Looking for an IPv6 naysayer...

Wed Feb 9 19:52:25 UTC 2011

On 2/9/2011 1:21 PM, Scott Helms wrote:
> IPv6 for some ISPs will be extraordinarily painful because of legacy
> layer 2 gear (usually DSLAMs that drop any frame with IPv6 in the
> EtherType field), inability to upgrade customer gear efficiently (again
> mainly a DSL problem where TR-069 isn't in use), and the requirement to
> replace PPPoE/oA termination gear (like Redback SMSs) means that a small
> telco (say 3000 DSL lines) could be facing a multi-million dollar
> expense to enable IPv6 for customers.
>

Oh, that's not the WORST of it.

... 3+ years ago ...

IPv6 is coming. All gear needs to support it. Here are the basic models 
of security from the router that we can use and pros and cons for each. 
You do NOT want DSLAMs which enforce their own security.

... each year after ...

*repeat*

... 1 year ago ...

Engineer: I disapprove of that DSLAM. It has IPv4 security measures you 
can't disable (PPPoE and DHCP security! Wow!), doesn't support enough 
q-in-q support to use an isolation model, and doesn't have IPv6 support 
itself to make up for what it breaks.

Telco: Well, we're buying millions of dollars worth, so we'll just have 
to make it work. Vendor says it'll be IPv6 ready later this year.

... 1 year later ....

Telco: Why did we do this? They say it will be ready later this year. 
The problems we've had with this vendor have been awful. We should have 
used someone else.

Engineer: No worries. I'm sure they'll get the support ready for you in 
time. I'll have my side sitting here waiting on them or worst case 
you'll spend some money to work around/replace them.

*snickers*

Jack