[ppml] those pesky users...

[Johnson, Ron]

>>Quoting Sean Reifschneider <jafo at tummy.com>:


>> I've contacted my upstreams, and one is expecting to add IPv6 within
the
>> next year.  The other one is checking with their network engineers,
and has
>> been for days and days, so I'm not optimistic that they're right on
top of
>> it.  ;-)


> Yea.  I contacted one of my upstreams 2 years ago about routing IPv6  
> and they said they'd get back to me  in a few days.  I guess a "few"  
> days is about 700.

> Aaron


Ok, I am going to put on my smarty pants... 
Since the release of RFC-1918 and CIDR, the pressure on address space
has decreased significantly. 
For the most part we are able to live within our means. 
We make our downstreams justify address requests, we press for 1918 use
with NAT when ever possible,
and we recycle disconnected customer blocks regularly. 

As a mid-sized ISP, we just don't feel the drive to change our entire
address scheme for no good
reason. My management certainly does not want large scale disruptions in
service to perform what is
seen as unnecessary renumbering. 
 
If ARIN were in fact offering an exchange program where we would receive
vastly increased sized IPv6 allocations
for a greatly reduced fee over the IPv4 blocks. A case could be made on
the economics of changing 
to v6. Otherwise, the folks that actually run our businesses that we
work in, (Well some of us anyways) have no 
justification to act upon this whole new fangled IP address scheme.
Remember, that people making the business 
decisions for the most part do not understand the technical, so
technical arguments for network modifications
requires an economic reason. 

Right now, the conversion with management over IPv6 goes like this: 
ENG: Hey, err, we are considering renumbering the backbone to support
IPv6.
MGT: Why?
ENG: Because IPv4 is going to run out, and we need to be ready for the
future.
MGT: When exactly is this drop dead date of address space running out?
ENG: Well, sometime soon, perhaps in the next 5 years.
MGT: What does this entail?
ENG: Renumbering all the backbone IP addresses, training all the
operations and support staff to understand the new IP scheme. A number
of change windows, a allocation fee from ARIN, a audit to ensure all
devices support the new Scheme... Etc...
MGT: Come back in four years.


Ron Johnson
New Edge Networks.