North American Network Operators Group
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Re: hat tip to .gov hostmasters

  • From: Stephen Sprunk
  • Date: Mon Sep 22 13:51:01 2008
Kevin Oberman wrote:
Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2008 11:42:33 -0400
From: "Goltz, Jim (NIH/CIT) [E]" <[email protected]>
Remember, they've also "mandated" IPv6 support on all backbones.

Yes, and the goal, relatively insignificant that it was, was met. It was not a requirement that anyone actually use IPv6, only that the agency backbone networks be able to carry IPv6. In fact, the wording was such that doing proper routing was not even really needed.

Our backbone has offered IPv6 as a production service since 2002, so it was a non-effort for us. Most other agency backbones were pretty trivial to make "IPv6 capable".

The problem is that only the backbone currently needs IPv6. No facility network or end host needs it, No network service needs it. No IPv6 packets, even routing updates, need to be delivered in any useful way. It was a pretty trivial goal and was met with very little effort.

They mandated that all products, not just hardware, support IPv6. However, all that the requirement turned out to be, in practice, is that all products be "software upgradeable" to IPv6. My employer is still selling stuff by the truckload to the USG because the hardware itself is "IPv6 capable" (just like it's OSI or DECnet "capable"), but we haven't written a single line of IPv6 code yet because customers aren't actually demanding it and we have other, more profitable, things to spend developers' limited time on.

For vendors whose hardware needs to change for IPv4, like core routers, this is a big deal; for the rest of us, it was a non-event once we read the fine print.

S