The 600 ton elephant in the room is anyone could right now sit down and design and deploy some alternative to IPv4/IPv6 and from there begin writing down how they did it as a series of standards documents and encourage others to give it a try hoping for some snowball effect. You just float it on top of the current probably IP layer tho there are other possibilities, not too many (pick a layer.) What much of the muttering is about is people (who never do things like this) tend to be risk-averse and want someone or something on high to bless and nurture their efforts. That's what much of this discussion about some alternative to IPv6 comes down to, risk aversion, how do you know if you sat down and began working out an alternative you'd be rewarded for your efforts. You Don't! Imagine if Linus Torvalds sat waiting for the POSIX committees et al to take up his ideas for an alternative to Unix (TM). He'd still be waiting. Probably one of the worst problems with IPv6 is precisely the fact that groups of people managed to ride directly on the then rapid growth of IPv4 and turn out whatever a dozen or so strangers in windowless hotel rooms and some email lists could agree on, including all sorts of vested interests (e.g., router vendors and the big tech of the day.) Clearly it wasn't completely insidious, it all kind of works, it's just that there's been a lot of resistance to adoption hence a sense that something's wrong. The world is your oyster (TheWorld is mine :-)). P.S. One might want to keep in mind a quote often attributed to Bill Joy (one of the founders of Sun Microsystems, and a lot of other stuff), roughly: In order for a new technology to succeed it has to be ten times better than what it seeks to replace (i.e., to overcome incumbency and inertia.) -- -Barry Shein Software Tool & Die | bzs@TheWorld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: +1 617-STD-WRLD | 800-THE-WRLD The World: Since 1989 | A Public Information Utility | *oo*