On Sun, 16 Oct 2005 10:55:38 EDT, Joe Abley said:
Thought experiment: how many different software vendors need to change their shipping IPv6 code in order for some new feature like shim6 to be 80% deployed in the server and client communities of hosts?
I'm thinking it's probably less than 5, but I'd be interested to hear opinions to the contrary.
Client end, if Microsoft, MacOS X, and the various Linuxoids shipped, you'd have pretty good coverage. Maybe Solaris 11 if they're still relevant by then. A few vendor Unixoids (AIX, Irix, etc), and proprietary systems (z/OS), but those vendors will either read the writing on the wall or fade away... Router end, probably same number - Cisco, Juniper, Linksys and a few other SOHO-class vendors, plus a few I've overlooked. The number is certainly more than 5, very likely close to 1 dozen, unlikely to be more than 2 dozen. Of course, even if everybody shipped a *working* *interoperable* product today (quit giggling - we're being hypothetical here), you'd still have a 3-5 year timeframe before all the stuff sold yesterday and years previous got upgraded or replaced.