[6bone] IPv6 Drawbacks

[Stephane Bortzmeyer]

On Mon, Oct 28, 2002 at 10:01:58AM -0300,
 Carlos Alberto Barcenilla <barce@frlp.utn.edu.ar> wrote 
 a message of 55 lines which said:

>   Having read a lot about IPv6 I cannot find big drawbacks in the IPv6 suite.
>  
>   In your opinion, what are the main drawbacks do you think IPv6 faces?

School assignment, uh?

I agree to reply if you give your copy to the teacher with my name on
it :-)

Now, my two eurocents: the two main locks, IMHO, IANAL, YMMV, etc,
are:

* it is very difficult for an operator or provider to find a
commercial IPv6 upstream provider. This makes difficult to go from the
experiment (the 6bone) to the actual service (selling IPv6). This lock
cannot be broken by the ordinary IPv6 site, we must wait Worldcom or
MFN or Genuity.

* many applications are not written in an AF-independant way and
therefore do not run over IPv6. When they do, they often have
limitations. Even the software infrastructure is not complete (the
Linux kernel filtering system, Netfilter, for instance. Or DHCP
v6). Unlike the first one, this lock can be broken by the masses, with
many programmers patching, lobbying the maintainers, etc.