Patrick W.Gilmore wrote: The point still stands - without real multi-homing so I do not have to be dependent upon a single vendor, IPv6 is simply not an option. Quick Meta-Question: Why was was this even considered when v6 was being engineered?

Yes, although the magnitude of the problem has been way underestimated. Most people did not understand that it had to be built and validated both in the core of the protocol and in policies; collectively they promised to fix the problem "next year" and never delivered. Same as easy renumbering, WRT to multihoming IPv6 has run on vaporware for years.

Are the people who started the v6 movement really that out-of-touch with reality?

Some are, and some are not. Generally speaking, too many people had little experience with network operations, some had experience with little relevance to the real world with sheltered networks such as research. This is a generic structural issue though, same as hunger in the world and spam: no silver bullet. Retrospectively speaking, I'm not even sure less people out-of-touch with reality in the initial phases would have changed much.

Or were they arrogant enough to believe they could limit control to a few entities and the user base would just go along with it?

To a large extent, no. Although it is true that a few people from large operators did see early on the advantages of "lock-in" addressing, the fact of the matter is that a small routing table had the favors of lots of people. 10 years ago, the big picture of the Internet was quite different than it is today and the renumbering issues were not nearly as complex as they are today. Michel.