[arin-ppml] How hard is it to transition to IPv6?

[michael.dillon at bt.com]

>     I didn't get to reply to this earlier and only do so now 
> to make sure I am communicating clearly.  

You're not! Communication begins with listening and understanding.

> but I do feel very 
> strongly that the industry in general ignores the smaller 
> providers and I took your comments as continuing that 
> cavalier approach.

This is a gross misunderstanding on your part and you still
don't seem to get it. You have it 180 degrees backwards.

> > That is an ad hominem attack and is not allowed on the ARIN
> > policy discussion lists. You should be ashamed of yourself.
> >   
> Err, what?  This wasn't an attack of any sort and was much 
> cooler than 
> the initial reply I typed.  Perhaps the word negligent 
> doesn't mean the 
> same thing to you as it does to me, but that has an extremely 
> negative 
> connotation IMO.  When you use strong wording you will get a strong 
> response.

Making incorrect and innaccurate claims about a company's postion
is negligent. Just because a person happens to work for company X 
does not mean that a person's comments are the position of 
company X. I sign my name on all my posts to make it clear that
the message is MY OPINION. Reverse engineering mail headers and
making incorrect and unwarranted statements on the basis of a
domain name found there, is negligent to you. It just makes you
look stupid.

> > And read my email again, carefully this time. In effect, I told
> > the customers of all ISPs, not just one ISP, that they SHOULD
> > complain about their ISP supplier's negligence if that ISP 
> > supplier does not provide satisfactory timelines for IPv6 support.

> We are, have been, and will continue to do so but again the largest 
> challenges that ISPs face are the pieces that end users directly 
> control.  What I was trying to get across, and apparently 
> failing, was 
> that the Google example is not particularly applicable to ISPs, 
> especially small and medium ones.

Weasely words. It's still not clear to me that you get it.
I suggested that folks complain to suppliers and you called
me on the carpet for getting folks to complain to their customers
which is 180 degrees opposite from what I said.

And I so have many years of experienc in small business so I
know the resource constraints people are up against. But I also
know that small businesses have greater flexibility in changing
direction and moving quickly to sieze an opportunity. I remember
when I visited an ISP in a town of 80,000 in the mountains of
British Columbia and they showed me how they had built their own
terminal servers on Linux boxes with some 16-port serial cards.
They have a young college guy there who was hacking the Linux drivers
to make it do what they needed.

Moaning won't solve your problems. Tell vendors what you need
and if they won't give it to you, SWITCH VENDORS or build your
own. As a small company you have better chances of success by 
switching or building your own. Stop complaining about policies
and ARIN and the government and big companies because none of
that helps you to be ready for IPv6.

If you don't want to manage your company through the IPv6 transition
then either shut it down or sell it. There is no way to prevent
that transition from happening in the next couple of years.

--Michael Dillon