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There are some reasons why IPv6 will take until 2015 until we start to see substantial adoption, but technician knowledge isn't one of them. Any competent IPv4

There are some reasons why IPv6 will take until 2015 until we start to see substantial adoption, but technician knowledge isn't one of them. Any competent IPv4 network engineer can come up to speed on IPv6 in a single one-week class. The major reason why we aren't seeing adoption is that there is no commercial need - that's the real driver.

TranceMan 13y ago
anecdotal but in a presentation given by the head network architect at a large (ex national) uk communication provider - training engineers is the main reason ipv6 has not been rolled out.
- ay 13y ago
  It's a pretty good excuse. But not a good reason anymore.
yaantc 13y ago
> The major reason why we aren't seeing adoption is that > there is no commercial need - that's the real driver. Not entirely true. All big networks using private IP addresses and NAT (recent ISPs, and most cellular networks for example) have to implement carrier grade NAT (CGN), and it's getting painful and costly. Also, a lot of web applications require low latency. The way to do this is often to create a lot of parallel connections to fetch content. For example, a google map can easily span 40+ TCP connection to fetch all the tiles making the MAP. During peak time this can put a very high load on CGN gateways. And when they overload, some sessions lags or time out (missing or delayed tiles => bad user experience). This is why all big players on the web now support IPv6 and use it when possible. IPv6 avoid CGN and does not have such issues. Even if that still makes a small percentage of all traffic, it's steadily rising now. IPv6 is finally happening, because the alternative (CGN) is too painful to scale. Now old large ISP with little growth don't care: they have plenty of public IPv4 addresses, with enough in stock to absorb their limited growth for a while. So they don't need CGN and don't care about IPv6. I don't expect this to change. But with mobile and cellular getting a bigger and bigger share and mostly on NAT with IPv4 there is enough of a pressure to move to IPv6 to make sure it'll be mainstream by the end of the decade.
- ay 13y ago
  Speaking of latency: one of the big IPv6 news for me in 2013 is that now, on average, IPv6 when it works gives better latency than IPv4: https://ripe67.ripe.net/archives/video/43/ https://ripe67.ripe.net/archives/video/43/

TranceMan 13y ago

anecdotal but in a presentation given by the head network architect at a large (ex national) uk communication provider - training engineers is the main reason ipv6 has not been rolled out.

ay 13y ago
It's a pretty good excuse. But not a good reason anymore.

yaantc 13y ago

> The major reason why we aren't seeing adoption is that > there is no commercial need - that's the real driver. Not entirely true. All big networks using private IP addresses and NAT (recent ISPs, and most cellular networks for example) have to implement carrier grade NAT (CGN), and it's getting painful and costly. Also, a lot of web applications require low latency. The way to do this is often to create a lot of parallel connections to fetch content. For example, a google map can easily span 40+ TCP connection to fetch all the tiles making the MAP. During peak time this can put a very high load on CGN gateways. And when they overload, some sessions lags or time out (missing or delayed tiles => bad user experience). This is why all big players on the web now support IPv6 and use it when possible. IPv6 avoid CGN and does not have such issues. Even if that still makes a small percentage of all traffic, it's steadily rising now. IPv6 is finally happening, because the alternative (CGN) is too painful to scale. Now old large ISP with little growth don't care: they have plenty of public IPv4 addresses, with enough in stock to absorb their limited growth for a while. So they don't need CGN and don't care about IPv6. I don't expect this to change. But with mobile and cellular getting a bigger and bigger share and mostly on NAT with IPv4 there is enough of a pressure to move to IPv6 to make sure it'll be mainstream by the end of the decade.

ay 13y ago
Speaking of latency: one of the big IPv6 news for me in 2013 is that now, on average, IPv6 when it works gives better latency than IPv4: https://ripe67.ripe.net/archives/video/43/ https://ripe67.ripe.net/archives/video/43/