6bone Routing [was RIPng & tunnels]

[bound@zk3.dec.com]

Geert,

I can renuber any link with stateless or DHCPv6 pretty easy.  I think
with OSPFv6 I can probably do it quite well with the LSPs using
link-local addresses instead of global addresses.  So for sure the
infrastructure of IPv6 will work well.  But that does not account for
many other things.

1.  I still don't have away to propogate my prefix from the ISP to my
backbone.

2.  If you read the PIER reqs its dependent on hosts changing lots of
stuff and routers to make renumbering pleasant.  I think it will take at
least 2 years for vendors to get smart and wake up to those changes and
get them in "real" products.

3.  I think customers want IPv6 RIGHT NOW and as far as they are
concerned the Internet has already melted down.  They are going to build
their Intranets with IPv6 if they can.  They would like to understand
how they will get the prefixes in their routers (for stateless) and
servers (for DHCPv6).  They don't want to depend on 1897 to build a real
IPv6 back-bone network.  I think a year is reasonable as it will take
them that long to get up to speed.  I will also tell you that there is a
bunch of unhappy users out there who have been given a load of garbage
about IPv6 from someone.  I have just connected with 3 large fortune 100
and International accounts as they wanted to talk to the engineer and me
directly.  They want IPv6 and they want it right now.  If they have to
they will replace existing equipment from people who don't support it.
This is what I predicted would happen and force the market 3 years ago.
I think its going to happen very quickly.

This is why we cannot treat the 6bone as the Mbone.  The Mbone is very
useful but I don't have customers asking me to put it into the very
heart of their network backbones.  For IPv6 I do.  Note Dynamic DNS
Updates is another one RIGHT NOW.  

To make matters better.  I am going to take the time to train at least
15 Tech Support folks who will each train 15 more and 15 more etc.  In
addition in the U.S. from Sept - Dec 1996 there will be an intensive
IPv6 set of Seminars across the U.S. in most major cities.  So by Jan 97
I think we will have a greater req for IPv6 in the market.  This way I
can stay home and do what I like which is engineering.

4. The last thing is the idea of renumbering.  Its a lot of up front
work for the customer.  Its like trying to get user requirements out of
them for an application.  They want to spend as little time with that as
possible.  

Even with IPv6 it just is not as easy as our mail makes it sound here or
on PIER.  With IPv4 I have been told they will not even bother and just
move to IPv6.  

/jim