Re: IPv6-only devices?

[Brian E Carpenter <brian@hursley.ibm.com>]

Ronald van der Pol wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Feb 06, 2003 at 16:16:09 -0500, Keith Moore wrote:
...
> If you read my initial email again you would see that I also say that
> it is perfectly OK to have IPv6-only appliances that do not need to
> communicate to IPv4-only nodes.

And in a SOHO context or an on-board network on some kind of vehicle,
it might be very natural for those IPv6-only devices to communicate
with a local server that proxies for them in some way to the
outside world. E.g. a "building services" server that doesn't
expose individual IPv6 thermostats to the outside world, but does
expose room temperatures. That server can be dual stack.

This is to me the most natural model for really low-end devices, which 
will be very price sensitive (i.e. a few dollars difference in the cost 
of ASIC or memory really matters). Unless you want to build a NAT-PT
with a Thermostat ALG for each band of thermostat.

> 
> I think dual stack is the best migration path. I also think that the
> transition period should be short. Not a flag day, but also not a
> transition period of decades. I agree with you that running dual
> stack networks is costly *). I think the transition should be done
> in a few years.

Er, how to say this politely? "In your dreams." The only realistic
thing to plan for is an indefinite period of coexistence. Once IPv6
is seriously out there, I can't see the overlap being less than ten
years, and even that is very optimistic.

Of course, the day should come when IPv4 is an overpriced
legacy service only supported by a couple of dinosaur telcos, but
I don't expect that to happen until I'm happily retired.

> I think this means the IETF should restrict new
> work to IPv6-only. In other words: either move to IPv6 or abondon
> the effort.

It's a bit soon for that. But we should clearly not accept any
WG that does stuff that isn't IPv6-ready. So IPv6 people need to
colonise every WG that exists, and read every draft for
IPv6ness.

    Brian