I'm not convinced these 2 are related. If AWS wanted, they could start promoting IPv6 as a panacea to all internal network problems (if they had it working, that is), and the competition would have a hard time catching up. My guess is the reason is more mundane: supporting IPv4 is just easier, especially if you take into account the number of their services.
While this is probably exactly the spin the AWS sales team head in mind, it conveniently glosses over all the IPv4 related products customers won’t need anymore if they use IPv6, and thus pay a lot less for their simplified network infrastructure.
AWS has no incentive to support IPv6 from a sales perspective.
In addition, IPv4 addresses are an asset that has monetary value; and there’s no reason AWS would want to drive down the value of the asset by helping customers migrate to IPv6.
Have you heard of the Jevons paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox? It is really insightful. If you make something more efficient/ easier to use, people will use more of it. That is exactly what I think about the switch from IPv4 -> IPv6. Networking is really complicated now and if you happen to make it just a bit easier and cheaper, people will use it and the related services more.
Stateful NAT is a real burden on bigger networks and is at least a chore on smaller networks. It at least doubles the complexity of managing a network especially when you have a DMZ that should be used from some "private" and some "public" endpoints.
Sure there is. AWS has a vested interest in the value of IPv4 going down as much as possible.
Owning IPv4 addresses is a requirement of AWS’s core business. Unless people stop using IPv4, then AWS cannot sell those addresses. There is no incentive for the addresses to increase in value.
Further, if people continue to use IPv4, then AWS has to continue to acquire even more IPv4, and AWS wants the price of those to go down so that acquiring them is cheaper (or wants people to stop using IPv4 so that they can stop spending money on them altogether).
> Unless people stop using IPv4, then AWS cannot sell those addresses. There is no incentive for the addresses to increase in value.
But if people stop using IPv4, the asset (billions of dollars by some accounts) becomes worthless... AWS are passing on the cost for public IPv4 addresses now, so there's even less incentive.
AWS' business model is not speculating on IPv4 addresses. But the fact that smaller providers can't get IPv4 allocations coincidentally works in big cloud providers' favor (and incumbent ISPs). The slower you deploy IPv6 the longer you defer that cost and the longer you enjoy your advantage in address space capacity.
