The following comment was spotted on the CPSR Governance list; the author is Ian Peter: "Well, let me be radical about this and suggest that IPv6 has already failed and will never be rolled out. What's more, it won't really matter (except to a few embarrassed people and organizations). IPv6 belongs to the year 1995. That’s the year that a piece of software called Windows 1995 was rolled out. It didn't even include a browser because Microsoft hadn't released Internet Explorer yet. The web probably had only about one million users. The world has changed since then and it's just possible that a more creative way of expanding the number pool might be available to us now that wasn't thought about then. It is also possible that we are dealing with an adoption problem of a scale not anticipated at the time (particularly given the long unanticipated lead time in rollout). If it's consumers who are supposed to lead the adoption of IPv6, I suggest it will never succeed. As everyone agrees, there is no business case. NO business case, no rollout, no IPv6. That's the laws of the universe. I will also say it doesn’t matter - because the problem is not non-adoption of IPv6, as we have begun to believe - it's that numbers are supposed to run out and probably will unless something changes. If we think through a decent mitigation strategy there are a number of things that can be done to ensure that doesn't happen for another 20 years or more. That gives time for a more elegant approach to number pool expansion than IPv6 to emerge. To their credit, both Geoff Huston and Randy Bush have begun to think about these alternative mitigation strategies - although both seem to still cling at times to the hope that the laws of markets and the laws of human behaviour will suddenly change and IPv6 will suddenly be adopted but a lot later than first expected. (That's sometimes called denial). The last great hope seems to be that when the last number runs out someone (probably in an underdeveloped country) will scream and we will all change. Yeah, right on.... Sorry to rain on the parade, but really the answer to the number pool expansion problem requires us to be realistic rather than hopeful, and to be prepared to be flexible with approaches rather than clinging to an approach that hasn't worked. So let me say it again - the problem is not that people are not adopting IPv6. The problem is that we have not yet arrived at a strategy for dealing with number pool expansion that is acceptable to all major stakeholders and is scaleable to future needs. We need a major rethink - and I really don't think it will be a difficult problem to solve if we put our efforts into alternative approaches rather than "flogging a dead horse"." __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com