RFC 1669

Market Viability as a IPng Criteria ✨

Okay bestie, this is RFC 1669 🦋, and it's giving informational, meaning it's a vibe check and not a spec. J. Curran from BBN wrote it, and it's dated August 1994 🎀. It's part of the Network Working Group, and the title block doesn't list anything it obsoletes or updates, so no drama there 💅.

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Status of this Memo 📜

This memo gives info to the Internet community 🌸. It is not an Internet standard of any kind, not even a little 🙈. Distribution is unlimited, so pass it around 💌.

Abstract ✨

This doc was submitted to the IETF IPng area in response to RFC 1550 🎀. Publishing it doesn't mean the IPng area agrees with any of the ideas in it, so keep that in mind 🧐. If you have comments, send them to the big-internet@munnari.oz.au mailing list 💜.

Introduction 🛍️

Okay so in an open marketplace, new tech only takes off when people actually want it 🔥. New technologies that want to win need to bring new capabilities or lower costs so customers feel confident. Internetworking tech can be a total pain to deploy, so it has to deliver a correspondingly high return on investment 💸. To figure out whether new internetworking tech is market viable, you compare how much effort it takes to deploy against the benefits the customer actually sees 👀. "Viability in the Marketplace" is an important requirement for any IPng candidate, and this paper is my attempt to sum up the big factors in deciding whether IPng proposals are market viable 💅.

"Pushing" Internetworking Technology 🚀

Some people argue that if the computing industry adopts a single IPng protocol, the networking industry will generally accept it too 🤔. There's solid evidence for this, because some of today's more popular networking protocols got their first market acceptance by being bundled with computer operating systems, like IP via UNIX or DECNET via VMS 🖥️. BUT, and this is a big but, this approach is by no means guaranteed 😬. Some of today's most popular internetworking software (Novell, etc.) has thrived even though manufacturers bundled alternatives 👑. Since IPng has to compete against a well established and mature internetworking protocol (IP version 4), promotion by computer system manufacturers is highly desirable, but it's not enough on its own to guarantee IPng acceptance in the marketplace 💖.

Can IPng compete against IPv4? ⚔️

With so many IPv4 systems out there, computer system manufacturers will need to keep providing IPv4 capabilities for the foreseeable future 🕰️. If new systems have both IPng and IPv4, users are going to face a seriously tough choice between the two 😭. Existing IPv4 users will migrate to IPng for one of three possible reasons:

New functionality not found in IPv4 🧚

IPng needs to at least match what IPv4 already does 💅. It's still unclear whether extra stuff like resource reservation, mobility, autoconfiguration, autoregistration, or security will be in the base spec of any IPng candidate 🤷‍♀️. To give people a real reason to move, IPng proposals need to offer capabilities beyond what IPv4 already gives them ✨.

Reduced costs by using IPng 💸

It's pretty unlikely that migrating to IPng will save any organization money 💀. Migrating will definitely mean more training and engineering, and that means higher costs 📉.

To gain connectivity to otherwise unreachable IPng hosts 🌈

For existing sites with valid IPv4 network assignments, connectivity isn't affected until address depletion happens 🙌. Systems with globally-unique IPv4 addresses will have complete connectivity to any systems, since new IPng hosts are required to be backwards-compatible 🫶.

From the view of an existing IPv4 site, IPng doesn't give much tangible benefit until IPv4 address depletion happens and organizations that are only reachable via IPng show up 👀. Without any migration benefits, it's uncertain whether a significant base of IPng sites will form before IPv4 address depletion 🤔.

Sites that aren't running IP yet have very little motivation to deploy IPng for now 😴. As long as IPv4 network assignments are available, a new site can choose IPv4, which gives many organizations today enough internetworking capabilities (measured in functionality, cost, and connectivity) 💼. Since IPng and IPv4 have parity in capabilities, IPv4, as the more mature internetworking protocol, is the more probable pick for organizations choosing a protocol right now 🦋.

Once IPv4 address assignments are no longer available, sites that want to be part of the global Internet are going to face a very difficult decision when picking an internetworking protocol 😭. The current IPng proposals can't provide complete internetworking between IPng-only sites and IPv4-only sites, because by definition there won't be enough space to map all IPng addresses into the IPv4 address space 🌌. None of the proposals currently call for dynamic network address translation (NAT), so IPng-only sites will inevitably have access to only a partial set of IPv4 sites at any given moment 🧱.

Internetworking services that don't allow complete access to the global Internet (IPv4 and IPng in the post-IPv4-address-depletion world) are clearly not as valuable as services that offer complete Internet access 📉. Sites that can't get IPv4 network assignments will look for Internet services that provide complete Internet service 🔍. Also, some sites will have "privately numbered" IPv4 networks and will want similar Internet services that provide transparent access to the entire Internet 💜. Network address translation devices and the services that follow them are highly likely under these market conditions 🔥.

Summary 🎀

No internetworking vendor, whether host, router, or service vendor, can afford to deploy and support products and services the market doesn't want 💅. With the potential spread of network address translation devices, it isn't clear that IPng will get enough following to reach market viability 😬. We've seen internetworking protocols fail in the marketplace before, even with vendor deployment, and IPng can't succeed if organizations don't deploy it 💀. As it's currently envisioned, IPng may not be ambitious enough about delivering new capabilities to compete against IPv4 and the inevitable arrival of network address translation devices 🙈. To meet the requirement of "viability in the marketplace", IPng needs to deliver clearly improved functionality over IPv4, while also offering some form of transparent access between the IPv4 and IPng communities once IPv4 address depletion has happened 👑.

Security Considerations 🔐

Security issues are not discussed in this memo 😱. Yep, that's the whole section, so no security talk here, and keep that in mind as you read 🙈.

Author's Address 💌

John Curran
BBN Technology Services, Inc.
10 Moulton Street
Cambridge MA 02138

EMail: jcurran@near.net