[ipv6-wg] IPv6 cloud!

Hi Jens and list,

Jens Link <lists at quux.de> writes:

> Sometimes IT is a world full of surprises and magic. Puff and it
> 1999. Oh year 2000 is coming[1]. Puff and the support for Windows XP[2]
> ends. Puff and there are only few IPv4 addresses left. Puff and many
> access providers are doing some form of large scale NAT and maybe
> IPv6. Puff and the solution we bought last year doesn't support
> IPv6. But we need IPv6 now.

These days, when I'm in the mood and I'm talking to the right people, I
simply tell them: "I've decided to focus my work on IPv6 in 2003, and
I'm still not sure if it was a smart decision.  But the first time I
negotiate a four digit hourly rate, then I'll know I was right."

Occasionally that seems to get the message home.

> About two years ago there was a large German VoIP provider complaining
> that all these evil German cable providers had started using IPv6. They
> wrote about it in an their BLOG. There were about 70 comments in the
> form of "Why don't you just provide IPv6?"

Don't forget to mention their statement in that blog that "it's a
problem between you and your ISP."  Telling that to users who have been
switched to DS-Lite (without their ISP even telling them, at least in
some cases), and whose "land line" phone stopped working, that's about
as good as it gets when you really, really, REALLY want some customers
never ever to come back.

"*Our* Internet works, so it must be yours that needs fixing!"

"We have enough IPv4 addresses for ourselves, so this isn't a problem to
us."

> There was a lot of time to see that IPv6 is coming. There are still
> networking projects today that are not build with IPv6 in mind[3].

And then there are those network projects that claim they support IPv6
but actually only do "IPv4 with longer addresses".  But that's the real
problem: There's a painful shortage of people who know about networking
in general, but with IPv6 it's absolutely hopeless.  There aren't even
enough people who just memorized enough cookbook recipes they don't
understand to get IPv6 (sort of) up and running.


Cheers,

    Benedikt

-- 
Benedikt Stockebrand,                   Stepladder IT Training+Consulting
Dipl.-Inform.                           http://www.stepladder-it.com/

          Business Grade IPv6 --- Consulting, Training, Projects

BIVBlog---Benedikt's IT Video Blog: http://www.stepladder-it.com/bivblog/