On 6/12/2003 at 13:14:30 -0400, Andy Dills said:

On Thu, 12 Jun 2003, Jared Mauch wrote:

...

I honestly see most of the backbone providers offering native IPv4 and IPv6 services in the next few years. Contact your provider as you can probally get in on any beta service offerings they currently have.

Am I the only one that thinks IPv6 is a minimum of ten years out before you see actual non-geek demand?

I don't know about timeframe, but I certainly don't see it soon.

Is IPv6 better than IPv4? Yes.

I'm not sure that is widely agreed on. Specifically, I am not sure there are many features of v6 that are wanted and haven't been ported back to v4.

Enough for it to motivate everybody to switch? Debateable.

Some of the new features in ipv6 have already been tried in other protocols... protocols that ipv4 has already replaced in the market. They won't be the adoption drivers people seem to think they are. v4 may not be as efficient as v6, but it is efficient enough, and until it cannot handle the apps the mainstream users need, the mainstream won't use it. Fortunately, unlike VHS vs Betamax, you can quietly include support for both in a single device with no or little excess cost, and, like cassettes vs CDs, you will be able to have one mass market for the good enough right now, and one smaller market for the -philes, and slowly shift from one to the other. First, though, you have to make ipv6 perform. ipv4 has been worked on by some very competent people for a long time; to pull out yet another comparison, like rotary vs piston engines, even if ipv6 is theoretically better than v4, the implementation and support have to catch up before the wide deployment can really get started. -Dave