Subject: [v6ops] 6to4-historic summary point: 8. "6to4 to experimental instead of historical"

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2011 13:18:13 -0700

On Apr 27, 2011, at 12:14 AM, Ole Troan wrote:

> 8. "6to4 to experimental instead of historical"
> -----------------------------------------------
> 
>   - In my opinion tend to be similar to Jordi's. 6to4 is good for experimenting with IPv6.
>     If you need IPv6 service use native solution. But if there no solution on the market what to do?
>   - According to our policy our 6to4 relay is only for experimenting with IPv6 technology.....
>     What about 6to4 relabeled to experimental?
> 
> Reply: If we postulate that 6to4 is harmful to the deployment of IPv6 in the Internet then I don't see any
>       other choice than deprecating it.

</chair>
Speaking for myself, I agree that the question is at least in part whether "6to4 is a way to experiment" or "6to4 is directly harmful". Geoff's remarks at IETF-80 supported the notion that 6to4 was actively harmful, in that it sends traffic into his dark net, which is to say "places that an intentional user didn't intend". Victor and John have commented on the requirement for an ISP to divert energy from native IPv6 deployment to 6to4 relay deployment in order to give their customers a user experience that they consider acceptable. If the user experience is unpredictable absent operational support, operational support of 6to4 distracts from native deployment, and lack of operational support leads users to conclude that "IPv6 doesn't work and so should be turned off", the experiment seems a dubious luxury.

<chair>
We can either stay in the "experimentation" phase or move to the "deployment" phase. It would appear from this discussion and many others that operators are in the deployment phase. Does the working group agree with that statement? Do we agree with reclassification of the facility as historic?

Reply if the answer is "no", and give a better suggestion.