IPv6 Confusion

[nanog at daork.net (Nathan Ward)]

On 18/02/2009, at 3:04 PM, Steven Lisson wrote:

> ISP gets a chunk of IPv6 address space, sets up customers with it,  
> gets
> their big lovely carrier grade NAT device that NAT's from customers  
> IPv6
> address to whatever IPv4 service they need.
>
> I'm probably missing something but does this not seem like a good
> option? Why not use IPv6 instead of private IPv4, end user gets
> end-to-end connectivity with anything that is IPv6 enabled while still
> being able to access the legacy IPv4 network.

Or, you do dual-stack, so their applications do not have to be  
modified to support IPv6 - they only need to support IPv4 (with NAT)  
like they always have. They have IPv6 to do end-to-end, and IPv4 to do  
client-to-server, or for legacy application support.

How many of your customers are likely to be running Windows XP in 2  
years? Probably still quite a few - they will not be able to function  
on IPv6-only, as they do not have DHCPv6. In the current state of  
things, IPv4 to the edge is going to be required for some time still I  
believe.

Sure, over time applications will need IPv6 support. That is not going  
to be likely to be done by the time we run out of IPv4 resources for  
the edge.

--
Nathan Ward