assume v6 available, average cost to implement

Ray Soucy rps at maine.edu
Thu Aug 4 15:50:48 UTC 2011


As much of an IPv6 advocate as I am, I think the TCO for the SMB
regarding IPv6 is often cost- prohibitive.  Not because of CapEx, mind
you, but OpEx.  That's something we need to fix within the next year
if we want to see real IPv6 adoption.

Strong IPv6 knowledge is still very rare, especially in the SMB IT workforce.

Right now, deploying IPv6 doesn't mean just deploying one technology
but several.  Do you have an IPv6 firewall? IPS? IPv6 address
management solution? Monitoring? Security Policy?  The list goes on.

To be honest, I'd put the TCO of IPv6 for an SMB to be much closer to
six figures than five.

There is simply no good solution for them right now.  Remember that
for IPv4, most of the systems mentioned above are provided through a
unified, inexpensive, and easily managed, multi-function firewall.  No
such product exists for the IPv6 world, at least not in a mature
state; so the knowledge required is much higher; the number of systems
and services required is much higher; the cost is... higher.

I'm sure a few consultants making bank on "deploying" IPv6 for
organizations without giving any thought to security, operational, or
performance concerns will be more than happy to chime in and say how
wrong I am.  But trust me, the majority of SMBs aren't completely
brainless, and all you have to do is talk to them to know that they
have the exact concerns and conclusions mentioned here.

On Wed, Aug 3, 2011 at 11:14 AM,  <brunner at nic-naa.net> wrote:
> Folks,
>
> In the never ending game of policy whack-a-mole, we are offered the claim that
> that the cost to a small to medium business to make its operational purpose
> v6 address enabled is in the mid-five figures.
>
> For those of you who do smb consults, some numbers to make a hypothetical
> shop consisting of a quarter rack of gear running nothing more goofy than
> a couple of applications on a couple of ports, basicially, a dbms plus a
> bit of gorp, say in central Kansas, to which some provider, say Kansas
> Telekenesis and Telefriend has just made v6 happy.
>
> Having renumbered hq.af.mil some time ago, I'm expecting the 50k bogie to
> add colons to some retail insurance office or mortuary in central Kansas
> to be on the exceedingly good dope high side.
>
> Thanks in advance for real numbers, which I'll sanitize before using to
> attmept to keep one policy playpen slightly less crazy than normal.
>
> Eric
>
>



-- 
Ray Soucy

Epic Communications Specialist

Phone: +1 (207) 561-3526

Networkmaine, a Unit of the University of Maine System
http://www.networkmaine.net/




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