
Hiya folks, Why are your respective companies treating IPv6 turn ups as a sales matter instead of a standard technical change request like IP addresses or BGP? Sprint and Qwest, I know you're guilty. How many of the rest of you are making IPv6 installation harder for your customers than it needs to be? Regards, Bill Herrin -- William D. Herrin ................ herrin@dirtside.com bill@herrin.us 3005 Crane Dr. ...................... Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/> Falls Church, VA 22042-3004

On 11/18/2010 11:06, William Herrin wrote:
Hiya folks,
Why are your respective companies treating IPv6 turn ups as a sales matter instead of a standard technical change request like IP addresses or BGP? Sprint and Qwest, I know you're guilty. How many of the rest of you are making IPv6 installation harder for your customers than it needs to be?
My IPv6 dealings with Sprint have been purely technical from all aspects. If you were to ask about, say, Verizon; well, check the archives for my failed experience. =) ~Seth

Sprint keeps telling us they do not yet support IPv6. Is this not the case? -----Original Message----- From: Seth Mattinen [mailto:sethm@rollernet.us] Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2010 2:12 PM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Why is your company treating IPv6 turn ups as a sales matter? On 11/18/2010 11:06, William Herrin wrote:
Hiya folks,
Why are your respective companies treating IPv6 turn ups as a sales matter instead of a standard technical change request like IP addresses or BGP? Sprint and Qwest, I know you're guilty. How many of the rest of you are making IPv6 installation harder for your customers
than it needs to be?
My IPv6 dealings with Sprint have been purely technical from all aspects. If you were to ask about, say, Verizon; well, check the archives for my failed experience. =) ~Seth

On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 02:10:56PM -0800, Ryan Finnesey wrote:
Sprint keeps telling us they do not yet support IPv6.
http://www.sprintv6.net/sprintlink_ipv6_overview.html Best regards, Daniel -- CLUE-RIPE -- Jabber: dr@cluenet.de -- dr@IRCnet -- PGP: 0xA85C8AA0

On 11/18/2010 14:10, Ryan Finnesey wrote:
Sprint keeps telling us they do not yet support IPv6. Is this not the case?
I'd say that's not completely true. IPv6 is not available everywhere on the edge of 1239, but it is available. Contact your rep and place an SCA request for dual stack on your port so you are on the radar. ~Seth

On 11/18/10 11:12 AM, Seth Mattinen wrote:
My IPv6 dealings with Sprint have been purely technical from all aspects. If you were to ask about, say, Verizon; well, check the archives for my failed experience. =)
Not here. We've been on their tunneled AS6175 network for some time and now they're making us jump through sales hoops to get native AS1239 dual-stack. -- Jay Hennigan - CCIE #7880 - Network Engineering - jay@impulse.net Impulse Internet Service - http://www.impulse.net/ Your local telephone and internet company - 805 884-6323 - WB6RDV

We treat it as a technical request - a MAC of sorts. The only time we would treat it as a sales matter is when the customer requires technical assistance with their configuration or network design (different matter). Paul -----Original Message----- From: William Herrin [mailto:bill@herrin.us] Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2010 2:06 PM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Why is your company treating IPv6 turn ups as a sales matter? Hiya folks, Why are your respective companies treating IPv6 turn ups as a sales matter instead of a standard technical change request like IP addresses or BGP? Sprint and Qwest, I know you're guilty. How many of the rest of you are making IPv6 installation harder for your customers than it needs to be? Regards, Bill Herrin -- William D. Herrin ................ herrin@dirtside.com bill@herrin.us 3005 Crane Dr. ...................... Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/> Falls Church, VA 22042-3004

Not us... We're making it about as easy as possible. In many cases, we offer discounts for dual-stacking. Owen On Nov 18, 2010, at 11:06 AM, William Herrin wrote:
Hiya folks,
Why are your respective companies treating IPv6 turn ups as a sales matter instead of a standard technical change request like IP addresses or BGP? Sprint and Qwest, I know you're guilty. How many of the rest of you are making IPv6 installation harder for your customers than it needs to be?
Regards, Bill Herrin
-- William D. Herrin ................ herrin@dirtside.com bill@herrin.us 3005 Crane Dr. ...................... Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/> Falls Church, VA 22042-3004

Pricing hasn't been an issue when I've dealt with them. It's been more of a "Have your account manager issue the order so we can make the appropriate changes." which is just a business process and not unexpected. Only reason I don't have v6 on Qwest is that I'm connected to a Juniper and I didn't want to be moved to a Cisco to support it. When they support v6 to customers on the Juniper, I will have the paperwork done. Jack On 11/18/2010 1:06 PM, William Herrin wrote:
Hiya folks,
Why are your respective companies treating IPv6 turn ups as a sales matter instead of a standard technical change request like IP addresses or BGP? Sprint and Qwest, I know you're guilty. How many of the rest of you are making IPv6 installation harder for your customers than it needs to be?
Regards, Bill Herrin

-----Original Message----- From: William Herrin [mailto:bill@herrin.us] Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2010 2:06 PM
Why are your respective companies treating IPv6 turn ups as a sales matter instead of a standard technical change request like IP addresses or BGP? [WES] Because in most companies, sales owns the direct relationship with the customer, so when they ask about a new feature or service, they work with sales, and sales gets the right technical folks involved. A clarification that is probably important here: "a sales matter" != "extra charges for IPv6" at least at my employer, so if you believe that is why it's being referred to sales, I ask that you not jump to conclusions. Eventually, this is something that can be accomplished solely through a portal like any other technical change request, but short term, we wanted to focus on making our IPv6 availability as wide as possible and as soon as possible. That requires a bit more handholding, and sometimes a manual process here and there, which involves sales.
Sprint and Qwest, I know you're guilty. [WES] Bill, I know that you mean well and you're just trying to push IPv6 deployment, and sometimes a little public shame goes a long way, but in the future, before you call my company out in public with tenuous assertions like this, please at least try to reach out to me privately to address your perceived issue with the way Sprint is handling IPv6 rollout? It's not like I'm hard to find, even if it's a blast message to NANOG that looks like "Will someone with IPv6 clue at Sprint contact me?"
How many of the rest of you are making IPv6 installation harder for your customers than it needs to be? [WES] I guess that depends on who you talk to and their definition of hard. Obviously you feel that there's some problem, so feel free to provide details specific to Sprint off-list and I'll do my best to address them.
Wes George Token Sprint whipping boy and IPv6 mechanic http://www.sprintv6.net

On 11/18/2010 14:24, George, Wes E [NTK] wrote:>
[WES] Bill, I know that you mean well and you're just trying to push IPv6 deployment, and sometimes a little public shame goes a long way, but in the future, before you call my company out in public with tenuous assertions like this, please at least try to reach out to me privately to address your perceived issue with the way Sprint is handling IPv6 rollout? It's not like I'm hard to find, even if it's a blast message to NANOG that looks like "Will someone with IPv6 clue at Sprint contact me?"
Me, personally, I have had absolutely zero issues with Sprint and requesting IPv6. The process was extremely smooth and at no point did my rep or their support engineers ever tell me it was not available. There was an easy questionnaire I had to fill out, but that was it. ~Seth

On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 5:24 PM, George, Wes E [NTK] <Wesley.E.George@sprint.com> wrote:
Sprint and Qwest, I know you're guilty. [WES] Bill, I know that you mean well and you're just trying to push IPv6 deployment, and sometimes a little public shame goes a long way, but in the future, before you call my company out in public with tenuous assertions like this, please at least try to reach out to me privately to address your perceived issue with the way Sprint is handling IPv6 rollout? It's not like I'm hard to find, even if it's a blast message to NANOG that looks like "Will someone with IPv6 clue at Sprint contact me?"
Hi Wes, I apologize for singling you out. I brought the subject up after getting the same, what I thought decidedly odd response to my IPv6 turn up request from more than one upstream. My point was this: if IPv6 is the next Internet protocol then at some point in the very near future it is a -standard- component of -every- product you're paid for. Not a "new" feature customers may order. At worst it's like requesting IP addresses - an included component configurable with a tech support ticket. For those of you whose companies are not yet treating IPv6 as a -standard- service (at least where available), carefully consider why not. Also, bear in mind that as an end user, we know where to find the tech support system 'cause the lines break at 3 am and I have you on speed dial. We may not have talked to our sales rep in a year or more. In some cases (Verizon) I don't have the foggiest idea who my current account rep is. If I'm asked to sign papers (as some folks have reported for some carriers) that's enough of a barrier that I probably won't turn up IPv6 right now. It's not about the dollars. If it has to be signed, it has to be vetted by legal. Intentionally asking legal to closely examine my activities is a little like going to the doctor -- necessary and often helpful but sometimes the prescription is a rectal exam. Don't get me wrong. I'd love to hear from my account rep about how you're ready to turn up IPv6 on my line at my convenience and oh by the way check out our wonderful new products for sale. But when I have to track the rep down and treat IPv6 as a new product rather than a configuration change, that's a hassle which leaves me with a negative feelings about your company. Regards, Bill Herrin -- William D. Herrin ................ herrin@dirtside.com bill@herrin.us 3005 Crane Dr. ...................... Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/> Falls Church, VA 22042-3004

My point was this: if IPv6 is the next Internet protocol then at some point in the very near future it is a -standard- component of -every- product you're paid for. Not a "new" feature customers may order. At worst it's like requesting IP addresses - an included component configurable with a tech support ticket.
Exactly. Actually, I would go one step farther, if you don't have native v6 as a standard feature, you aren't offering "Tier 1" (whatever that is) internet access and are offering only a subset of the Internet. There really isn't an excuse for the major providers not to be ubiquitous v6 native at this point. I agree, v6 should be "standard internet", not anything special or premium. In fact, customers should be demanding discounts for v4 only service. It just isn't worth paying good money for substandard capability.

On 11/18/10 2:24 PM, George, Wes E [NTK] wrote:
[WES] Because in most companies, sales owns the direct relationship with the customer, so when they ask about a new feature or service, they work with sales, and sales gets the right technical folks involved. A clarification that is probably important here: "a sales matter" != "extra charges for IPv6" at least at my employer,...
And therein lies the problem. By punting technical provisioning tasks to sales, if it is != "extra charges", you're virtually guaranteeing that the sales people won't put any effort into making it happen. Salespeople are driven by commissions (carrot) and quotas (stick). When salespeople have to divide their time between tasks that don't contribute to commission or quota and those that do, guess which gets done first and which last. I'm not pointing fingers at Sprint or Wes. This is a generic problem. We've been guilty of it too from time to time. If it's a matter of data entry or filling out a form, have a secretary do it or make the form available online. -- Jay Hennigan - CCIE #7880 - Network Engineering - jay@impulse.net Impulse Internet Service - http://www.impulse.net/ Your local telephone and internet company - 805 884-6323 - WB6RDV

"George, Wes E [NTK]" <Wesley.E.George@sprint.com> writes:
Sprint and Qwest, I know you're guilty.
Bill, I know that you mean well and you're just trying to push IPv6 deployment, and sometimes a little public shame goes a long way, but in the future, before you call my company out in public with tenuous assertions like this, please at least try to reach out to me privately to address your perceived issue with the way Sprint is handling IPv6 rollout? It's not like I'm hard to find, even if it's a blast message to NANOG that looks like "Will someone with IPv6 clue at Sprint contact me?"
I totally sympathize with the "please don't bash us in public" sentiment, but "holler on NANOG" does not scale. If the intent is to be selling IPv6 to the great unwashed masses (a laudable goal if you want to continue to grow post-v4-runout), it's got to be no more difficult than getting IPv4. Needs to be productized in such a way that the default case is that you get both, and if you don't turn on the v6, well, shame on you. -r

:-> "William" == William Herrin <bill@herrin.us> writes: > Hiya folks, > Why are your respective companies treating IPv6 turn ups as a sales > matter instead of a standard technical change request like IP > addresses or BGP? Sprint and Qwest, I know you're guilty. How many of > the rest of you are making IPv6 installation harder for your customers > than it needs to be? For us, SLAs are not guaranteed for IPv6 yet, hence we want customers to acknowledge that. This is bound to change sometime in the near future of course. Pf -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pierfrancesco Caci | Network & System Administrator - INOC-DBA: 6762*PFC p.caci@seabone.net | Telecom Italia Sparkle - http://etabeta.noc.seabone.net/
participants (12)
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Daniel Roesen
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George Bonser
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George, Wes E [NTK]
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Jack Bates
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Jay Hennigan
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Owen DeLong
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Paul Stewart
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Pierfrancesco Caci
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Robert E. Seastrom
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Ryan Finnesey
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Seth Mattinen
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William Herrin