[AusNOG] [Ap-ipv6tf] official shutdown date for IPv4. The date he is pushing for is April 4, 2024. "IPv4 can't go on forever, " Latour said. "

[Matt Palmer]

On Fri, Nov 07, 2014 at 04:23:49PM +1100, Ross Wheeler wrote:
> >There is literally no reason not to do it at this stage, other
> >than people being too set in their ways to learn new things.
> 
> Not wanting to throw oil on the fire here, 'tis a genuine question...
> 
> Are there any "IPv6-outside-IPv4-inside" SOHO/Home routers available?

I'm not aware of any that support DNS46, but you don't really need it --
nobody's taking away your IPv4 access any time soon (at least not in those
parts of the world that have plenty of hoarded IPv4 addresses and/or the
money to buy netblocks on the open market).  Dual stack works quite nicely,
and plenty of routers support it.

Yes, there is a messy chicken-and-egg problem at both the eyeball and
content edges of the network, but network operators aren't making life any
easier by dragging the chain on providing IPv6 support to the edges.  Plenty
of home/SOHO routers support all the features necessary to run a dual-stack
network on any provider who supports IPv6, and that's all that's needed.

> Completely apart from the network-operators point of view, between
> us we have a hell of a lot of customers who are going to have
> equipment that simply doesn't do IPv6; who are not going to be able
> to afford (or justify) the expense of replacement gear; and are
> going to be in an awkward position if they were "forced" to change
> now.

The only thing that's going to *force* people to change, now or in the
future, is a lack of publically-routable IPv4 addresses.  Not deploying IPv6
where it *can* be used isn't going to delay that future any, whereas rolling
out IPv6 everywhere *does* potentially conserve addresses[1] while
simultaneously helping to expose any remaining kinks in IPv6 adoption early
enough to get them fixed before sheer blind panic sets in when IPv4
addresses start getting *really* scarce.

> The number of people who CAN'T get the NBN yet vastly outnumbers the
> number who can, so "Oh, but they'll have IPv6 available at their
> router now" doesn't apply, and likely won't for some time to come.

What's the NBN got to do with it?  I've had IPv6 on my home connection for
so long I can't remember exactly when I got it (several years at least) and
I'm on bog-stock ADSL.

- Matt

[1] $DAYJOB is fully IPv6-enabled, and I run plenty of internally-oriented
but Internet-facing services IPv6-only, because everyone who has to use it
is v6-enabled too.  This has saved about a /27 of public IPv4 space so far,
and it'll only get better as we grow into something more than a small
startup.

-- 
Imagine an orkplace where you were the only non executive: Make them all
CEO. Give them all at least one Masters degree and/or a PhD, and the ego
trip that comes with that. Now double it.  That's education.
		-- GB, in the Monastery