IP4 Space

Lamar Owen lowen at pari.edu
Fri Mar 26 15:57:23 UTC 2010


On Wednesday 10 March 2010 09:46:19 pm Jim Burwell wrote:
> On 3/10/2010 16:57, Owen DeLong wrote:
> > The target really needs to be the CxOs and the management,
> > especially in places where there is content facing the general
> > public.  Fortunately, Google, Yahoo, Netflix, etc. get it and have
> > moved forward with IPv6. Some others are coming along.

> True.  CxOs can basically order it to be done.  

Fascinating thread; thanks to all for the many insights found here; this 
thread has made my personal archive, just like the other long one did.  I've 
chosen to reply to this post, because it directly addresses me, in addition to 
the other two topical posts I just couldn't resist.

So, let me give the insight from the CIO point of view, at least in terms of a 
non-profit organization.  How do I know this PoV?  I _am_ the CIO here, that's 
how.  Here's my hypothetical reaction to a hypothetical network engineer 
coming to me with a good, solid, thorough, and compelling presentation on why 
we need to go to IPv6:

"Hey, great presentation.  Compelling arguments.  But I have one question: 
will our existing gear that's not yet fully depreciated handle it?  No? Sorry, 
won't happen.  Not in this recession year; grants have been tight, and nobody 
wants to fund this kind of capex right now.  Especially not since it hasn't 
yet been five years since that previous grant bought some of that equipment.  
No, we cannot afford to forklift upgrade now.  Do whatever you can with what we 
have.  Or, if we absolutely must upgrade, find the money in the bandwidth 
budget, and reduce our bandwidth if you have to do so.   Oh, and one other 
thing: is our ISP supporting this IPv6 thing yet?  No?  Come back when they 
do, and when you figure out how to do this with our existing equipment, or find 
the money in the existing budget.  If you'll excuse me, I have a meeting with 
the head of the server group, who says he needs funds for upgrading our server 
farm to something called vSphere 4.  Says he can save us a couple of grand per 
month in power and cooling costs, and has a plan to use the savings to upgrade 
our website to something more interactive for our core stakeholders."

Fact: many, if not most, businesses today are struggling to do basic things, 
at least in my area.  IPv6 migration for many businesses is a desirable, not 
an essential, thing to do, at least right now, and especially if serious capex 
is required to do it.  For some businesses, IPv6 addition is more of an 
annoyance than a desirable.  So, many businesses, in today's economic climate, 
will be dragged into IPv6 kicking and screaming simply because it's going to 
be, in their eyes, dead cost.  Unless there is either a significant value-add 
or cost reduction in the mid to long term, that is.  Having more addresses is 
not enough.  And thus, ISP's which serve those businesses really don't have 
sufficient economic reason to expend their own capex budgets down to the bone if 
the demand from their customers is low.  

At the CxO level, it's all about the money.  Or the lack therof.

In our case, yes, we're going to add IPv6 when it makes cents to do so.  
Misspelling intentional; but I do have a plan in place to roll it out quickly 
when needed, in no small part thanks to threads on NANOG and Cisco-NSP.
-- 
Lamar Owen
Chief Information Officer
Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute




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