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Verizon Refuses To Provide Complete IPv6

Glendale2x writes "I'm a progressive sort of guy and I want to go full dual-stack, IPv6 for the future, etc. However I recently tried to turn up a new Verizon circuit with IPv6 (after a 6-month fiber install process), and to my chagrin the order they accepted back in May they're now saying is against their policy to provide. They're missing around 29% of the IPv6 internet and refuse to carry it. Tell me again how we're supposed to encourage IPv6 adoption in the face of a huge black hole like this?"

48 of 438 comments (clear)

  1. bullshit by shentino · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They'd damn well better give you a full refund if that v6 was an essential part of the contract.

    If verizon's pulling this shit AND trying to keep your money they need their asses spanked in court, big time.

    1. Re:bullshit by NoYob · · Score: 5, Insightful
      I wonder if a complaint or enough of them to the FCC would get them to comply.

      But yeah, definitely take any and all legal recourse.

      --
      It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
    2. Re:bullshit by nacturation · · Score: 5, Informative

      That's some fine internet tough talk, but realistically the best solution open to the common man is to simply vote with your dollars and leave. Verizon is probably happy enough to let a squeaky wheel out of any time contract, if they really are in violation, knowing that the unwashed masses will not notice these kinds of failings.

      The problem is if the six month install process came with a hefty price tag (article is Slashdotted, so can't read up on it). Voting with your feet and going elsewhere implies a massive sunk cost that may not be recoverable, depending on how open the fiber accessibility is to other providers.

      --
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    3. Re:bullshit by ZekoMal · · Score: 5, Interesting

      That's some fine internet tough talk, but realistically the best solution open to the common man is to simply vote with your dollars and leave.

      I'm sick of this excuse. Voting with your dollar works when your dollar is the only dollar. When millions of other people have dollars and a good chunk of them are ignorant, your dollar won't be missed. I took my dollar away from Verizon years ago, and there's a good chance that many others did the same thing.

      There are three methods to dealing with businesses: you can let them do whatever they want to you, you can quietly go elsewhere, or you can speak up loudly and take them to court. The first method makes the business happy, the second makes you feel good about yourself but does very little, and the third lets everyone hear what evils the company did and how they handle it, thus making more people make decisions of their own. Seeing as how all of the duopolies and monopolies and x-opolies are still thriving despite the silent treatment, I would think a more aggressive approach is the only way to fight back.

    4. Re:bullshit by kimvette · · Score: 5, Informative

      The problem is if the six month install process came with a hefty price tag (article is Slashdotted, so can't read up on it)

      Coral cache: http://www.rollernet.us.nyud.net:8090/wordpress/2009/10/verizon-refuses-to-provide-complete-ipv6/

      If you use the "slashdotter" Firefox extension, it will automatically insert coralcache, mirrordot, and google cache links into the summary for you.

      --
      The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
    5. Re:bullshit by paul248 · · Score: 4, Informative

      It won't free you from the failings of Verizon if you happen to be on one of the networks they omit from their routing table.

    6. Re:bullshit by c0d3g33k · · Score: 5, Interesting

      A-fscking-men! Thanks for the wonderful and insightful comment. When I've posted comments on forums to voice a grievance along with a promise to never buy a product from company X again, the response I've gotten from the "Company X employee" can often be paraphrased as "so what? You're not buying our product so you're not a customer. Why should we care what you think?". Voting with your dollar doesn't cause enough pain to get attention - there are enough other uninformed customers to keep the cash flowing in. Evil can't stand the light of day, so drawing public attention to demonstrably bad practices (to avoid libel lawsuits) is more likely to get their attention.

    7. Re:bullshit by Sponge+Bath · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Nothing you do will guarantee that *every* corporation in the world will do *everything* to your satisfaction, including suing Verizon.

      But if you control a company that can afford the financial resources and distraction from your business to go head to head in an extended legal battle with Verizon, then get to it and report back! I'm genuinely interested to hear the results.

    8. Re:bullshit by witherstaff · · Score: 5, Informative

      Go with your state Public Utilities Commission. In my ISP days any disputes I had that I took to the PUC would get resolved rather quickly. The FCC doesn't care, Verizon lobbies them far more than a user ever could.

    9. Re:bullshit by Stolovaya · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If there was any realistic way to be a competitor, sure. But it's a pretty locked market.

    10. Re:bullshit by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Honest business has no room in mass markets. Simple reason: People want cheap goods and services and don't care about quality, simply because they don't know just what quality they may expect.

      Since there are rarely "secret" ways to save money in business, the only way to offer cheaper products is to let quality slide. Usually in areas where only few of your customers will notice it. In this case, this means that v6 service will be limited if existing. Why? Because 99% of their customers won't notice it since they don't even know whether IPv6 is some protocol or some new program to download more porn.

      Now, you COULD of course open your own ISP and offer better service. Less oversold bandwidth. A newsserver that carries more than your own ad-filled newsgroups. Unshaped traffic that can't only be used sensibly for http traffic (where it doesn't matter whether every other connection dies within 5 minutes, making ssh connections a PITA). You would have to charge more, though, simply because your cost will be higher. How many people are going to pay for it? Again, 99% of the users that could sign up with you won't know or care about what you offer, or at least not enough to pay the higher fee. Of that last percent, how many will even know that your service is really better?

      Saying "make it better" is usually not going to cut it. Market won't allow it.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    11. Re:bullshit by rantingkitten · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think part of the problem is that for every legitimate complaint someone might have against a company, there are about fifty clueless dolts making completely asinine and totally unjustified complaints about the same company. Making a public scene about a company's atrocities is a great idea but in general, looking at complaints about a company just nets the loons, the disturbed, and the just plain goofy. It's not always easy to make a real complaint heard in the sea of idiocy.

      --
      mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
    12. Re:bullshit by ShakaUVM · · Score: 4, Funny

      >>They'd damn well better give you a full refund if that v6 was an essential part of the contract.

      From my Terms of Service with Verizon, defining a 'bit': "A unit of information that respresent a single character."

      Sigh... both a Tech and Grammar Fail.

      I wonder if I can sue them for breach of service if they can't come up with a coding scheme that can pack ASCII into a single bit.

    13. Re:bullshit by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You try starting at the bottom and see how well you do. In fact, it is basically impossible to start any significantly-sized business from the bottom any more, at least in any competitive market, because the entrenched players have already purchased legislation (and are already working on buying more) to prevent new players from entering the market. Technical superiority is not enough, and really never has been. In order to grow a business large, you must be "in bed" with those who make decisions. Look at the last Tier 1 phone/net provider to be spun up: Qwest. The only way they were able to get enough right of way to lay enough fiber to become relevant was that their CEO left Southern Pacific Railroads after brokering a deal there that would get him that right of way from SP. (Or was it UP? I forget. The point still stands.) Qwest therefore never had to start from the bottom: they began from a position of power, and were backed by a fairly awesome amount of capital. For YOU to get to the same point, even if you had more business savvy than trump and more technical ability than everyone who wrote Unix and designed the internet combined, you would have to be likewise connected. That is very much the opposite of "Starting at the bottom".

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  2. Verizon are just protecting you by sakdoctor · · Score: 4, Funny

    From the EVIL 29% of the internet.

  3. Re:I don't think IPv6 is really the future any mor by mysidia · · Score: 5, Insightful

    IPv4 Exhaustion is expected approximately 734 days from today's date. That is just about 2 years.

    It takes a lot longer than 2 years to develop a networking standard, and gain acceptance from the community, and no alternative has even been proposed.

    There are two solutions on the table: IPv6 and IPv4 with carrier grade NAT.

    It's going to be one of those things, in two years.

  4. Order Accepted? by WiiVault · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Does that imply there was a contract between you and Verizon? If so you should pursue them for breach.

  5. Re:I don't think IPv6 is really the future any mor by conureman · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I don't think the Telcos are finished punishing us for de-regulation yet. They want us to cry for Ma Bell, and then when the rates go through the roof, we might be forgiven.

    --
    The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
  6. Re:I don't think IPv6 is really the future any mor by NNKK · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Carrier-grade NAT" is not a solution, it's an oxymoron, and one that has already been rejected by the real world.

  7. Re:Google Cache link by paul248 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Fail. Looks like Slashdot doesn't provide complete IPv6 either.

  8. Re:I don't think IPv6 is really the future any mor by glennpratt · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What's wrong with IPv6 exactly?

    I've been running dual stack on test servers just because and it seems to work fine. I've tested Windows Server 2008 and Vista clients with IPv6 and it works fine. I even get IPv6 connections to some internet servers like Mozilla.

    Admittedly, I'm not an expert, but I'm looking forward to the end of NAT on every router.

  9. Obvious answer... by Totenglocke · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Tell me again how we're supposed to encourage IPv6 adoption in the face of a huge black hole like this?

    Well call me Captain Obvious, but I'd say don't subscribe to Verizon. If enough people want it, eventually either Verizon will offer it or they'll go out of business. Either way it's a win for consumers.

    --
    "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
  10. Re:I don't think IPv6 is really the future any mor by Ant+P. · · Score: 3, Informative

    Except China. The latest figure I've heard is six levels of NAT in some places.

  11. Re:I concur... by Glendale2x · · Score: 3, Informative

    Server's overloaded. I didn't expect me complaining about Verizon would hit the front page. Trying to convert it to a static page.

    --
    this is my sig
  12. I wonder by DaMattster · · Score: 5, Insightful

    if the reason that the big boys don't want to go to IPv6 is that they stand to lose an additional money maker. They can charge for publicly available IP addresses with IPv4. In IPv6, every address would be public. This might explain carrier reluctance to make the change. It gives them one less way to nickle and dime the consumer.

  13. Re:Google Cache link by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Slashdot is a proper American site and refuses to surrender to new-fangled hippie bullshit like Unicode and IPv6. If ASCII and IPv4 was good enough for George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, it is good enough for us!
    The abundant usage of Javascript and AJAX may suggest differently, but after any amount of actually using the site, you'll see it's really a undercover op to make people long for the simple functionality of the pre-Web-2.0 days.

  14. Re:I don't think IPv6 is really the future any mor by ekhben · · Score: 4, Informative

    [citation needed]

    In 2003, RIPE NCC noted that estimates fell around 2012. I will grant you that 2003 is not 12 years ago, only 6, but that was a result on the first page of google for "IPv4 run-out estimates over time."

    I'm unfamiliar with oil reserves and cold fusion research, but I'd like to see your justifications for those claims, too :-)

  15. Yes, but watch for... by Junta · · Score: 3, Interesting

    -Aggressive purchase/selloff of unused IP space (there are companies with class As that come no where near 16.7 million systems).
    -ISPs dropping granting an IP to residential customers and phones on the base plans, using NAT upstream

    In other words, the world is so IPv6 averse that the IP exhaustion will not really happen in the medium-term future. While it is sad, the fact that 95% of the internet does not care or know about having a globally unique IP address will keep NAT a viable solution for a while. I.e. just as some people pay extra for a single static IP address, in the next few years, expect to have to pay a premium for a single real IP for others to reach you at.

    --
    XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
  16. You aren't seeing the whole picture by davidwr · · Score: 5, Funny

    Thanks to China's Carrier-grade NAT you aren't seeing levels seven through 1,345,751,000. In China OLPC means One Level of network address translation Per Citizen.

    --
    Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
    1. Re:You aren't seeing the whole picture by mysidia · · Score: 5, Funny

      That would be OLTPC or OLNATPC

      Actually, n/m, come to think of it.. many to one translations are commonly called PAT, NAPT, PNAT, or "Overload NAT".

      Oh, and though it may be a matter of debate, some folks swear that it's incorrect to call those NAT.

      So OLPPC (One layer of PAT per citizen) or OLNPPC (One layer of Network and Port Address translation per citizen), OLNAPTPC, or respectively OLNAPTC OLPNATPC, or OLNPC

      But not OLPC...

      Oh, what were we talking about again?

  17. BGP aggregation policy by chrylis · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I know I'm only seeing a small piece of the diagnostics here, but it's my understanding that they are correct that Verizon's end-user network should act as a stub as far as end-user traffic is concerned. If the problem is that they won't route traffic from your address (inside Verizon's /32) to another direct-allocation network that is in fact a legitimate BGP peer for IPv6 services, I'd complain to ARIN directly that their traffic is being dropped.

    1. Re:BGP aggregation policy by Glendale2x · · Score: 4, Interesting

      If the problem is that they won't route traffic from your address (inside Verizon's /32) to another direct-allocation network that is in fact a legitimate BGP peer for IPv6 services, I'd complain to ARIN directly that their traffic is being dropped.

      Yes, this is the problem. Unfortunately then you'll hit the "well, just because ARIN says so doesn't mean we have to route it" excuse, which is what I'm waiting for them to come back with on Monday.

      --
      this is my sig
    2. Re:BGP aggregation policy by Glendale2x · · Score: 3, Informative

      So the first question I'd want answered would be: which backbone provider do those blocks belong to?

      A whole lot of different ones. They're ARIN's PI multihoming block.

      I may be mistaken, but it's my understanding that IPv6 addresses, unlike IPv4 addresses, include information about the backbone provider, so you really can't get your own allocation from ARIN and expect an ISP to route it for you. It doesn't (or isn't supposed to) work like that, for good reason. So, if the missing blocks are people who aren't backbone providers but have some kind of back-door deal with Sprint and/or Hurricane Electric, Verizon may be in the right.

      You wouldn't have been mistaken before 2006. ARIN does allow you to get your own IPv6:

      https://www.arin.net/policy/proposals/2005_1.html

      I believe RIPE is following suit next month.

      --
      this is my sig
    3. Re:BGP aggregation policy by Glendale2x · · Score: 3, Informative

      Fascinating. Is there a corresponding document somewhere explaining how this is supposed to be implemented? It seems to defeat one of the design criteria of IPv6, i.e., keeping routing tables simple.

      You are correct that it does defeat the routing table simplicity goal because implementation of multihoming is exactly the same as it is with IPv4. This happened because IPv6 was left without a sane way to multihome. I don't know what block RIPE will use, but AFRINIC (2001:43F8::/29), and APNIC (2001:0DF0::/29) also have a similar policy to ARIN.

      --
      this is my sig
  18. It's either IPv6 or carrier-grade NAT or ??? by davidwr · · Score: 5, Interesting

    IPv4 is a measurable finite resource. There are 2^32 of them. You can plot it on a graph fairly accurately.

    Predicting the end of IPv4 addresses is like predicting the end of any other measurable, finite resource:

    As we get near the end, if there is demand there will be rationing or an increase in price to drive demand down. Either way, the supply will last longer than a naive prediction would indicate.

    IPv4 NAT has already reduced the rate of exhaustion beyond what it would be without it, albeit at the price of reduced inter-connectivity.

    If IPv6 isn't rolled out nearly globally soon, I think you'll see a lot more carriers handing out NAT'd addresses for new customers unless those customers are willing to pay extra for a world-visible address. Within a year after that they'll jack up the prices on existing customers who don't "downgrade" to the cheaper NAT'd plan. This will buy more time, but, again, at the cost of decreased connectivity.

    Of course, I could be wrong, there could be something new and easier to implement coming down the pike, in which case all bets are off.

    --
    Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
  19. ipv6 is good for voip by h00manist · · Score: 3, Interesting

    therefore, ipv6 is bad for Verizon?

    --
    Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
  20. Re:I don't think IPv6 is really the future any mor by paul248 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The boy who cried wolf might have turned out differently if the boy were able to predict the approximate future date at which the wolf would come, and periodically reminded people that the date was getting closer.

  21. change of contract by Eil · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's hard to tell from the summary, but did you sign a contract with them back in May that included IPv6 support? If yes, and they spent six months building out the line only to tell you in the end, "oh, sorry, we don't want to do IPv6 anymore" then you can get them in court for material change of contract. If there was no contract (hard to believe if there was a 6-month build-out), or if it never specified IPv6 anywhere, then you're hosed and pretty much get what you deserve for taking Verizon's word at face value. :)

    1. Re:change of contract by Glendale2x · · Score: 5, Informative

      They very conveniently lost the original order (where I disclosed exactly what I required, down to what networks I will announce) and the circuit was delivered as IPv4-only in August. With a static /29. Without BGP. All of this was a huge shock to the provisioning team on the first call when I started talking BGP for IPv4. It took over a month to get them to change it to dual-stack and re-engineer the endpoint to go to a different city that had IPv6 support after I forwarded them all of my copies. And then they pulled this out of their hat. Oh, don't forget that my account manager was fired in September and the new one won't accept my calls. It's a huge fucked up mess.

      I must admit, I never figured that complaining about Verizon sucking would make the front page of slashdot.

      --
      this is my sig
  22. IPv6 adoption screwed by a few major factors by Junta · · Score: 4, Insightful

    First and perhaps foremost, a lot of the industry has formulated a non-trivial amount of their business plan around the artificial scarcity of IPv4. It is recommended that even residences get /48 prefixes, though some have asked that to be reduced to /56, giving every person up to 255 subnets to route, each subnet being able to host 18 quintillion hosts in a globally unique fashion. Giving a singe IP address just won't cut it since no one has bothered to do NATing on IPv6.

    Secondly, no sanctioned way exists for an IPv6 only 'client' to communicate with an IPv4 'server'. I know that the engineers of IPv6 have a pure vision of a peer to peer internet where NAT is evil, but they needed to embrace it to get a very bad problem addressed. If it were baked in, then ISPs would suddenly have an incentive to migrate. As it stands, IPv6 represents only a financial burden, since it requires investment *and* they can't cut off IPv4 due to lack of interoperability. With this, suddenly, the still valuable IPv4 space wouldn't need to be given out to end customers, and IPv6 could carry them through.

    One alternative would be for ISPs to start giving out private IPv4 addresses and doing the NATing for IPv4 that way, then assigning IPv6 networks for usage more in the spirit of symmetric peers. However, ISPs aren't particularly incentivized to go beyond the first step of taking away globaly IPv4 addresses. This comes to a third reason, we can still game the system with ISP level NAT a lot more since a vast majority of IP addresses in use are used by people who wouldn't even know they were behind an external NAT gateway if it happened to them one day. Most every modern internet usage is designed to tolerate NATs. Torrent and friends are more impacted than others, but most people still use http for 99% of their internet experience, and do not serve at all.

    --
    XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
    1. Re:IPv6 adoption screwed by a few major factors by mysidia · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Maybe with the right type of gateway they could.

      Imagine you reserve a /16 of "private address space" for name mapping.

      You have a gateway that provides DNS.

      When someone looks up "www.blah.com" and it has an IPv6 address, the DNS server immediately allocates an ephemeral IPv4 address, enters it into a temporary database, and returns it to the client.

      Now when the client requests to open a TCP connection to the ephemeral IP address within the TTL period, the gateway will automatically receive the IPv4 packet, re-encapsulate it as an IPv6 packet with the proper destination address. Upon receiving a reply packet, it will find the matching database entry, re-encapsulate it as an IPv4 packet, and return the reply to the client.

      The result is a user-transparent conversion from V4 to V6 and from V6 to V4.

  23. I've used dual-stack IPv6 with IPv4 NAT for 2 yrs! by cwolfsheep · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm getting rather sick of reading posts along the lines of "it doesn't work," "it'll never work," and "you need to have one work for the other." In 2006-2007, I tried deploying an IPv4-based TINC setup on my office computers. However, to maintain this, you needed a computer at each of the bigger sites, and smaller systems tied to a common system: I had over 100 nodes chained together like this. By summer 2007, it was unsustainable: I had already been researching IPv6, and decided to start implementing it as a solution for accessing things like Intranet, VNC, and remote file systems. By the end of 2007, I had more or less eliminated the IPv4 chains with a setup of our sites using NAT'd IPv4 in the 192.168-whatever range, and individual IPv6 subnets for each site, tied together by an ethernet-based TINC install on OpenWRT routers. It has worked above and beyond my expectations: we can use regular Internet; we can use IPv6 global and internal resources. If it doesn't support v6 out of the box, chances are it works with "portproxy" fine. With a transition to newer Linux systems and Vista/2008 Windows systems, it becomes more streamlined. You can't avoid v6: its all around you. I believe in it and I've made it work.

    --

    Life is irony, and nothing ever goes as planned.
  24. Re:I don't think IPv6 is really the future any mor by mysidia · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's a bit like suggesting you can sell parts of your land (real-estate) under the table, without notifying the county records office of the sale..

    The problem is... there's a registered owner (or deed holder). And having someone tell you that you can use some IP addresses is useless unless you can get traffic to them.

    The action required to get traffic to go to an IP address is very public, you have to announce the IP address space using an AS number.

    The only way for you to do it without setting off alarm bells is to pretend that you ARE the person you "bought" the IPs from under the table, using their AS number.

    Your announcement will probably be filtered, since your IP block is a portion of theirs (it's smaller than the assignment)

    So the traffic goes to them... unless they happen to be an ISP connected to you, you are now in a sticky situation.

    So the difficulty in simply 'acquiring IPs' under the table, is the need to get connectivity to them. Controlling that connectivity is harder, and if the company that sold you the IPs goes bankrupt, you're screwed.

    You're better off just getting your ISP to allocate you the IPs. Either that... or buying/merging with other companies for the sole purpose of acquiring their IP addresses, and throwing away all else.

    (Depending on how scarce IPs get)

  25. Re:Actually, Verizon is right by Glendale2x · · Score: 3

    IPv6 was designed to solve not just one problem, but two. Not just address exhaustion, but also routing table explosion.

    But it created a problem: no multihoming. I'm not just a Verizon customer: I'm a Sprint customer, I'm a SAVVIS customer. How would it be efficient to only be able to route via Verizon (especially if it were down)?

    --
    this is my sig
  26. Re:Summary is misleading. by Glendale2x · · Score: 3, Interesting

    For those interested:

    Neighbor V AS MsgRcvd MsgSent TblVer InQ OutQ Up/Down State/PfxRcd
    2600:80A:60F::1 4 701 18685 7401 44868 0 0 1d09h 1516
    2620:0:950::242:130
                                    4 11170 28462 14090 44869 0 0 1d00h 2140

    Verizon carries 1516 routes, the combination of Sprint and HE are 2140 routes.

    --
    this is my sig
  27. Re:Actually, Verizon is right by louarnkoz · · Score: 3, Informative
    Ah, multi-homing. There is an IETF working group busily trying to address that. They have been at work for some time, so I don't hold my breadth.

    The least bad solution with the current standards is to give to each IPv6 multiple addresses, e.g. one with the Verizon prefix, one with the Sprint prefix, one with SAVVIS. Of course, that solution assumes that the exit routers are capable of choosing the exit route based on the source address picked by the host, which is a *big* assumption. I suppose that if there is enough demand, Cisco, Juniper et al will come up with such routers.

    If that works, you get the equivalent of each host having multiple "virtual network cards", one for each provider. Of course, they do not in fact have multiple cards, just multiple addresses.

    Failing that, the big organizations will pay their providers large sums and get a short prefix (/32, probably) that will be routed. The small folks will be left hanging.

  28. Re:I don't think IPv6 is really the future any mor by Kaboom13 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    IPv4 dates back to 1981. At the time, I'm sure handing out Class A's did not seem such a bad idea. Noone at the time expected IPv4 to be the be all end all of network addressing, they expected it to be used for awhile and then replaced by something else. Back in 1980, did you think there would be a personal computer (or several) on every desk and in every home, all connected to a global internet tying every on of them together? This is a good 10 years before most people ever heard of the "Information superhighway". The people participating and building the network, getting it off the ground, got large chunks of addresses to use as they saw fit. That sounds fair to me. Is it fair for people to wait until others made a massive investment in the network, and after it becomes wildly successful, to then demand they byproduct of their investment?

    Noone could have expected IPv4 would achieve the status it has today, noone predicted address scarcity being a problem before a better protocol could be designed and implemented. Presumably the designers, being intelligent, reasonable men, expected other intelligent, reasonable men to follow them, capable of implementing upgrades to add new address space as the demand required and the technology was available. Unfortunately the internet devolved into being led by squabbling, political maneuvering, corrupt fuckheads. I don't think it's fair to blame the original designers for that.

  29. Scramble his eggs... by TapeCutter · · Score: 3, Funny

    "Better politely and PLEASENTLY letting them know that there's a problem."

    Visiting in person and spitting the dummy can be deeply satisfying...

    I came back to a busy mobile phone store for the fourth time regarding enabling a AU-$30 sim chip, I had also had several lengthy conversations with the phone company over that time. I went through the story (again) with a disinterested "manager" who said it was the phone companies fault, however I used to work for the telco so at this point I knew he was making excuses to brush me off and get back to earning comissions from the 30-40 people milling round the store. I had also just been watching him successfully use the same routine on the woman he served before me.

    My blood started simmering but I kept a lid on it and said I no longer cared who's fault it was I just wanted my money back, he replied that the phone company had my money, I said (with a raised voice) "I don't care about the fucking phone company, I gave the money to you". He forcefully refused again claiming he no longer had the money. I replied with some loud random abuse and then picked up a display box of leaflets from the counter and threw them in the air along with the sim chip and paperwork. The "manger" was now tripping over a printer trying to back away into his office - I am at heart a "gental giant", realising I had already scared the shit out of the guy I calmed down.

    I quietly turned around to leave and to my surprised delight the previously packed shop was now completely deserted, even his staff had run off! Most memorable $30 I ever spent, my kids still rib me about it 10yrs after the fact.

    --
    And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.