Randy Bush wrote:
what amazes me is the lack of real work on the problem that a a jillion v6-only sites can not connect to the internet in a useful scalable way. without that, everyone will continue to need ipv4 space for a loooooong time. and it will be sliced and diced, and bought and sold, in smaller and smaller pieces. and nats will be ubiquitous, as if they were not already. this is not a pleasing picture. but it's the likely reality.
I see a two potential escape paths: 1. larger access providers run into the comcast problem[1] and realise that ipv4 is a dead end. this will lead to mass consumer ipv6 enablement, potentially with proxies to provide ipv4 transport. this will be particularly noticeable in emerging markets, where a) there is a relatively small install base which leads to a massive requirement for address space and b) there are language borders, which means that local content providers can service their entire market on ipv6 without having to worry about whether the current ipv4 install base can access it 2. wide-scale implementation of NAT at access levels is going to make people realise exactly how evil NAT is, and that ultimately, administration, hackery and capex costs for obtaining new ipv4 space are going to end up as more than the cost of moving to ipv6. There's nothing that concentrates the mind like having your business size constrained by a technical problem. But you're right on about fragmentation. It's going to happen in a big way and the effect on the internet is going to be savage. Ironically, massive fragmentation is a good driver for ipv6 takeup. Nick [1] http://www.nanog.org/mtg-0606/durand.html