On 18-jul-2005, at 18:31, Kuhtz, Christian wrote:

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If there is pressure to adopt IPv6 rapidly in a given region, and that given region also happens to drive broadband technology evolution, and North America ends up being dependent on cheap equipment primarily driven by overseas standards..

I don't see this. For instance, the need for non-ASCII characters in (for instance) Asian languages has pushed Unicode. Modern systems in NA are all capable of using Unicode. But do users in NA actually _use_ Unicode? ASCII works fine for them 99% of the time.

I don't disagree with that point at all. But what I was trying to say goes a little further and is basically the notion that you're likely to use gear that happens to speak Unicode because of other developments and while you may be fine using ASCII most of the time (given that it is a charset specifically developed to meet North American English needs some time ago), you may be receiving a parasitic benefit of it showing up elsewhere or everywhere else. It won't influence purchase decisions perhaps, you won't buy gear X because it doesn't do Unicode, but it may just show up as the defacto standard. Just like other charsets have made it into just about every current, modern operating system and application.. So, you'd adopt just because it's there and it's no worth fighting the current of being different. (GSM in North America is a similar example, I think :-) There are economic forces at work, that have very little to do with the suitability of technology for a specific locale, which may drive adoption of technology.

Same thing with IPv6. Windows and MacOS have had IPv6 on board for years. Doesn't mean people use it.

Yup. That is absolutely correct. But, if there are huge amounts of actions in a given market place, that's bound to spill over into a different market place because of global distribution of goods. Not because the other, different market asked for it, but just because it's more economical to make one set of gear that is a superset in the end.

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The key questions are

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When will who you want to talk to speak IPv6?

That's a key question when you've made up your mind to be one of the last to adopt IPv6.

Yes, and in terms of volume, that's where I see North America being right now.. We're on a track to be dead last (well, almost) on the path we are on right now (and have been for some years).

The real key question is: when will it start to make sense to use IPv6 for my own stuff, regardless of what the rest of the world does?

Not if you are fine with what you have, and believe in never change a running system because one doesn't believe it's prudent to keep up with technology...

In an enterprise environment the ease of never again having to think about how many hosts are going to end up in the same subnet alone may be quite compelling. But it only makes sense when you can turn off IPv4 in most of the network and proxy or translate communications to the outside.

Well, I'm not sure I would be so bold as to say it's an either or choice, but it would have to be for substantial islands of a corporation or other type of organization to make economic sense. Just like there's still antiquated computing gear (& software on it) hopping around happily all over the place, although isolated and put into a scenario where there are gateways or dain bramage impact on the rest of the world is otherwise limited, there will be IPv4 in islands long after IPv6 achieves world domination (which has yet to be seen). If there is a business case for IPv6, it is pandemic rather than epidemic for as far as my rather cloudy crystal ball will let me see... Best regards, Christian The information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential, proprietary, and/or privileged material. Any review, retransmission, dissemination or other use of, or taking of any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited. If you received this in error, please contact the sender and delete the material from all computers. 163