--On tirsdag, juni 17, 2003 11:52:45 +0100 Tim Chown <tjc(_at_)ecs(_dot_)soton(_dot_)ac(_dot_)uk>
wrote:
Fair point. But a year ago we didn't have Abilene, GEANT or a large
number of European NRENs offering a native IPv6 service. Cisco and
Juniper's support has come on in leaps and bounds, and now we do see US
and European real deployment, overlaid on the production IPv4 network,
and we see dual-stack transatlantic links. On the coal face, we can see
real progress.
A year ago we didn't have official IPv6 support in Windows XP. We didn't
have prototypes from Sony and Panasnic being shown publicly. We didn't
have a pilot IPv6 deployment project from Microsoft (threedegrees).
Things are moving on. Sure, we'll get hype from the marketing people,
but that's what they're paid to produce :)
And noone's forcing IPv6 on anybody. If you want to keep running IPv4,
with or without NAT, feel free.
I actually think the last point is important.
I run IPv6 on some of my boxes now - the only part that gives me a headache
is when someone else is running an IPv6 service that is less reliable than
their IPv4 service. Experience breeds confidence.
(and my ISP doesn't know or care that I'm doing it. So much for relying on
the ISPs....)
The difference I see between GOSIP and the US DoD announcement is that
GOSIP was an attempt to bring something into existence by buying it; the US
DoD IPv6 announcement says that they have evaluated something that exists,
and found it useful enough to require it to be present "everywhere".
And I find that a *huge* difference.