Re: Looking for an IPv6 naysayer...

[Owen DeLong <owen () delong com>]

On Feb 9, 2011, at 3:16 PM, david raistrick wrote:

> On Wed, 9 Feb 2011, Owen DeLong wrote:
>
> > > > I don't feel sorry for them. We know that IPv6 is coming for how long?
> > > > 15years? 10year? 5years? Well if you only read the mainstream media you
> > >
> > > And at what point during that time did they have any vendor gear they could purchase that -would- support v6?   At 
> > > -best- during the last 5 years, but I'd put money on that even today they can't purchase gear with adequate v6 
> > > support.
> > This is largely the result of the fact that they did not demand it from their
> > vendors during that time.
>
>
> I was purchasing for and building small SP networks during that time.
>
> Requiring v6 of our vendors would have meant we just never got anything, so we'd have never provided service.   Come 
> to think if it, maybe it -would- have been better for everyone involved (except those of us who just got paychecks 
> and experience out of it) to just simply not do it - but we didn't know that at the time 15 years ago!
Requiring it delivered day one, sure. Putting in a requirement for "Will support" so that they are required to provide 
an upgrade path, OTOH, to me seemed like it was basic good business sense. It worked out pretty well for the 
organizations I was working for back then. We got upgradeable hardware and the vendors got awareness of the demand. 
Admittedly, I wasn't working in the last mile arena. However, pressuring vendors is possible without
sacrificing immediate needs.

> Vendor C and J don't provide gear that fits into all network topologies (WISPs, MTU DSL, and smallish ADSL roll outs 
> come to mind, certain during the time period in question.  Sure, they eventually bought products in those 
> markets...but even still, I had sub 6 figure budgets to build with - I certainly had no leverage).
I don't think that networks with sub-6-figure buildouts are the ones we're too worried about right now.
They can probably upgrade for sub-6-figure amounts.

Owen