[arin-discuss] Anyone play with IPv6 on the RV4000?

[michael.dillon at bt.com]

> 		There are two pragmatic choices - embrace 
> nested NAT technologoes over IPv4
> 	as the only cost effective way forward - OR - embrace 
> IPv6 as the most cost effective
> 	way forward.  The other vectors are research projects, 
> pipedream, nostalgia, or
> 	out-rigth delusional.

Right.
And marketing either of these is not the way to create demand.
But marketing consulting services which will analyze a company's
network and make reccomendations on a strategy to get through
the looming IPv4 crisis, is definitely a way forward which will
likely create demand for IPv6, assuming that most companies 
would be better off going with v6 rather than layered NAT.
Unfortunately, most ISPs do not see themselves in the consulting
business.

This reminds me of the European VPN Users Association
http://www.evua.org
which was quite successful at providing consulting services to a range 
of companies to help them analyze their VPN needs, write effective RFPs
for VPN service, demand effective terms in contracts, and choose the
technology
that was best for business, not just the latest trend. They helped many
companies navigate through the maze of frame relay, ATM, private
circuits,
IPSEC over Internet, and MPLS VPN services.

What we are missing at present, is an effective consultancy effort to
help end user companies through the IPv4 crisis. They are plenty of 
consultants offering IPv6 training or doing rah-rah promotional tours,
but as far as I know, none are offering the up front analysis needed
to decide if and when an end user company should invest in IPv6.

--Michael Dillon

P.S. I mention the EVUA because back in 2000 I helped win a Europe-wide
VPN
contract based largely on making sure that our IPSEC VPN service fitted
into
their model, SLAs, etc. Sadly, most of the company (Ebone/GTS) felt that
we knew better than the customer, and spent horrendous amounts of money
trying to make an SDH multipoint VPN solution based on an untested
startup
named Cosine. Ebone no longer exists and Cosine is only a shell having
sold
off all their intellectual property. It can be much easier to say that
the
customer comes first than it is to actually execute based on that
sentiment.