[Fwd: [members-discuss] [ncc-announce] RIPE NCC Position On The ITU IPv6 Group]

Sat Feb 27 07:33:00 UTC 2010

On Fri, 2010-02-26 at 22:20 -0800, Kevin Oberman wrote:
> Let's face reality. We have met the enemy and he is us. (Apologies to
> Walt Kelly.) We, the network engineers simply kept ignoring IPv6 for
> years after it was available. Almost all operating systems have been
> IPv6 capable for at least five years and most much longer. Most
> routers have been IPv6 ready for even longer. But we didn't move IPv6
> into services nor offer it to customers. As a result, it just sat
> there. Code was not exercised and bugs were not found. Reasonable
> transition mechanisms are nowhere to be seen, and the cost of fixing
> this (or working around it) has grown to frightening proportions.

Say it brother!

The fact of the matter is that by and large, the operator community not
only ignored IPv6 but many poo-poo'ed it and diminished any amount of
support for it from the small contingent of those who were willing to
progress its deployment.  In the past there were claims that it was
immature and flawed but for the most part no one really wanted to commit
themselves to putting up or shutting up.

Meanwhile clued and semi-clued users watching from sidelines could do
nothing but play in a vacuum and yell in frustration as their providers
ignore them as well.  I speaking as a demoralised user personally gave
up begging my provider for IPv6 connectivity.  Yes, there's always
tunnels but that's not the answer for real deployment.  Remember how
well tunnels worked out for multicast?

As a result, we are in a situation today where we are now scrambling to
do the things that should have evolved naturally.  Worse than stale code
is stale procedures and the lack of long-term growth and embracement.

What this means is that while we once could have taken the chance and
deployed a less than perfect technology, gotten early adopters and
slowly progressed mass-adoption, we are now in a position that we have
to undergo a crash-course in training and operational procedures.
Beyond that, the user community will need to be educated and even more
effort will need to be made in order to make things user-friendly.

And because of the heightened need for more modern features as well as
security, I might argue that we are relatively less prepared in our IPv6
development from a software standpoint than during the infancy of the
protocol.

It is often much easier for everyone involved if you slowly raise the
bar rather than suddenly springing an Olympic level high-jump upon them.

-- 
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