Broadening the IPv6 discussion

Thu Aug 29 19:33:02 UTC 2002

On Thu, 29 Aug 2002, Irwin Lazar wrote:
> Since we're on the topic of IPv6, I wanted to gauge the current attitude of
> the ops. community toward its deployment.  We're seeing a lot more interest
> from our enterprise clients in using v6,

Yes, we see this too.

This is in addition to the continuing rise in tunnels in use we see via
our free IPv6 tunnel broker at tunnelbroker.com.

>  However, the
> road-block seems to be the lack of ISPs that offer IPv6 services.  

Ha!  Ahem, no.  We have IPv6 routers deployed nationally and have even
sold IPv6 direct connections, even in the presence of the ability to get a
free tunnel, because enterprise type clients want to have a business class
level of service where they can call you for support (among other
reasons).

I'd say the observable low usage of IPv6 compared to IPv4 is because IPv6
is still in its early product phase where early adopters are still
considering how it works and what you can do with it and suppliers are
giving out free samples (i.e. all the tunnel brokers and 6to4 gateways out
there).

> does anyone see anything resembling a growing momentum toward IPv6 adoption,

Yes, it's an gradual trend.  We are seeing and increase over time in
active tunnels and in average traffic per tunnel.

Right now IPv6 is something to research, if the trend of increasing usage
continues it will become commercially significant.  How inevitable of a
trend you think this is depends on if you think every cell phone, car,
light switch, tv, washer, dryer, toaster, etc will eventually have it's
own IP address.  If you don't think that IP addresses allocations are
based on scarcity then IPv4 should rule for ever.  If on the other hand...

Mike.

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