Re: @Mark
What it gets him is shifting the burden of network management onto the end user/customer/business owner and away from developers, network vendors and enterprise engineers.
People who write software that would work optimally with end-to-end connectivity don't have to write things hat deal with NAT and proxies and the like in an IPv6 world. (Or at least, not the IPv6 world they imagined.) Since these are the kinds of applications they want to write and use, then moving the burdens of cost onto others is natural. Everyone seeks to externalise costs.
Flip that coin, and people who actually buy and use networking equipment, care about individual privacy or worry about things like network security absolutely and completely do not want IPv6. Dealing with IPv6 means accepting that costs which used to shouldered by the application and network equipment vendors are now their headache.
IPv6 is nothing more than the death knell of the internet itself. It is the transformation of a what was an open, semi-anonymous network with more than a little bit of the “wild west” into a network where every single device is handed a routable, unique, traceable individual address. It moves from a world in which everyone has curtains on their windows to one in which there is a CCTV in every room watching our every move.
It takes the internet from a way to exchange ideas and information – from a network started by academics and embraced by the hoi polloi – and transforms it into a barren, flat, corporately controlled wasteland. Nobody is safe in an IPv6 world. Nobody is anonymous. Everyone has to invest a great deal of time and money into their own individual network security…but if you put too much effort in then you will either break connectivity with the applications developed by those who worship the end-to-end model, or you will get asked pointed questions by government/RIAA/grand toaster-connected poobah about just why, exactly, you are not letting everyone spy on everything you do all the time.
This may have seemed like an okay idea in the mid-90s. Maybe it even was an okay idea back then. But the year is 2012. We live in a world where “innocent unless proven guilty” has been so eroded in most “democratic nations” ast to have completely lost its meaning. There is no such concept. Especially when computers are involved, we are all of us guilty until proven extra guilty.
And now, with IPv6, we as end users get to pay even more for the privilege of connecting to and using this marvellous internet! Instead of simple management and maintenance, instead of simple tools to connect and interact we have to take on a massively increased security and management burden.
So what does it buy him?
Us. Our freedom. Lower costs. Higher margins.
And all he’s had to do to make it happen is shout loudly enough and mock anyone who questions IPv6.
IPv6 is pure. It is good. It is a marvel of design and thoughtfulness. It is unimpeachable. Anyone who questions it for any reason is obviously an idiot.
Why are they an idiot? Because IPv6 is pure. It is good. It is a marvel…