Andy Dills wrote:
Am I the only one that thinks IPv6 is a minimum of ten years out before you see actual non-geek demand?
It will probably happen before that. The Japanese government requirement that all businesses be fully ipv6 compliant before 2005 is certainly going to have a major impact on vendor ipv6 implementations, from the core to the desktop So while you may not get 30Mpps on your backbone router, you're probably not going to be stuck with a white elephant rate-limited to 200Kpps either. One day, you may even be able to run an ipv6-only desktop from vendor M, who knows?
From one perspective (and not necessarily the best, or even a remotely accurate one), all it's going to take is for Microsoft and a bunch of NAS & ADSL equipment vendors to implement stable ipv6 edge connectivity and to prefer AAAA over A records. Once this happens, there will be demand from customers by default, and this may create enough of a business case to justify more infrastructural spending on ipv6. This would help those providers who have a partial ipv6 deployment in their core, and may bootstrap the uptake process for those who haven't bothered looking at it yet.
I'm a bit more optimistic about its take-up these days, mainly because support from the desktop and the network edge is going to be the main driving factor, and because this is probably going to become much more widespread from now on. Nick