Subject: Re: AN interesting article. FYI... contd

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 13:47:40 -0400

I read the article in question.  It was very light on facts (I don't know what
IPv6 and domain name shortages have in common), but some of the implementation
points are real.

I am the fellow who will be going to my CIO to ask for money to implement IPv6
one day.  And to be very honest, it will be a hard sell.

We will need to replace/upgrade almost all of our equipment (mainframe
datacenters, 10's of 1,000's of pc's, hundreds of routers, thousands of
eithernet switches, I don't know how many Novell, NT and Unix servers).
Everything has addresses buried in them (I know, we should not do that but we
have a lot of people in IT, so it happens and I cannot assume).  We have custom
code we wrote and custom code vendors have written for us, some of whom are no
longer in business (again, not right but it's life).  We will have to throw-out
applications as part of this.  I think that the job will take 5-10 years to
complete, with the help of 100's of people around the world.  We are talking a
huge investment.

To be honest, right now the only justification for this is to stay current and
maybe someone will come along and implement something based on it that we need.
We have enough addresses for our internal needs.  I know, that sounds like the
"I won't go to IP because Decnet is good enough" 1988 arguement, but we went to
IP because it gave us the ability to connect everything to everything, which is
exteremely powerful.  I need that kind of argement to propose this size of
upgrade.  Gartner and Forrester's are recommending that their clients
re-evaluate IPv6 in 2003, and I tend to agree with them.  It's just not a hot
topic on anyones plate at the moment.

I'm not going to hand a line to my CIO, I have to feel it is of value to
recommend it.  Show me the killer app, or the fact that the public internet is
going IPv6 big time, or that bluetooth is coming fast with IPv6.  I am very
encouraged to see future IO talking about IPv6, that may be what brings it into
the glass house if it becomes the predominate standard.  I applaud the work that
the IETF and ngtrans group are doing to ease transition from IPv4 to IPv6.

Roy Ford

From: Pete Loshin <[email-masked]> on 08/27/99 12:43 PM

To:   [email-masked]
cc:    (bcc: Roy Ford-RE-1/PGI)
Subject:  Re: AN interesting article. FYI... contd

At 11:05 AM 8/27/99 -0500, [email-masked] wrote:

>...The article may not
>be useful for technical implementation information (or accurate facts
>of any sort), but it does tell us a lot about what some common
>opposition to IPv6 will use as arguments.  As such, we should be
>aware of these arguments, and make sure we can get out the right message.
>We can dismiss it out of hand, or we can use it to help shape our own
>advocacy efforts...

So, IPv6 is a gratuitous upgrade, a plot on the part of competing vendors,
colluding with each other to scam customers?

If that kind of argument held water with executives, do you think Microsoft
would be on its way to becoming a trillion-dollar company? (Before you
flame me, Microsoft is certainly not the only offender with what some
people might consider to be gratuitous upgrades, just the most successful.)

How many new versions of Ethernet have we seen since IPv4 was rolled out?
I'd say that upgrading the link layer is far more intrusive than upgrading
the network layer, yet it's been done.

>    Imagine that some CIO has read this article and then asks you,
>"So, why should I buy into this whole IPv6 thing?  What about these
>infrasctructure costs?  What about the compatibility issues?"  How would you
>respond (other than just pointing out that the author hadn't a clue)?

I'd give the CIO a copy of my book, _IPv6 Clearly Explained_ (Morgan
Kaufmann, 1999). Then, I'd start throwing buzzwords around, like
"competitive advantage" and "value proposition" while I explain IPv6's
technical merits and the kinds of things you can do with that you just
can't do with IPv4.

BTW, re: CMP (now part of Miller Freeman), the article about deploying IPv6
that so many of the participants of this list helped me write this spring
for Data Communications (which will publish its last hard copy edition on
October 21) has not yet been published--and might not make it into print,
though I'm told it is supposed to make it into the last issue.

-pl
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From: TriniInXisle <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 14:23:39 -0400 (EDT)

How  to  i  remove  myself  from  this  list.

> though I'm told it is supposed to make it into the last issue.

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From: Jeff Williams <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 11:25:51 +0100

Roy and all,

  I have to agree with you here.  Many are not going to do the upgrade
when the can do most of what IPv6 provides on IPV4 networks now.
The justification just isn't there form a $$ standpoint at the very least.
But I also believe that they should also not look at it from that standpoint
alone either.

  I would also say, that we are upgrading to IPv6 but also providing IPv8
capability as well, but it will be s slow transition over about two years.
However for us, we will do our own tunneling for IPv4.  I am not satisfied
with the IETF's technique.  I believe ours is superior.

  I also find the currently IPv6 does not work and play well with ATM,
that is a big concern to us and many others I am sure.  Hence we have,
again we will be using the IPv4toIPv8 as IPv8 provides much better
for ATM's, and IPv8 will still carry any IPv6 traffic with no major problems..

> though I'm told it is supposed to make it into the last issue.

Regards,

--
Jeffrey A. Williams
Spokesman INEGroup (Over 95k members strong!)
CEO/DIR. Internet Network Eng/SR. Java/CORBA Development Eng.
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