On 2019-03-20 4:29 p.m., David Lang wrote:

> On Wed, 20 Mar 2019, David Collier-Brown wrote:
>
>> On 2019-03-20 10:28 a.m., Mikael Abrahamsson wrote:
>>>
>>> This isn't a resource problem, it's a code problem. The IETF wants 
>>> 10-15 year old hosts to be able to connect to a network and perform 
>>> basic networking. It might not be very optimized, but the basic 
>>> function should be there. New functionality can optimize for 
>>> different factors, but making older host stop working is frowned upon.
>>
>> Fortunately this is a solved problem in capacity planning: you 
>> replace machines often enough that they're not constantly out of 
>> service being repaired. 10 to 15 human-years is the equivalent of 70 
>> to 105 of the dog-years we use in this silly business (;-))
>
> I have quite a number of consumer devices from 2000 or earlier still 
> running, consumer endpoints (aka IoT devices) do not get updated very 
> much, if at all.
>
> David Lang

Interesting thought: I wasn't expecting consumer devices from 14 years 
ago! What do you have?

In our house,

  * the cable modem is about a year old,
  * it's predecessor was about 5 when it died,
  * the old printer was 3 years old
  * the new one is about 4
  * my homemade PVR is about 6, and is starting to look elderly, and
  * the old cable box was about 3,
  * the new one about one
  * and my netbook is older than the PVR by maybe a year or so (;-))

--dave
(I intentionally skipped IOT devices, as I expect they could 
change/pivot hugely about the time the market starts to mature,

-- 
David Collier-Brown,         | Always do right. This will gratify
System Programmer and Author | some people and astonish the rest
davecb@spamcop.net           |                      -- Mark Twain