On Dec 9, 2011, at 4:38 PM, Deepak Jain wrote:
I can tell you that (as of Dec 2011) *lots and lots* of networks (big ones, even some of the biggest) are in no real position to support nearly universal customer IPv6 service yet. There are networks that have IPv6 "somewhere".. but even where we've been requesting IPv6 turned up alongside existing IPv4 sessions sometimes the turnaround is months and months with lots of repeated banging -- even where the gear and the uplinks support it.
I think you are working with the wrong carriers in that case perhaps? As part of a turn-up this year, IPv6 was a standard question, including the IP/BGP request form that had separate tabs for IPv6 and address space requests along-side the IPv4 BGP/space request. The cases were with Cogent and Abovenet for connections in the US. I know that NTT can also do IPv6 as well. I think that some of what you may be terming the big-guys such as at&t and verizon/uunet are still behind the curve but they are largely in the managed services and not internet space from what I can tell. Internet is a side thing they sell and not a primary line of business.
Some of this is that (esp internal) tools still aren't where they need to be. Some of this is that once we IPv6 becomes the "standard"... well, security and other concerns will challenge all the infrastructure in place.
I do agree that most tools seem to be IPv4 centric these days at least for management of the device (Eg: no SNMP over IPv6 only). You can do much of the monitoring over IPv6.
And this is all before you get into issues of inconsistent views of the IPv6 RIB, and the rest.
While this still exists, this is something that will resolve itself with increased adoption.
Just my opinion, hopefully someone else has a better experience.
My experience as well. - Jared