Ars Technica on IPv4 exhaustion

Justin M. Streiner streiner at cluebyfour.org
Thu Jun 19 15:11:45 UTC 2014


On Thu, 19 Jun 2014, Christopher Morrow wrote:

>> 2. The network Admins at the above mentioned companies need to learn IPV6,
>> most will want there company to pay the bill for this.
>
> for a large majority of the use cases it's just "configure that other
> family on the interface" and done.

In the simplest cases, yes.  Throw things that often exist in 
mid to large sized enterprises, like firewalls, DHCP servers, load 
balancers, log analyzers, etc, having to upgrade $XYZ to get IPv6 support 
or fix bugs, and there's a bit more to it.  These are not insurmountable 
problems, but administrative/political/financial inertia is a real thing 
in many shops.

>> 3. The vendors that make said equipment should lower the cost of said
>> equipment to prompt said companies into purchasing said equipment.
>
> the equipment in question does both v4 and v6 ... so why lower pricing?
> (also, see 'if made in the last 7 yrs, it's already done and you
> probably don't have to upgrade')

There could be problems with things like DHCPv6, depending on how the 
user's ISP provisions service.  SLAAC 'just works' for the most part, but 
if the FooTronics 1000 an all-in-one router/firewall/wireless AP/printer/
belt sander/toaster from $BIGBOXSTORE doesn't come with firewall settings 
that let IPv6 work just out of the box, or at least have a big, shiny 
"Make IPv6 work" button, support calls will be generated.  ISPs and 
FooTronics both hate support calls.

Again, playing devil's advocate here.  I just don't look forward to 
dealing with support calls from customers who bought kit from vendors who 
slammed in IPv6 support as quickly and cheaply as possible.

jms



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