I guess that means vendor C has no excuse on the 7200 VXR series (and I believe a few of the newer models). But I still don't see anthing fantastically IPv6 happening there. Daryl G. Jurbala Introspect.net Consulting Tel: +1 215 825 8401 Fax: +1 508 526 8500 http://www.introspect.net <http://www.introspect.net/> PGP Key: http://www.introspect.net/pgp <http://www.introspect.net/pgp> -----Original Message----- From: stephen@sprunk.org [mailto:stephen@sprunk.org] Sent: Friday, June 13, 2003 12:48 AM To: eddy+public+spam@noc.everquick.net Cc: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: IPv6 [.....] Most L3 switches shipping today (e.g. the product in question) have particular ethertypes and destination address offsets hardcoded into their ASICs. It's not a matter of supporting 128-bit addresses -- they simply doesn't understand IPv6's header any more than they do DECnet or AppleTalk. While allocation policies may have an effect on how IPv6 FIBs are most efficiently stored, address length is a fairly small part of the problem when you're talking about redesigning every ASIC to handle both IPv4 and IPv6. [....]