IPv6 Transition to Cost US $75 Billion?

darthcamaro writes "There are alot of reasons why the US isn't moving as quickly as Japan and Europe in migrating to IPv6. One of those reasons is likely cost. An article on Internetnews.com cites an unreleased 'Dept. of Commerce report estimating it will take $25-$75 billion to pay for the transition.'"

Comments

$25-$75 billion

[biocute]

$50B difference is huge, this goes to show nobody knows what's going on.

I guess USA's high internet adoption and usage actually hinder its move.

This reminds me of China's ability to build its new Shanghai rail based on the magnetic levitation system, while other well-established rail-using nations like Singapore may find it difficult to switch. Talk about right place right time.

Re:$25-$75 billion

[lgw]

Eventually though, all the IPv4-only equipment will reach the end of it's natural life, and be upgraded to IPv6-compatible equipment, and the IPv6 support won't cost anything extra. Unless you're upgrading early just to jump on IPv6, there rally no equipment cost at all. Sure, there's some manpower cost in learning how IPv6 works, but that's the nature of the industry. This reports looks like an excuse for someone to not adopt quickly.

Re:$25-$75 billion

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess USA's high internet adoption and usage actually hinder its move.

But even higher internet adoption in Europe and Japan doesn't hinder their moves, most strange.

Re:$25-$75 billion

[tyagiUK]

"It's hard, very hard, to know exactly what hardware every company has, and more importantly, how that hardware is used."

So why bother making an estimate?

Either say nothing, or make a statement based on well-understood and well-researched facts.

Re:$25-$75 billion

[Professor_UNIX]

But even higher internet adoption in Europe and Japan doesn't hinder their moves, most strange.

Not really strange.. there's really no IPv4 address space crunch here in the USA. Most people have become accustomed to using NAT, but even if NAT hadn't taken off, the USA has a huge surplus of unused IPv4 address space compared to the allocations given to the rest of the world. Pull back some of the millions of addresses grandfathered to early adopting universities and government sites and you will have more than enough for the entire USA. Does GE really need 16 million addresses? Does the Army's Yuma Proving Grounds need 16 million addresses? How about HP? Do they need 16 million addresses? Force these kinds of groups to prove they are using that much address space, if not they should be forced to readdress their networks and give back all that unused classical A space so it can be subnetted into smaller CIDR blocks. Once you run out of that, start doing it with the old class B networks. Most companies can get by perfectly fine exposing only a handful of routable addresses on the Internet and NAT'ing the rest.

Wrong angle

[Anonymous Coward]

They should have focused on how it will *GROW* the economy by creating $75 Billion in new jobs and infrastructure.

Re:Wrong angle

[ackthpt]

They should have focused on how it will *GROW* the economy by creating $75 Billion in new jobs and infrastructure.

Sorry, Charlie, but this administration couldn't give two bits for anything in silicon. It's all about petroleum, otherwise Michael Dell would be Secretary of Commerce.

Whatever you think you believe about this crop of economic vandals being pro-business you can just forget it, like any small business which has been infinitely more screwed by the oil price maniupulation than any jump in minimum wage or healthcare premium.

Re:Wrong angle

[IamLarryboy]

Okay, I understand the desire to look for the bright side, but the economics in the parent are just plain wrong.

If it takes $75B worth of resources, that is materials, production capacity, risk and labour, to switch to IPv6, that is $75B worth of resources that cannot be spent on other productive uses. It is not the case that suddenly $75B worth of income and infrastructure is going to appear out of thin air. No, resources must be diverted from other uses. This is what is know as opportunity cost.

This is the same issue that stupid newsmen were spouting off on after the New Orleans disaster. An entire city was wiped out yet they went on about how good it would be for the economy. WTF? An entire city worth of wealth was erased and this is somehow a good thing? Ya, some people will benefit, such as construction workers and sawmills. However, this is more than offset by the losses to just about everyone else. It will be offset to the tune of about 1 large city.

Think about it. If you could create wealth in this way you could simply bash your way to Billions with a baseball bat. Wealth comes from two sources. First, from taking existing wealth and converting it into more valuable wealth (production). Second, from re-arranging existing wealth from less valuable uses to more valuable uses (trade).

Now, it very well may be that the $75B investment is worth the cost. In fact, I believe this to be the case. I bet that over the years the investment will pay for itself many times over. However, the $75B it is going to cost is most certainly a cost and infact not a credit.

Uh...

[Anonymous Coward]

How much money would be spent on upgrading routers and internet infrastructure anyway? I can claim that over the next 10 years internet infrastructure will cost over $100B, regardless of whether or not it's IPv6 compatable or not.

Sounds like the amount that could be saved...

[ShatteredDream]

If we eliminated most of the fraud, waste and abuse in the government. With the Department of Education not being able to account for a majority of its budget, the Defense Department losing over $12B of tax dollars in Iraq and all of the pork that goes through Congress, I can't help but think that if the Congress didn't have the power to spend money on "internal improvements," we'd not be in this problem today.

The governments in this country waste so damn much of our GDP on pure bullshit that if we actually had fiscal responsibility, this would be non-issue. We have a GDP of $11T, does anyone actually think that if the costs associated with compliance, regulation, tax payments, etc. were much easier that corporate America would be bitching about this transition? It'd be just a drop in the bucket.

What's the cost

[QuietLagoon]

not to make the transition?

Holy Address Space, Batman!

[DanielMarkham]

That's a lot of bucks, but studies like these are easy to take in isolation instead of looking at the big picture.

The U.S. economy is what? About 12 Trillion dollars a year? In 1999 the internet economy was closing in on 150 Billion, by now it has to be through the roof.

Poor software? It costs over 200 Billion a year (sorry no link). You have to put these numbers in perspective. When you are dealing with 300 million folks or so, and the world's largest free market, any kind of estimate for anything is going to be big. The common cold costs over $30 Billion a year.

Just keep it all in perspective. The internet economy will blow right through this obstacle if it gets in the way of sales

My Blog

75 billion? who cares, it isn't going to happen

[Anonymous Coward]

IPv6 isn't going to happen, because it doesn't need to happen. I can get to all the web sites I need. So can you. My coffee pot isn't on the internet, and if it needed to be, I'd use NAT, or invent some new multiplexor protocol that sits on IPv4. Don't you people realize this???

I love the guy up their who said IPv6 will *create* $75billion in the economy. How the hell will it do that?

I'll issue my usual challenge to the IPv6-fans: If you love IPv6 so much, cut yourself off from IPv4 completely. Don't use an IPv4 address. Don't access IPv4 sites. That's what has to happen for IPv6 to be a reality. If you're running IPv6 on top of or alongside IPv4, you haven't "switched over" yet. You're just goofing around with some nonstandard network protocol. Might as well use fidonet.

Go ahead, I'm waiting......

Re:75 billion? who cares, it isn't going to happen

[cli_rules!]

To support parent further - hasn't NAT become (mostly) a Good Thing from the security perspective?

This is the commerce department estimate...

[Bored Huge Krill]

...and therefore assumes that it will be carried out under a no-bid contract awarded to Halliburton, who will bill Cat-5 cables at $10,000 each. Sounds a fair estimate to me :-)

That's right - people will buy anything!

[NotQuiteReal]

Even if they don't need it - like lots of devices that will have their own IPv6 address, even if there is no reason to! (The proverbial Internet aware toaster will be a big seller!)

We must move to IPv6, because the Internet just doesn't seem to be working right (or at least I tell myself that, because I wouldn't want to fix it if it weren't broken). I look forward to a time that each of my Happy Meal toys will be able to be connected to the Internet, yes we need IPv6 Now!

Bah! As others have pointed out, there will not be much cost, if it rolls out more slowly. As you update hardware, get stuff that can do both IPv4 and IPv6 next time... eventually a critical mass will be reached and the switchover will happen.

That's ridiculous

[Phil Karn]

That estimate is just ridiculous. IPv6 has been in Linux, BSD, Mac OS X and Windows XP for at least several years. BIND has had support for AAAA records for some time. It's in Cisco router images. We just have to turn it on and use it!

And we don't have to wait for our ISPs, either. I've been using 6to4 (IPv6 tunneled over IPv4) for years. It's especially useful on home networks where multiple servers have to share a single IPv4 address on a cable or DSL modem.

6to4 works very well. A 6to4 tunnel coexists nicely with an IPv4 NAT on my home router. The computers on my home network can run conventional clients through the NAT just as they always have, while servers running on those computers can be contacted directly from the outside using IPv6.

While not every Internet application yet speaks IPv6, the important ones already do. SSH is the most important, but popular SMTP, IMAP and HTTP implementations do as well.

I cannot believe the handsprings users are expected to perform on retail commodity routers with kludges like "port forwarding" when 6to4 tunneling is both simpler and far more general and powerful.