* Gap between IPv6 technologists and implementers remains
For quite some time there has been a gap between the technologists shouting about the pressing need for IPv6 and the implementers who just don’t see it. That gap apparently still exists, and may be growing wider.
According to a recent survey, only 7% of IT decision makers see IPv6 as “very important” to their own goals. The survey was released by Juniper Networks, which not coincidentally sells IPv6 gear:
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2005/052405-ipv6-survey.html
On a more anecdotal level, user Chuck Yoke earlier this month wrote a column in Network World where he wondered aloud where all the IPv6 implementations are. He has written about the IP upgrade several times over the past few years, and he has gone from shunning IPv6 to slowly warming up to it. Still, though, he can’t help but notice that no one is doing it:
http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2005/050905yoke.html
Then there is last week’s Tech Update, in which Karl Siil, chief architect of Lumeta, presents the case for using at least the addressing improvements inherent in IPv6:
http://www.networkworld.com/news/tech/2005/051605techupdate.html
He also talks about the benefits and challenges surrounding the technology in this week’s Network World Radio interview:
http://www.networkworld.com/research/2005/0523radio.html
In this newsletter I have covered vendors’ implementations of IPv6 in Ethernet gear, implementations that have been rather modest in pace – a couple of announcements a year, perhaps. But they are getting there.
To the vast majority of users, however, the problems IPv6 fixes seem to remain forever in the future, or in some cases are being addressed in other ways. Will they come around? Or will it take an act of Congress (as the survey story implies) to bring them around? I’m guessing that it will.
What do you think? Drop me a line at mailto:jcaruso@nww.com
