IPv6 Confusion

Wed Feb 18 23:26:27 UTC 2009

On Wed, 2009-02-18 at 16:45 -0600, Stephen Sprunk wrote:
> I bet the latter is why the US DoD gave up on their hard IPv6 
> requirements and now simply mandates that products be "software 
> upgradeable" to support IPv6...
I think you will agree that vendor support for IPv6 has come a long way
in the past few years.  Even Force10 is shipping v6 capable hardware! ;)

The price of software licenses for v6 (when required) is now a figure we
think about when proposing new equipment.  Even customers who do not
have a v6 strategy are at least conscious of the fact that they will
need it eventually, and may rather pay a little more for a box that
includes the feature now, than spend more on a license that includes
things they don't need later on.

I think, for example, that Juniper is making a mistake by rolling v6
capability into a license that also includes BGP and ISIS on some
platforms.  Cisco is guilty of this as well.

I am not necessarily advocating that v6 must be a basic feature on every
new box; but I don't think it is correct to force customers to buy a
license that includes a lot of other bells and whistles just to get v6.
It could be a separate cost.

- j