Hi again Dmitri, and IPv6-wg sorry for double-post (though different content), I want to elaborate on a point Dmitri brought up. On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 12:11 PM, Dmitri Gribenko <gribozavr@gmail.com> wrote:
I think that most users don't really care about how IPv4/v6 works, they just want "the Internet" to work.
I think this premise is a bit false. I can chose several ways to exemplify what I think. I will try the following: Judging by how automatic IPv6-transition methods have in the IETF now by pretty near consensus been judged in-adequate for IPv6 access, I think it's quite fair to say that the IPv4 and the IPv6 internet are two completely separate networks. At the very least the IPv4 internetwork as a whole does *not* connect to the IPv6 network. Individual hosts may via manually configured connections do so, such as you explain in your debian-administrator's article, but the network as a whole does not. They are for all intents and purposes disconnected networks. IPv6 advocates presumably advocate for IPv6 deployment in order to preserve the 'pure' end-to-end principle of the Internet. Many of us think users don't care about being behind a NAT, but another many do realize the limits this sets on applications to interact freely and how necessary and useful the principle is for the continued success of a, IMO desirable, 'prosumer' Internet of the future. My point is, if (more) end-users actually knew the benefits of IPv6 (because there are benefits (right?)), and the risks of not getting IPv6 in the future, they may well be more inclined to wish for it, which may unlock another business decision problem at service providers (no user demand). I'm not expecting 'my grandmother' to care, but I do think a good measure of success of someone explaining the difference between IPv4 exhaustion/CGN and IPv6, is that my grandmother understood the difference, *at some level*. :) (**Not** saying this is the way to do it: I do have an analogy with vehicle registration plates which works in Sweden at least, because there they are of a fixed size, [A-Z]{3}-[0-9]{3). They've been issued serially, in increasing lexicographic order, and are about to run out. All cars are required to have a unique serial number to drive on the roads. (Some old cars have been scrapped which does free up their number, but the demand is still going to surpass the supply.) Since going by bus limits your freedom where you can go on the roads, the vehicle registration agency has to figure out a way to make the plates wider. I have used this analogy on 'laymen' several times and it seems to do a good enough job. The question of perceived immediate benefits for a typical user is harder to address, because the applications that really take advantage of IPv6 are few today, but this is about the future and your freedom to not travel by bus.) So I do think, much in same way the Chrome article goes about explaining things most users did not knew about a web browser, the benefits of a IPv6 Internet over a IPv4 CGN Internet *could* be explained. Just my 0.00042 grams of gold. Cheers, Martin