On 28.02.2009, at 21:52, Martin Ebnoether wrote:
On the Sat, Feb 28, 2009 at 12:39:46PM +0100, Tonnerre Lombard blubbered:
Apple is gaining a lot of market share, and their products configure IPv6 all by themselves. Same goes for Windows Vista. Ok, for XP you have to install IPv6 support first, I think.
True, true. Though, there still are some Win 2000 and even older OS around.
Sure and there are some analogue TV around who can't watch HDTV. What do you do to those. The Industry of which Fust and Interdiscount etc live of have shown many times in history that they produce products of lifespans of 1-2 years. I'm sure some of you have betamax video recorders, HD-DVD players, Analogue TV's, Natel-C's etc out there which all can no longer be used. You can't have everything. But you can update your Win2000 box to run Linux (or WinXP or Vista if you have the patience). Win2000 is end of life, end of support by Microsoft. Its 9 years old by now. And I'm sure a 9 year old computer will have plenty of problems in today's Internet with highspeed video etc.
Besides, even if they start offering v6 today, users will not buy it, because of that Interdiscount/Fust issue. Also most windows PCs and home servers would need some tuning for v6.
Not true, see above.
What about all the plastic routers, firewalls and WLAN access points? And then, gameconsoles, mobile phones, PDAs, Squeezeboxes, etc?
Pure WLAN access points are ethernet bridge devices, they don't care about IPv4 or IPv6 except for their own configuration (which can stay on 192.168.x.x without a problem). Only if they do in addition NAT you get into trouble. On the other hand if you have native IPv6 on your ethernet, you don't need NAT anymore and all your NAT issues go away (why does MSN/Skype/ICQ filetransfer sometimes do not work behind NAT and sometimes it does? Why does my VoIP not work properly etc etc.)
Firewalls in any case have to deal with IPv6 if you like it or not but because you skip NAT, it becomes a lot simpler as it's simply a port blocker. You would be surprised how many of the "plastic boxes" support IPv6 today or can be made to support it with a simple software update. It might not be widely advertized yet.
Remember this discussion is about OFFERING IPv6. Not REQUIRING IPv6. IPv4 will stay here for quite some time but an upgrade path has to be established. This is a long term transition and the IPv6 standards have lots of things in them to allow a smooth transition. And the first steps are the backbones. Today all the good ones have IPv6 in the core. And if not, you can use IPv4/IPv6 tunnels. Mainstream operating systems all have IPv6 support built in. The access link is now the last hurdle. The standards are there. You just have to plan and execute.