In message <201003261157.23601.lo...@pari.edu>, Lamar Owen writes: > 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 t > o > 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.
What percentage of your equipment already supports IPv6? Most 5 year old pieces of equipement already have IPv6 support. It just needs to be enabled. > No, we cannot afford to forklift upgrade now. IPv6 is *not* a "forklift upgrade". It's a parallel deployment that can be done incrementally one service at a time. The first step is to get the bits to you. > 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. Turning on IPv6 doesn't really affect the amount of bandwith you use. > Oh, and one other > thing: is our ISP supporting this IPv6 thing yet? No? You don't need your ISP to support IPv6 to turn on IPv6. You just need a IPv4 path to someone who does support IPv6. > Come back when they > do, and when you figure out how to do this with our existing equipment, or fi > nd > 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 serve > r > farm to something called vSphere 4. Says he can save us a couple of grand pe > r > month in power and cooling costs, and has a plan to use the savings to upgrad > e > 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 cape > x > 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. Most IPv4 only ISPs are already carrying IPv6 traffic. It's just encapsulated by one of the early deployment methods. > At the CxO level, it's all about the money. Or the lack therof. Turn on IPv6 should be a $0 cost. Fully supporting IPv6 on all the services you offer will have some cost. > 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 > -- Mark Andrews, ISC 1 Seymour St., Dundas Valley, NSW 2117, Australia PHONE: +61 2 9871 4742 INTERNET: ma...@isc.org
