On 10/06/2016 4:38 p.m., Mark Andrews wrote:
It would be nice to live in a world where that were the case. However, the
world we live in is run my bean counters, and the marketing department.
IPv6 is a huge project that is seen by them as an unnecessary expense.
Absolute BS. IPv6 has never needed to be a huge project for a ISP
compared to everything else a ISP does. It required some research
and ensuring that you bought compatible equipement and things fell
due for replacement. If you failed to do the research and therefore
needed to do everthing in a rush then it might seem like a huge
project.
Router-jockeys and purists often cite this. I've done it myself.
But there are a lot more moving parts in most service providers than
simply the ones and zeros.
Bandwidth Accounting, Billing, Provisioning systems in particular - and
the developers/maintainers of these who have little or no knowledge of
IPv6 and perhaps not a lot more than that of IPv4, except that it's more
easily human-read and digested?
This was very much my experience in more than one ISP job over recent
years - the network kit is more than capable, it's the bits around the
outside that need work.
Even if routing and switching kit was subject to lifecycle-replacement
every 5 years or so, software components that are in the background,
'just work' and suddenly are very black-boxy because the author has long
since left the organisation and noone left behind knows how to make it
IPv6ready... sometimes the forklift approach is what is left.
Sorry this is tangental to the thread's focus but every time I see this
particular argument trotted out I feel like it's overlooking the
obvious; lack of sufficient forethought 10 years ago turns into
significant piece of work today. A lesson? Yes, but hindsight is 20:20.
Mark.
