FW: Question about the future (of mainframes?)

[James Saker Jr.]

John -- Are these things still alive out there? I thought they tore the last
ones out before Y2K! (kidding)

Actually, I'd have to guess some of your customers are telecom companies
that use the systems for billing applications. One of the primary drivers
for us with reference to IPv6 has been the ability of our operational
support systems (OSS) to be able to interact, manage, mediate and track the
anticipated large base of IPv6 devices. 3G mobile devices (phones, pdas,
pagers, etc.), for example, will be difficult to manage at best without the
back-end OSS infrastructure to support it.

Understanding how data intensive telecom mediation and billing can be, I'd
have to expect that some of your customers are in our category. If they're
not asking you for IPv6 support which will be mandatory for these OSS
systems, I'd be finding out why. I'd have to expect that the absence of any
interest is more a reflection of a replacement approach rather than
disinterest in the protocol.

JRS

James R. Saker Jr.
jsaker@pensat.com



On Mon, 12 Jun 2000 JohnRankin@aol.com wrote:

> Hello everyone,
> 
>     I am the director of development for one of the IBM Mainframe TCP/IP 
> stacks.  Up to this point we have not implemented IP version 6, and none
of 
> our customers have even asked us for this support.  I guess, I'm wondering
if 
> this support will still be necessary.  So I thought I would solicit
opinions.
> 
> John Rankin
>