Is the transition to IPv6 a “market failure?”
29 Sep 2009
This is an extended commentary on a presentation to the 1st Workshop on Internet Economics, hosted by CAIDA in September 2009.
The Fine Print: I am not a economist in terms of my professional qualifications. Worse still, I think I fit in to the category of amateur economic dilettante! So most of what I offer here I do so tentatively, as it probably needs a little more rigor and precision in basic economic terms than I am able to provide!
At the outset I should say that here I would like to restrict my view to the transition from the IPv4 Internet to the IPv6 Internet, and, in particular, to examine the topic of the appropriate market structure that lies behind the dual stack transition strategy, and the manner in which the Internet can transition from the universal use of IPv4 as the underlying datagram protocol to the universal use of IPv6. I should also stress that this is not an examination of IPv6 itself and its utility, but is limited to an examination of the mechanisms of transition from the IPv4 Internet to the IPv6 Internet, using an approach that attempts to take a perspective of the fundamentals of markets and the associated market models that attempt to bring suppliers and consumers into some form of equilibration.
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