And Now for Something Completely Different (was Re: IPv6 news)

Sun Oct 16 22:00:57 UTC 2005

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On 16-Oct-2005, at 16:20, Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu wrote:

> On Sun, 16 Oct 2005 10:55:38 EDT, Joe Abley said:
>
>> Thought experiment: how many different software vendors need to
>> change their shipping IPv6 code in order for some new feature like
>> shim6 to be 80% deployed in the server and client communities of  
>> hosts?
>>
>> I'm thinking it's probably less than 5, but I'd be interested to hear
>> opinions to the contrary.
>
> Client end, if Microsoft, MacOS X, and the various Linuxoids  
> shipped, you'd have
> pretty good coverage.  Maybe Solaris 11 if they're still relevant  
> by then.  A
> few vendor Unixoids (AIX, Irix, etc), and proprietary systems (z/ 
> OS), but those
> vendors will either read the writing on the wall or fade away...

To get 80%, I think on the client side you just need support in  
Microsoft v6-capable operating systems.

> Router end, probably same number - Cisco, Juniper, Linksys and a  
> few other
> SOHO-class vendors, plus a few I've overlooked.

I don't think you need any support at all on routers for shim6 to be  
functional for services that users and content providers care about.

On the server side, windows plus Solaris plus linux seems like it  
might give 80%.

So, that makes windows, Solaris and Linux.

Whether the answer is three, five or twelve, the point I was  
attempting to make was that it's not necessarily a huge deployment  
obstacle to roll out shim6 across a good proportion of the network's  
hosts from the coding point of view. Since no flag day is required,  
this does not seem necessarily unmanageable.

> Of course, even if everybody shipped a *working* *interoperable*  
> product today
> (quit giggling - we're being hypothetical here), you'd still have a  
> 3-5 year
> timeframe before all the stuff sold yesterday and years previous  
> got upgraded
> or replaced.

Sure.

In some ways it's fortunate that Microsoft has yet to ship an  
operating system where v6 is turned on by default (right? I heard  
that Vista will be the first?)

On the server side there's the additional upgrade carrot that  
upgrades will facilitate multi-homing, which may make for an easier  
sale.

Anyway. Thought experiment.

Joe

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