5 ms·

It seems like a lot of technology transitions go smoothly, while others painfully drag on for a decade (ipv6, Python3). Are there any common root causes for the

by kens 8y ago

It seems like a lot of technology transitions go smoothly, while others painfully drag on for a decade (ipv6, Python3). Are there any common root causes for the semi-failures? Has anyone written about why some succeed and some don't?

Someone1234 8y ago
Backwards compatibility seems to be the largest. Look at the deployment of TLS as a success story. Everyone kept on supporting both old and new, watched the percentages, and then dropped the old when the new had enough penetration. The whole thing is also a bit of a shell game. Nobody wants to invest in it until they feel like they're "behind" if they don't. So you have a big player or two in order to make it feel like that's the way the wind is blowing.
- apple4ever 8y ago
  TLS is a great example of how to do it. IPv6 is a great example of how not to.
  - vetinari 8y ago
    TLS is way more concentrated than IPv6/IPv4. There are a handful of browsers that pushed the adoption. There's nobody doing the same in the IPv6 space. There are areas that the browsers purposefully ignored (DNSSEC, DNS-SD) and thus their adoption is low.
    - apple4ever 8y ago
      Good points. And brings out the problem with IPv6- there is no sector pushing IPv6, because no sector sees the benefits. Question is why does no sector see it? My theory is that it adds a lot complexity and planning for little gain. So no sector is going to push for it.
      - vetinari 8y ago
        With IPv6, there are mismatched incentives. There are parties that would have to do the investments and another parties would benefit. For ISPs, it means investments with no benefits. They do it only once their CGNAT is too overloaded or on other sign of running out of IPv4. When they do it, in the simplest and cheapest way possible, which the informed customers see as worse service, so naturally they want to avoid it. IPv6 would help network application developers, so they could do more or do what they do now with less, but they have no impact on investments ISPs would have to do. Then there are parties, that have working IPv4 infrastructure, feel no pressure caused by lack of IPv4, and migration would mean just expenses with zero benefits. Exactly like companies that ran login forms over http, up until browsers started to warn users. That was the incentive, that caused them to switch to https.
  - j1vms 8y ago
    > TLS is a great example of how to do it. ASCII -> UTF8 VHS -> DVD not as successful: DVD -> BluRay : timing was rather close to the rise of streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, etc.
    - rbritton 8y ago
      I would posit that BluRay has been less successful for two other reasons: 1. DVD video quality is good enough for most. 2. The Combination of DRM, unskippable portions, and similar is enough of a barrier to discourage the upgrade. Personally, I will only watch a movie on disk when I don’t have time to rip it and remove that crap.
      - gmueckl 8y ago
        The DRM and unskippable portions were the same for DVDs when they launched and yet they were a bigger success in an equal timeframe. I do not think that most consumers care enough about these two points to actually influence their decisionmaking. I'd be more interested in how the HD DVD as a very visible competitor blocked BluRay adoption because of consumers wanting to wait for a winner in that war.
      - leoc 8y ago
        DVD quality may be worse than you remember. The difference is really very clear on modern HD screens.
        AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
        In my experience, only if you're really looking for it or play them side by side.
        leoc 8y ago
        That hasn't been my experience. I was watching some instructional DVDs—well-produced, modern stuff https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v68ZP8tHhnc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v68ZP8tHhnc —on a desktop monitor lately and the difference really leaped out at me, despite my already knowing consciously that the video wouldn't be HD, and the fact that I'm far from being any connoisseur of video quality. Given that standard DVD resolution is never higher than 720 × 576 pixels it really shouldn't have been surprising.
  - coding123 8y ago
    Tls was a software upgrade for nearly everything. In fact just by building newer devices that software was just there and ready. Ipv6 is not just a software upgrade.
- zzzcpan 8y ago
  > So you have a big player or two in order to make it feel like that's the way the wind is blowing. This assumes markets with little to no competition. But most ISPs are in competitive markets with no trend setting big players and they can't waste money investing into IPv6 or anything else that has no demand if they want to keep the business alive and healthy.
  - lanstin 8y ago
    I wanted to buy native IPv6 access from my ISPs for a long time but it was not possible every where. I get it now from a Comcast business account. My Google search traffic is now over IPv6. Admittedly my networking interests are probably too rare to make a market force thru numbers.
- zamadatix 8y ago
  You can do the same thing with v6, the difference is problem space. TLS is about the client and the server upgrading while IP is about every box inbetween as well. If you look at TLS and HTTP version changes when the inbetween infrastructure is involved (even just a single corporate FW, not the whole path) you're held to legacy versions just the same as IP is held to legacy versions. Eventually some protocol is the bottom of what a group agrees to speak rather than individuals and that protocol has a completely different set of deployment issues than abstraction layers that can be built between end stations at higher levels.
  - fpoling 8y ago
    It is not only about intermediate boxes. Just consider how relatively smoothly various parts of WiFi stack was upgraded or how 2G->4G transition happens with mobiles phones. The biggest problem with IPv6 is that it a different protocol that requires special support on all levels starting from applications and down to managed switches.
    - votepaunchy 8y ago
      > consider how relatively smoothly various parts of WiFi stack was upgraded Has WiFi been upgraded? I believe new devices still have support back to 802.11b.
      - dtech 8y ago
        Usually, devices have an "802.11n+" options nowadays, dropping support for 11b and 11g has some benefits. It's often enabled by default on new devices, especially since most 11b/11g devices don't support WPA2-PSK so couldn't connect anyway
        Macha 8y ago
        11b maybe, but most 11g devices should support WPA2, 11g lasted a long while before 11n was widespread.
      - 8y ago
- ivlad 8y ago
  That's not true. TLS didn't happen until Google said they will penalize non-https sites. Letsencrypt helped alot, but the momentum was there even before them. From the client perspective there is the same level of compatibility between IPv4 and IPv6: client can connect to both types of addresses.
Waterluvian 8y ago
With both my personal experience is: "leave me alone, I'm here to solve a problem, not migrate." For new projects I use ipv6 where easy and python3.6 where possible.
protomyth 8y ago
Take a look at COBOL in our daily lives. The switching cost is horrible and lets face facts, developers don't seem to want to develop the next cool version of COBOL. I sometimes wonder about switching costs when you have two or more groups that have different beliefs, practices, and views of the daily grind. Infrastructure & Software costs money and time to switch with no real personal benefit and requires a change in knowledge. Both your examples require a hard switch and don't have a nice easy transition plan. Add taking away things that are familiar to the people in the field and you have a bad, long transition.
ajross 8y ago
> Are there any common root causes for the semi-failures? Sure is: it weren't broke and they fixed it! I mean, even today if you take a median python user (a devops person in a big shop, maybe) and ask them to name four major advantages that Python 3 has over Python 2... I doubt they could get past one. It's not that it isn't a better language, but for 90% of its user base who don't do library design it's almost indistinguishable. And it's incompatible! IPv6 was similar for most of its life. IPv4 wasn't broke. Now... it's getting toward broke. And in fact lots and lots of client ISPs (mostly mobile ones) are moving rapidly to IPv6, where their systems hit IPv6 backends of all the big content providers. I honestly don't know that I agree with the thesis of this article. Network operators who want to deploy IPv6 in the modern world certainly can, and are. That's pretty much the definition of a smooth transition, even if its taking a few decades longer than expected.
zokier 8y ago
But is either Python3 or IPv6 really a failure? Sure the migration has been slow, but has still been rolling on pretty consistently forwards. There are no major reversal in the trends of either IPv6 or Py3k adoptation, and especially for IPv6 there is pretty much no alternative out there. Maybe just a decade is not all that long period and the tech community is too impatient due the historically rapid pace of changes.
- yholio 8y ago
  Let's see... Can I get a /10 IPv4 block for my company without paying a small fortune? Can I do the job using IPv6 only? Does the vast majority of mobile and emerging market customers have end to end connectivity? If the answers are "No", "No" and "No", I would have to say that indeed, IPv6 really is a failure, after two decades and monstrous investment thrown at it, it has failed to solve any of the practical issues it was supposed to. It's a gigantic failure, both in a costs vs. benefits approach, but exponentially so when considering the opportunity costs of being still stuck with IPv4.

by kens 8y ago

Someone1234 8y ago

Backwards compatibility seems to be the largest. Look at the deployment of TLS as a success story. Everyone kept on supporting both old and new, watched the percentages, and then dropped the old when the new had enough penetration. The whole thing is also a bit of a shell game. Nobody wants to invest in it until they feel like they're "behind" if they don't. So you have a big player or two in order to make it feel like that's the way the wind is blowing.

apple4ever 8y ago
TLS is a great example of how to do it. IPv6 is a great example of how not to.
- vetinari 8y ago
  TLS is way more concentrated than IPv6/IPv4. There are a handful of browsers that pushed the adoption. There's nobody doing the same in the IPv6 space. There are areas that the browsers purposefully ignored (DNSSEC, DNS-SD) and thus their adoption is low.
  - apple4ever 8y ago
    Good points. And brings out the problem with IPv6- there is no sector pushing IPv6, because no sector sees the benefits. Question is why does no sector see it? My theory is that it adds a lot complexity and planning for little gain. So no sector is going to push for it.
    - vetinari 8y ago
      With IPv6, there are mismatched incentives. There are parties that would have to do the investments and another parties would benefit. For ISPs, it means investments with no benefits. They do it only once their CGNAT is too overloaded or on other sign of running out of IPv4. When they do it, in the simplest and cheapest way possible, which the informed customers see as worse service, so naturally they want to avoid it. IPv6 would help network application developers, so they could do more or do what they do now with less, but they have no impact on investments ISPs would have to do. Then there are parties, that have working IPv4 infrastructure, feel no pressure caused by lack of IPv4, and migration would mean just expenses with zero benefits. Exactly like companies that ran login forms over http, up until browsers started to warn users. That was the incentive, that caused them to switch to https.
- j1vms 8y ago
  > TLS is a great example of how to do it. ASCII -> UTF8 VHS -> DVD not as successful: DVD -> BluRay : timing was rather close to the rise of streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, etc.
  - rbritton 8y ago
    I would posit that BluRay has been less successful for two other reasons: 1. DVD video quality is good enough for most. 2. The Combination of DRM, unskippable portions, and similar is enough of a barrier to discourage the upgrade. Personally, I will only watch a movie on disk when I don’t have time to rip it and remove that crap.
    - gmueckl 8y ago
      The DRM and unskippable portions were the same for DVDs when they launched and yet they were a bigger success in an equal timeframe. I do not think that most consumers care enough about these two points to actually influence their decisionmaking. I'd be more interested in how the HD DVD as a very visible competitor blocked BluRay adoption because of consumers wanting to wait for a winner in that war.
    - leoc 8y ago
      DVD quality may be worse than you remember. The difference is really very clear on modern HD screens.
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
        In my experience, only if you're really looking for it or play them side by side.
        leoc 8y ago
        That hasn't been my experience. I was watching some instructional DVDs—well-produced, modern stuff https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v68ZP8tHhnc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v68ZP8tHhnc —on a desktop monitor lately and the difference really leaped out at me, despite my already knowing consciously that the video wouldn't be HD, and the fact that I'm far from being any connoisseur of video quality. Given that standard DVD resolution is never higher than 720 × 576 pixels it really shouldn't have been surprising.
- coding123 8y ago
  Tls was a software upgrade for nearly everything. In fact just by building newer devices that software was just there and ready. Ipv6 is not just a software upgrade.
zzzcpan 8y ago
> So you have a big player or two in order to make it feel like that's the way the wind is blowing. This assumes markets with little to no competition. But most ISPs are in competitive markets with no trend setting big players and they can't waste money investing into IPv6 or anything else that has no demand if they want to keep the business alive and healthy.
- lanstin 8y ago
  I wanted to buy native IPv6 access from my ISPs for a long time but it was not possible every where. I get it now from a Comcast business account. My Google search traffic is now over IPv6. Admittedly my networking interests are probably too rare to make a market force thru numbers.
zamadatix 8y ago
You can do the same thing with v6, the difference is problem space. TLS is about the client and the server upgrading while IP is about every box inbetween as well. If you look at TLS and HTTP version changes when the inbetween infrastructure is involved (even just a single corporate FW, not the whole path) you're held to legacy versions just the same as IP is held to legacy versions. Eventually some protocol is the bottom of what a group agrees to speak rather than individuals and that protocol has a completely different set of deployment issues than abstraction layers that can be built between end stations at higher levels.
- fpoling 8y ago
  It is not only about intermediate boxes. Just consider how relatively smoothly various parts of WiFi stack was upgraded or how 2G->4G transition happens with mobiles phones. The biggest problem with IPv6 is that it a different protocol that requires special support on all levels starting from applications and down to managed switches.
  - votepaunchy 8y ago
    > consider how relatively smoothly various parts of WiFi stack was upgraded Has WiFi been upgraded? I believe new devices still have support back to 802.11b.
    - dtech 8y ago
      Usually, devices have an "802.11n+" options nowadays, dropping support for 11b and 11g has some benefits. It's often enabled by default on new devices, especially since most 11b/11g devices don't support WPA2-PSK so couldn't connect anyway
      - Macha 8y ago
        11b maybe, but most 11g devices should support WPA2, 11g lasted a long while before 11n was widespread.
    - 8y ago
ivlad 8y ago
That's not true. TLS didn't happen until Google said they will penalize non-https sites. Letsencrypt helped alot, but the momentum was there even before them. From the client perspective there is the same level of compatibility between IPv4 and IPv6: client can connect to both types of addresses.

Waterluvian 8y ago

With both my personal experience is: "leave me alone, I'm here to solve a problem, not migrate." For new projects I use ipv6 where easy and python3.6 where possible.

protomyth 8y ago

Take a look at COBOL in our daily lives. The switching cost is horrible and lets face facts, developers don't seem to want to develop the next cool version of COBOL. I sometimes wonder about switching costs when you have two or more groups that have different beliefs, practices, and views of the daily grind. Infrastructure & Software costs money and time to switch with no real personal benefit and requires a change in knowledge. Both your examples require a hard switch and don't have a nice easy transition plan. Add taking away things that are familiar to the people in the field and you have a bad, long transition.

ajross 8y ago

> Are there any common root causes for the semi-failures? Sure is: it weren't broke and they fixed it! I mean, even today if you take a median python user (a devops person in a big shop, maybe) and ask them to name four major advantages that Python 3 has over Python 2... I doubt they could get past one. It's not that it isn't a better language, but for 90% of its user base who don't do library design it's almost indistinguishable. And it's incompatible! IPv6 was similar for most of its life. IPv4 wasn't broke. Now... it's getting toward broke. And in fact lots and lots of client ISPs (mostly mobile ones) are moving rapidly to IPv6, where their systems hit IPv6 backends of all the big content providers. I honestly don't know that I agree with the thesis of this article. Network operators who want to deploy IPv6 in the modern world certainly can, and are. That's pretty much the definition of a smooth transition, even if its taking a few decades longer than expected.

zokier 8y ago

But is either Python3 or IPv6 really a failure? Sure the migration has been slow, but has still been rolling on pretty consistently forwards. There are no major reversal in the trends of either IPv6 or Py3k adoptation, and especially for IPv6 there is pretty much no alternative out there. Maybe just a decade is not all that long period and the tech community is too impatient due the historically rapid pace of changes.

yholio 8y ago
Let's see... Can I get a /10 IPv4 block for my company without paying a small fortune? Can I do the job using IPv6 only? Does the vast majority of mobile and emerging market customers have end to end connectivity? If the answers are "No", "No" and "No", I would have to say that indeed, IPv6 really is a failure, after two decades and monstrous investment thrown at it, it has failed to solve any of the practical issues it was supposed to. It's a gigantic failure, both in a costs vs. benefits approach, but exponentially so when considering the opportunity costs of being still stuck with IPv4.