IPv6 news

Fri Oct 14 09:46:06 UTC 2005

> "I told them dudes to forklift their network" is hardly productive.

IPv6 is not a forklift upgrade.

> Showing, if folks can't find it themselves, that there is a business 
case
> that would justify a few million dollar upgrade is...

Again, it is cheaper to ease into IPv6 rather than waiting until
it hutrts so bad that you have a business case for a million dollar
spend. Start by making sure that your engineers get some IPv6 training
and enable it in your test labs. Add IPv6 testing to any purchase
of new equipment. Figure out how to enable IPv6 on your network, i.e.
make your plan so you know whether 6PE or dual-stack or ??? will work
for you. Light up IPv6 on a few PoPs so that you can get some experience
with monitoring etc.

> Hopefully other folks can make their
> beancounters understand that v6 is going to happen regardless of their
> wishes for it NOT to happen due to upgrade costs.

This is the key thing. The cost of NOT being prepared for IPv6 is
vastly higher than the cost of easing into it. When the IPv6 era 
comes crashing, there will be bankruptcies as a result because some
networks will simply not be prepared to handle the transition.
At that point in time there will be a shortage of IPv6 expertise
and even large amounts of money will not necessarily be able to
buy the skills that you need. 

The time to prepare is now.

When I read the Geoff Huston's response to Tony Hain's
analysis here:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/about/ac123/ac147/archived_issues/ipj_8-3/ipv4.html
I don't see him saying that we should do nothing. There
seems to be general consensus among these guys that
the time for action is now. If you want the IPv6 transition
to be painless for your company, then you need to get
planning and get IPv6 in your test labs today.

--Michael Dillon