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Re: And Now for Something Completely Different (was Re: IPv6 news)

  • From: Joe Abley
  • Date: Sun Oct 16 18:05:22 2005 
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On 16-Oct-2005, at 16:20, [email protected] wrote:


On Sun, 16 Oct 2005 10:55:38 EDT, Joe Abley said:
Thought experiment: how many different software vendors need to
change their shipping IPv6 code in order for some new feature like
shim6 to be 80% deployed in the server and client communities of hosts?

I'm thinking it's probably less than 5, but I'd be interested to hear
opinions to the contrary.
Client end, if Microsoft, MacOS X, and the various Linuxoids shipped, you'd have
pretty good coverage. Maybe Solaris 11 if they're still relevant by then. A
few vendor Unixoids (AIX, Irix, etc), and proprietary systems (z/ OS), but those
vendors will either read the writing on the wall or fade away...
To get 80%, I think on the client side you just need support in Microsoft v6-capable operating systems.

Router end, probably same number - Cisco, Juniper, Linksys and a few other
SOHO-class vendors, plus a few I've overlooked.
I don't think you need any support at all on routers for shim6 to be functional for services that users and content providers care about.

On the server side, windows plus Solaris plus linux seems like it might give 80%.

So, that makes windows, Solaris and Linux.

Whether the answer is three, five or twelve, the point I was attempting to make was that it's not necessarily a huge deployment obstacle to roll out shim6 across a good proportion of the network's hosts from the coding point of view. Since no flag day is required, this does not seem necessarily unmanageable.

Of course, even if everybody shipped a *working* *interoperable* product today
(quit giggling - we're being hypothetical here), you'd still have a 3-5 year
timeframe before all the stuff sold yesterday and years previous got upgraded
or replaced.
Sure.

In some ways it's fortunate that Microsoft has yet to ship an operating system where v6 is turned on by default (right? I heard that Vista will be the first?)

On the server side there's the additional upgrade carrot that upgrades will facilitate multi-homing, which may make for an easier sale.

Anyway. Thought experiment.


Joe

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