[AusNOG] Less than 10% of IPv4 Addresses Remain Unallocated

[Robert Brockway]

On Thu, 21 Jan 2010, Skeeve Stevens wrote:

>
> Problem is that users just want 'internet' and in general don't feel 
> they need to care about anything else - much less even know what ipv4 or 
> ipv6 is, they just know the term 'ip address'.

If they know that much :)

> For the last 6 months I've been asking most people if they know what 
> ipv4 or ipv6 is? They have no idea - and most of them are in IT.

IT is an interesting industry.  It's very stratified when it comes to 
knowledge level.  It's been my experience that a lot of people in IT are 
very shaky on the fundamentals with few people having a real depth of 
knowledge.  The people with the desire to accumulate real depth of 
knowledge in IT (aka clue) tend to gravitate together and associate on 
certain mailing lists.

I put the knowledge problems in IT down to the youth of our industry. 
The time since the invention of the first electronic computer is barely a 
single humand lifespan.  When IT has been around for 400 or 500 years I 
would hope to see a very different picture.

> End users don't care about ipv6, but it seems we're going to have to try 
> to make them care because of the cpe issue. It is going to be a painful 
> time.

I think end users will view an upgrade to an IPv6 enabled CPE as akin to 
the change from analog to digital TV.  They will go ahead and upgrade 
because their ISP told them they have to.  I think the fact that the don't 
understand the technology will actually make them more accepting of the 
change.  We see the migration to IPv6 as a headache waiting to happen. 
They see it as a mandatory upgrade that is slightly annoying.

Cheers,

Rob

-- 
Email: robert at timetraveller.org
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Web: http://www.practicalsysadmin.com
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