Rate of growth on IPv6 not fast enough?

Mon Apr 19 16:58:43 UTC 2010

On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 12:10 PM, Frank Bulk - iName.com
<frnkblk at iname.com> wrote:
> Don't forget the home gateway aspect -- it's a huge gaping hole in the IPv6
> deployment strategy for ISPs.  And don't talk to me about Apple's Airport
> Extreme.  ISPs want (once the volume of IETF IPv6-related drafts has settled
> down) for every router at Wal-mart to include IPv6 support.  If they start
> right now and presume that home gateways/routers are replaced every 3 to 5
> years, it will be several years before they've covered even 50% of the
> homes.

Alternatively, they could commission the vendors to release firmware
upgrades with IPv6 support for the most common older devices.   Given
that many of them are Linux based and the code already exists, this
isn't likely to be technically difficult.   The customer support
costs, however, of convincing people to actually install the new
firmware is another story.   A consortium of ISPs could collectively
work with the biggest OEMs/vendors to get this done if they wanted to
do so.

Start by commissioning IPv6 support into all new hardware.   I would
think that given the razor thin margins in home gateways/routers extra
money coming in for simply turning on code which already exists would
be attractive to at least some of them.  Come up with some kind of
logo for the program "IPv6 READY!".   Make it a bandwagon thing so
that vendors who aren't part of the program look behind the times.
Offer some kind of cheap to implement network service to customers
which can only be accessed via IPv6 to create user demand.    Many
people have said that the reason that no one is doing IPv6 is that
there is nothing in it for the end users, so change that.

Bill Bogstad