Subject: Re: IPv6 Comment
To: Mike Cheponis <mac@Wireless.Com>
From: Dave McGuire <mcguire@neurotica.com>
List: current-users
Date: 08/30/2000 05:15:16
  Hmm.  He sounds to me like an arm-waver who has no idea what he's
talking about.  Good thing he's in a college rather than in the real
world where he might do some damage.

    -Dave McGuire

On August 30, Mike Cheponis wrote:
> This appeared in the Sunday 27 Aug 00 edtion of the San Jose Mercury News.
> 
> I don't know Mr. Cheriton, yet I do think he makes some interesting points.
> 
> -Mike Cheponis
> 
> p.s. I am -not- saying "Rip IPv6 out of NetBSD" or anything of the sort.
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Thumbs-down on IPv6
> 
> Regarding Dan Gillmor's Aug. 20 column on Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6),
> I can reasonably claim to be a ``networking specialist'' (as someone who has
> been teaching and researching networking at Stanford for the past 18 years),
> and I do not give IPv6 a thumbs-up. In fact, to me it is clear that IPv6 is
> dead on arrival, or more accurately before arrival, given that it hasn't
> arrived. The IPv6 ``solution'' is somewhat like replacing English with
> Esperanto to make spelling easier. Maybe it would, but it's not going to
> happen. The compelling reason to make this drastic change is just not there.
> 
> Most of the fantastical benefits its promoters claim of security, quality of
> service, connectivity, etc., do not stand up to technical scrutiny, and what
> little does is totally uncompelling in the face of the massive cost of
> getting it deployed.
> 
> The IPv6 effort was started in 1992, before the advent of the Web, before
> Bill Clinton's presidency, before Netscape, before dot-coms and even before
> the commercializing of the Internet, making it prehistoric in Internet
> terms. It grew out of a concern that the Internet was running out of
> addresses. However, that problem was effectively solved by the introduction
> of what is called network address translation (NAT). Since 1992, NAT has been
> deployed widely in the Internet. By any market measure, IPv6 completely lost
> out to NAT.
> 
> 
> David Cheriton
> 
> Computer Science Department
> Stanford University
> 
> 
>