[e2e] the evolution of deployability

J. Noel Chiappa jnc at ginger.lcs.mit.edu
Tue Dec 17 10:58:46 PST 2002


    > From: Henning Schulzrinne <hgs at cs.columbia.edu>

    > My suspicion is that ISPs use the IPv4 scarcity to reduce bandwidth
    > usage by making deploying web servers, Shoutcast and P2P servers
    > difficult.

I think you're confused/mis-informed on this particular point.

My ISP (Cox) seems to have no difficulty in preventing me from deploying a
web server (and an SMTP server, grrrr) at the one static address I *do*
have, so I doubt they'd find it any harder to stop it at a range of them.


BTW, on a related point I often hear about the IPv4 address shortage and
ISP's, my sense, from talking to people, is that the IPv4 address shortage is
not really a money-maker for ISP's. I gather that the money they charge for
them (in places where it's not bundled into the basic service for the one you
do get) is all eaten up in management/provisioning/etc costs.


    > They have an active interest in not making IPv6 happen

I suspect most ISP's are relatively neutral - *provided their costs are
covered*. The last is a big if, particularly in today's market, where ISP's
are going umder right, left and center.

Deploying IPv6 is not a zero-cost thing for them, so if they are expected to
do it without any compensating increase in revenue, it ain't gonna happen. I
know of at least one major ISP which is fully prepared to roll out IPv6
service - if someone pays the bills.


Again, successful businesses sell their customers whatever they want, even
if it's a sky-blue left-handed rabbit - provided of course that they can
make money at it. Businesses that try to make people buy what's good for
them (as has been suggested here) don't do as well.

I was once part of a company that tried to sell customers what they really
needed, not what the customers thought they needed. That company is now
bankrupt.


    > The primary motivation for NATs is not selling boxes, but the
    > exorbitant cost of IPv4 addresses.

A point I missed making previously: I suspect box vendors could make just as
much money selling IPv6 widgets as they could selling NAT boxes.

    > Conspiracy-minded folks

There's some great quote (I think from John D. MacDonald, but I've not been
able to find it) about how people with conspiracy theories are usually just
people who find reality too complex to understand.

	Noel




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