[rpd] Pushing IPv6 ? Re: Questions about IP Allocation rate

[Jaco Kroon]

Hi Hendrik,

I'm in two minds on this.  On the one hand ... let it burn seems good.

On the other hand, the single largest cheap hosting provider is SA still 
has no sensible plan on deploying IPv6 as far as I can tell, neither 
does any of the MNOs.

Given the hosting provider can fix their crap QUICKLY, and the larger 
problem there would be to get their CUSTOMERS (who's in my experience 
generally small(ish) scale wordpress deployers - most of them I don't 
want to call developers because configuring plugins shouldn't be 
considered development) to deploy AAAA records.

The MNOs (at least two of them) claim they're ready, but no customer 
wants it ... and when the customers ask, they're being told it's in the 
roadmap but no timelines has been set since there's not high demand.

Doing v6-only on hosting side, and then using a small amount of v4 space 
to stateless NAT into the v6 infra is easy.  There are rumours (good 
authority but I've not personally confirmed it) that Facebook does 
exactly this already, and given it's stateless I can imagine that.

My concern is getting CG-NAT just right is non-trivial, as anybody that 
provides services even marginally more complex than http will attest 
to.  And given the above situation where hosting providers are reluctant 
to deploy IPv6 for some reason.

INVARIABLY when we are for AAAA records for services run externally 
where we manage DNS, we're being told one of two things:

1.  There's not IPv6 available; or
2.  Nobody cares about IPv6 so we don't bother.

This seems like circular reasoning to me, nobody cares because nobody 
has it, and nobody has it because nobody cares.

IPv6 for me seems more and more like the answer to IPv$ (which I 
differentiate from IPv4 ...).

Reality is that there is only one way IPv6 will become a reality, and 
that's by letting IPv4 burn down and causing it to break.

Until customers can't get to stuff because no IPv6 nobody is going to care.

The ONLY customers I've got asking for IPv6 are those with home cameras 
that streams ... typically using RTP of sorts, and here what ends up 
happening is that the camera suppliers are making boatloads of money 
thanks to IPv4 since that means they get to sell a platform, camera 
connects to platform, and streaming goes through platform (TURN 
protocol).  The performance is poor, and given most of these I've 
investigated sits in HK - that also raises some privacy concerns about 
who has access to video feeds.

When those customers gets IPv6 I get two positives:

1.  Their streaming is more reliable (no NAT ... no need to TURN via HK, 
results in less jitter, less buffering, less freezing and skipping).
2.  Overall less bandwidth ... for some reason I haven't investigated yet.

On the one hand I like having happy customers (need IPv4 or else they 
can't get to www.{somerandomsite}.co.za).  On the other hand, let it 
burn so we can stop having these discussions.

Kind regards,
Jaco

On 2025/10/14 10:21, Hendrik Visage wrote:

> Question:
>
>  Shouldn’t we rather consider pushing IPv6 deployment assistance 
> across Africa? ie. let the rest of the IPv4 go ASAP without much 
> resistance instead of making this a begging/pleading/fighting game?
>
> ARIN (North America) & RIPE (Europe) serviced areas are way ahead of 
> IPv6 roll outs, ‘cause they don’t have any left, and looking at 
> AfriNIC services countries, we are still have an abundance of IPv4, so 
> IPv6 percentage roll outs are very low, and rathe we should be pushing 
> to mirror the IPv6 percentage rollout and usage rather than fighting 
> over the few remaining IPv4s if we want to grow digital rollouts.
>
> Perhaps even moving to a state of: “You can have IPv6, once you’ve 
> proven a complete IPv6 rollout can you get anymore IPv4"
>
> ---
> Hendrik Visage
> Instant messaging: https://t.me/hvisage
>
>
>> On 13 Oct 2025, at 16:43, Andrew Alston <aa at alstonnetworks.net> wrote:
>>
>> Hi All,
>>
>> I was wondering if there were updated statistics for the amount of 
>> space allocated in the last 3 years.  In addition to this information 
>> regarding exactly how much free space is still available in the IPv4 
>> unallocated pool (excluding reservations)
>>
>> I ask this because depending on the allocation rate - we may wish to 
>> consider revising the soft-landing policy that currently reserves a 
>> /12 worth of ipv4 space for "future uses, as yet unforeseen".
>>
>> I point out that the soft landing policy was ratified in 2011, and if 
>> we still, after 14 years, have not been able to articulate a clear 
>> reason for such a large reservation, I think it's time we look at 
>> most, if not all, of that /12 back into the main unallocated pool 
>> that can be allocated for African resource holders that actually need it.
>>
>> Amongst other reasons, sitting with unallocated, unannounced, 
>> reserved space like this leaves the space vulnerable to hijacking and 
>> malicious use or even potential theft.
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>> Andrew
>>
>>
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>
> ---
>
> Hendrik Visage
>
> hvisage at hevis.co.za
>
>
> HeViS.Co Systems Pty Ltd
>
> https://www.envisage.co.za
>
>
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