Question about the future

[JohnRankin@aol.com]

In a message dated 6/14/2000 5:13:08 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
psb@ast.cam.ac.uk writes:

> On Wed, 14 Jun 2000, Aaron Angel wrote:
>  
>  > For the 'record', I'd like to point out he mislead no one.  He stated
>  > quite
>  > clearly in the first sentect he was a director of delevelopment for one 
of
>  > the TCP/IP stacks for IBM mainframes; he did not say he was directly from
>  > IBM.
>  > 
>  > -- 
>  > Aaron Angel <aangel@haknich.ugc.net>
>  
>  On the contrary, he mislead many of us by very poor use of language. The
>  most misleading part was, he should have asked IBM first before this
>  mailing list; the wording implied very strongly, and now we know
>  incorrectly, that IBM weren't yet developing IPv6.  And I think we might
>  be forgiven for assuming that the `director of development for one of the
>  TCP/IP stacks for IBM mainframes' probably did work for IBM.
>  
>  Peter.

Peter,

    I am so tempted to wade in on this attach against my credentials, but I 
would like to ask that the 6bone group, please refocus on my original 
question.

    I am trying to determine how effected the VSE Mainframe community would 
be by the indroduction of IP Version 6.  Yes, clearly IBM itself has plans 
for VM and OS/390.  But the VSE community is depending upon Connectivity 
Systems, and I am looking for some serious answers from a group that should 
know.

1. What types of devices will be ipv6 only?  
2. If ipv4 tunnels will exist for some time, then how limiting do you think 
they will grow?
3. What things are you hearing from your users? 
4. Is the issue of ipv6 still just in development labs, or are there real 
world customers asking about this support?
5. When we add support for ipv6 to VSE, how soon will it be a real 
requirement? 1 year, 2 years, more?
6. Those of you that have implemented the new layer, how stable are you 
finding things?
7. I see that Microsoft has provided support for ipv6 in Windows 2000, but 
why haven't they simply included it into the operating system? Are there that 
many issues that are causing changes, or is it that its difficult for end 
users to administer?

These are the types of questions I'm looking for answers about.

Please forgive me for being late in the game.  But that does not mean we are 
not a serious development house, with serious concerns.

John Rankin
Director of Development
Connectivity Systems Inc.
(NOT IBM)