How long much advanced notice do ISPs need to deploy IPv6?

Thu Oct 23 00:14:47 UTC 2003

On Wed, 22 Oct 2003 00:16:26 -0400
William Allen Simpson <wsimpson at greendragon.com> wrote:

> Umm, hard to remember that long ago, and haven't looked at IENs in
> ages, but should memory serve me correctly, the first TCP/IP documents
> I read were circa 1978, and the cutover was circa 1983.

I was a system/network admin at the University of Texas at Austin when
the old ARPNET NCP was phased out in favor of IPV4. There was not a
single cutover date, but rather both protocols were run side by side for
a few years as I recall. This allowed plenty of time for testing, etc.
Of course, the installed system base was much smaller in those days. UT
had 3 machines directly connected to the local ARPANET IMP and
no campus area network. In 1983 the 128.83.0.0/16 assigned to
UT was just being deployed. So the cutover to IPV4 was relatively
easy.

A major change in the operational protocols today would have a much
greater impact and require a much longer deployment and testing cycle.

-- 
Smoot Carl-Mitchell
Systems/Networking Consultant
email: smoot at tic.com
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