over the same link.
Has anyone done a pilot project to see how happy a real sample of end-users would be relying on NAT-PT or whatever?
Why are you even thinking of NAT-PT? The above examples generally provide 1 IPv4 address (which most people then NAT) and a /48 IPv6.
At one point an ISP will not be able to provide any more public IPv4 addresses (as it really ran out) to their users they can just start re-using those addresses. Eg if they have a /16, they can just cut that up into 256 /24's and recycle that /24 various times and use one /24 for the real public addresses, thus NATing the rest of the /16 behind that. Fastweb in Italy has been doing that with a large amount of hijacked prefixes (http://plany.fasthosting.it/natpool.html) already for quite some while and that seems to work more or less.
Thus leaving the NAT-burden on IPv4 and having full e2e IPv6. Greets, Jeroen
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