Migrating IPv6 (was Re: What Should an Engineer Address when 'Selling' IPv6 to Executives?)

Thu Mar 7 03:31:54 UTC 2013

On Wed, 2013-03-06 at 18:48 -0800, Owen DeLong wrote:
> On Mar 6, 2013, at 10:50 AM, Jeroen van Aart <jeroen at mompl.net> wrote:
> > Adapting your current software to IPv6, that could be more tricky.
> Although if you use the right IPv6 aware libraries and functions it
> could be relatively easy in code. In my own apps it's just a matter of
> changing the ai_family flag of getaddrinfo() to AF_UNSPEC if not done
> so yet.[...]
> 
> Yep. The important thing is for the enterprise to be aware of what is
> required and realize that it spans development, systems
> administration, networking, logistics, and will have end-user impacts
> worthy of some consideration.

People adapting stuff to IPv6 may find this blog entry of mine useful:

   http://biplane.com.au/blog/?p=179

It says "Java" in the title, but the principles are pretty much the same
for anything... Java has a class that encapsulates "IP address",
regardless of address family, so if your stuff was written with that
it's a lot easier to migrate some stuff. The same will be true of any
language with a similar abstraction. But you can't get away from print
and display changes, for example, where the physical space required,
that is, the real estate on screen or paper, is about three times larger
for IPv6 than IPv4.

And you can't get away from the end-user impact of the new and unknown;
IPv6 is transparent only up to the first support call...

In technical forums I find myself saying things like "bee thousand" for
"b000", "ay thousand dee zero" for "a0d0" and on one occasion even "ay
thousand and deety". It seems very natural and right to me and most
people seem to understand it without much effort, but boy, does it get
me strange looks sometimes :-) No-one looks askance when you say "one
ninety two dot one sixty eight dot one dot one", but that's pretty weird
too, really. I guess we (the wider IPv6 using community) will have to
develop a human vocabulary for IPv6 as well as a technical one :-)

Regards, K.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)
http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer
http://www.biplane.com.au/blog

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