IPv6 news

Fri Oct 14 18:33:09 UTC 2005

Thus spake "Sean Figgins" <sean at labrats.us>
> On Thu, 13 Oct 2005, JORDI PALET MARTINEZ wrote:
>> And in 6-12 months the new Vista will start replacing XP,
>
> Will start replacing XP on new consumer-grade computers.
> Corporations will take another 2-4 years to switch, and other
> people might have upgraded to windows 98 from 3.11 by then.

The companies I've worked for are usually only 6-12 months behind the latest 
Windows release.  I'll agree that 24 motnhs was probably accurate for those 
moving off NT 4.0 and 95, but starting with 2k things seem to have been 
happening much faster since MS has been doing much better with backwards 
compatibility on drivers and APIs.

Vista will have one big stumbling block for many -- 64bit drivers.  I'm 
betting most corps that upgrade will initially go with the 32bit version 
even on 64-bit-capable PCs to keep things consistent and get the best 
support for legacy drivers.  Or, perhaps by the time Vista comes out the 
vendors will have caved into the furious screams from XP64's early 
adopters...

> I think that we need to buy as much time as possible for IP, as V6
> is going to be extremely painful for the consumer, and thus the
> consumer is not going to want to adopt it.
>
> Our jobs, as network designers and operators will be make it
> seemless to the consumer without forcing them to shell out a
> thousand or more dollars on new Windows software, and the
> hardware that will be required to run it on.  If that is devising some
> sort of NAT for the large percentage of customers that don't care,
> then that may be the direction we need to take.

XP already comes with v6; all you have to do is Start->Run->"ipv6 install". 
Vista will just change things from "default off" to "default on".  IT 
departments can handle the logistics of this once their network is 
v6-capable.  The real stumbling blocks, IMHO, are:

1. In-house custom apps that don't have v6 support
2. Network hardware that needs to be replaced to handle v6
3. Stable IOS versions that support v6
4. Ops staff training on how to work with v6
5. People who rely on typing (or hard-coding) IP addresses instead of using 
DNS.

Consumers have entirely different problems, which I'll address (no pun 
intended) in another subthread.

S

Stephen Sprunk      "Those people who think they know everything
CCIE #3723         are a great annoyance to those of us who do."
K5SSS                                             --Isaac Asimov 