[nycbug-talk] (I hate IPv6!) - Thread Fork

[Yusuke Shinyama]

Hi Ike,

On Fri, 23 Mar 2007 19:40:55 -0400, Isaac Levy <ike at lesmuug.org> wrote:
>
> While there's no doubt for me that what you, (and Alex, and others)  
> are saying here, is right on the mark.  These are precisely the  
> reasons behind why a transition is not happening in America.
> 
> Your responses are exactly perfect points for me to think through and  
> address, insomuch as I believe the business case for IPv6 in America  
> is the very opposite- but only after seeing the LIVE IPv6 NETWORKS in  
> Japan!  (It's a real shame the dot-com boom hurt us all so badly, but  
> I feel like we have to get our asses back up on the horse and ride-  
> or we'll never get over it...)

In the US, you can get, say, eight static IPs without any
hassle. In Japan, however, getting static IPs is normally optional
in most ISP services and it costs around 3,000 yen extra per month
(about $25), for only one IP. Eight static IPs cost around 10,000
yen per month, or more.  I guess this is why Japan has been so
crazy about IPv6 stuff, so they've spent billions of yens already
to make all these things work, but...

I actually have mixed feeling here.  I'm still not sure if this
was a proper investment.  Because deploying a certain
infrastructure needs a huge nationwide effort, I think we should
have much stronger justification for this, rather than just "no
NATs" or "integrated IPsec".

And you say the dot-com boom hurt the US badly, but my feeling is
opposite. The software industries in Japan, including web
services, are now dominated mostly by the US companies. Most
people use MSN, Yahoo!, Google and YouTube, and there's very few
alternatives.  There have been a discussion why companies like
Yahoo! or Google never come up in Japan, but I guess this is
partially because they made efforts for a wrong direction.  For
example, Japanese higher education is terrible. I actually came to
the US after graduating from one of the top schools there (not
u-tokyo though), but can you imagine people there can graduate
even without knowing what's C pointers?  They are majoring
*Computer Science*.  And most software-related researches in Japan
are almost dying, partly because their poor funding for
fundamental resarches and pathetic support for grad students
(compared to the US.)  I admit Ipv6 is useful, but I believe there
must be a better way for spending money.

(Although this is off-topic, you might be interested in why
Japanese companies are doing so well without well-established
higher education systems. Most companies know Japanese univs are
crappy, so they train their employees in-house. They normally
don't expect much from students in terms of skills, but they do
expect strong loyalty to the company, so that they won't move out
after they master skills.  Actually, people switching companies
from one to another are considered disloyal, so most large
companies avoid hiring them.  The lifetime employment system,
which is still pervasive throughout Japan, also prevents people
from moving. Universities in Japan are generally regarded as just
a vacation, or a playground for kids before they get into the
harsh reality.)

Sorry for ranting in my bad English... but I just wanted to say
there are too many factors for saying a particular technology is
good or bad, espacially when they require a lot of resources.
Since there're still many other problems even within IT-related
fields, we need to be really careful.

Yusuke