
On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 4:40 PM, Patrick W. Gilmore <patrick@ianai.net> wrote:
Unfortunately, finger-pointing will not fix the problem.
Actually, finger-pointing is very helpful at this stage. I was able to change my local ISP's tune from "we have enough IPv4 addresses for our customers, so we aren't going to support IPv6" (ever) to "we will start employee beta testing soon." It ultimately took the threat of running an Op-Ed in the business section of the local paper to get them to realize they can't continue with their plan to offer no IPv6 support at all. With 800,000 SOHO CPE units deployed that have no IPv6 support and no remote firmware upgrade option on the horizon, I can understand why they hoped they could avoid ever supporting v6 -- it will cost them, literally, a hundred million dollars to fix their CPE situation and deploy native IPv6 if their CPE vendor can't provide a remote update. This is also why tunneled solutions are receiving so much effort and attention -- truck rolls and CPE replacement are huge expenses. If we don't start pointing fingers at these access networks, they won't "get it" until the pain of IPv4 depletion lands squarely on content networks who may eventually be unable to get any IPv4 addresses for their services, or who may be forced to buy transit from networks who have large, legacy IPv4 pools sitting around just to get a provider allocation. -- Jeff S Wheeler <jsw@inconcepts.biz> Sr Network Operator / Innovative Network Concepts