In message <201003261157.23601.lowen@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: marka@isc.org