2011-02-04

Why are people seeing this as something out of the blue?

I am in danger of this being called a VM hate site. It was bad enough being called a BT hate site once. Not the idea I assure you. I'm trying to tell it like it is, and giving a chance for replies too.

So, thanks to the comment from the man from VM. It does show they are working on it, which, to be frank, is better than a lot. I have had long discussions with ISPs that really had no idea at all that IPv4s were running out and that they themselves might run out soon, and that really is depressing.

What gets me is why this is seen as "out of the blue" so much. I know the forecasters for IPv4 depletion have varied in opinions from time to time, but not by a huge amount. Even so, as soon as there were forecasters counting down people should have been taking steps. The end may not have been nigh yet, a couple of years ago, but the fact there was going to be an end was clear. The fact we were going to have to support IPv6 was clear. So why just carry on as if nothing was happening?

Why wait until the end to start doing anything, or in some cases to think about starting to do something. That is what really gets me.

I can't understand why every DSL router manufacturer did not have IPv6 in last years models? That would have given them years to have planned it so not a rush. It would have been fine in there along with IPv4. Why ISPs were not offering IPv6 years ago (like we were), even if it was a bit geeky and not heavily used yet. A huge chance to get the kinks out of the system before things got more serious. Why has everyone dragged their heels.

Anyway, too late to worry about the past, we have to get the message home.

I am delighted to see someone asking VM for a fibre quote where native IPv6 is essential. More people do that and either plans for ISPs will get escalated, or we'll make lots of money :-)

5 comments:

  1. I am still amazed at network equipment vendors who have no IPv6 or at best IPv6 in 2012. What have they been doing? The usual excuse is that "nobody has asked for it" so where is their market research then, where is their forward looking product development?

    So just today a company lost out on a sizeable sale because they did not support IPv6 and they were "shocked that IPv6 was important".

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  2. They can't actually use "No one has asked for it" at least, if we were to be Pedantic. 2008 I moved away from VM to AA, because I spoke to VM about IPv6, and was told "there are no plans to implement it" at which point I phoned AA, and was told "yes, we can do that"... That is why I moved, so yes, VM (and probably others, too) have, are, and will continue to, lose business because they do not have IPv6 implemented in their network.

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  3. Larger ISP have whole call centres full of minimum wage drones to fend off questions like that.. they may truly believe nobody has asked for it, when the bloke in the call centre went 'ipvwhat?' and the conversation ended there.

    No need to single out VM.. BT Retail have a majority of DSL links in this country and don't seem to be saying anything about ipv6 yet.

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  4. I wonder if it started with the millennium bug... Technical people warned that there was a problem with two digit dates, and a big panic started. On the whole the problems were fixed, so there weren't a lot of computer failures over that New Year. Unfortunately, because the problems were fixed, people thought it was a non-event. They wondered if technical people had talked up the issues, to create lucrative work for themselves.

    IPv6 is a similar kind of issue. It involves spending money so that working systems continue to work, rather than spending money on something new that customers will see. I wonder if managers who spent money on the millennium bug now feel they were fast-talked by the engineers, and they are determined not to do the same thing with IPv6.

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  5. The frustrating thing is the actual router chips can support ipv6. They're the same ones used in China, after all. It's just the stupid firmwares which don't, and there's little hope of getting them all upgraded. If big ISPs had demanded IPv6 support two years ago, they would have had it - but as long as it wasn't on their 'must have' list, minimum bid manufacturers would never do the work to support it.

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