Fwd: Big day for IPv6 - 1% native penetration

Tue Nov 27 00:27:00 UTC 2012

On 11/26/2012 03:18 PM, Dobbins, Roland wrote:
> 
> Apple and Microsoft are application developers as well as OS vendors.  How much of a priority do you think IPv6 capabilities are to their application development organizations?  How much of a priority do you think IPv6 capabilities are to their customer bases?
> 
> How much of a priority do you think IPv6 capabilities are for corporate IT departments, beyond a checklist item on RFPs in order to CYA?
> 
> Where are the IPv6-only SQL Server deployments within enterprises, for example?  In fact, where are the IPv6-enabled client access LANs within enterprises?  Or even the *plans* for these types of deployments/capabilities?

How much of a priority?  I would say lots for Apple.  Have you looked at the current Apple software?  It pretty much "just works" on IPv6.  IPv6 is on by default on end systems. Airport Extreme is listed as IPv6 compatible by, among other companies, Comcast.  In Terminal, open an New Remote Connection to another Mac, do netstat -f inet6 and see that it is an IPv6 connection. Actually, it is more than a priority. It is pretty much a done deal.

As for corporate IT departments, it depends on whether management is measured on monthly cash flow or by long term growth.  I must note that many corporate IT departments have evolved from "No one gets fired for buying IBM." to "One might get fired for not buying Microsoft." This also automatically brings along IPv6 capabilities.

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Elsewhere it has been said that end users don't care about IPv6.  Well, that is generally true.  They also don't care about IPv4, DOCSIS 3, ATM, PPPOE, and lots of other technical acronyms.  What they do care about is reliable sharing of gossip, pictures, and videos.  They also care about reliable video chats with friends and family. 

To meet these expectations in a long term cost-effective manner, it behooves us network and content providers to remove all IPv4-forced hacks impeding easy end-system to end-system connections like all those 'wonderful' variants of NAT and artificially high pricing for IPv6.  When the marketing folks begins to treat IPv6 as a sales enabler rather than a fanciful cost item, then we may see accelerated deployment of IPv6 alongside IPv4.
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