On killing IPv6 transition mechanisms

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

Benedikt Stockebrand wrote:
> Hi Gert and list,
> 
> 
>> These enterprises are the ones that will be in for a nasty surprise
>> when they roll out Win7 or Server2008R2, and all of a sudden they have
>> uncontrolled IPv6 all over the place.  So it's quite important that they
>> understand what is coming up, and get prepared.
> 
> Right.  But what could they have done so far?  With Vista being
> generally considered unfit for enterprise use, 

Vista's downfall was that it did not have that good
application support for old XP apps - some would run, some wouldn't -
and too late Microsoft realized the importance of a 128MB 3D
card and 4GB of ram for decent performance, and did not adequately
communicate that to the OEM PC makers.

Enterprises that attempted Vista rollouts on P4's with 1GB and
slow graphics cards got burned and spread a lot of lies around.

But many enterprises did not have any of the problematical XP
apps, and deployed Vista by buying brand new business-class desktops
that DID have the requisite hardware, and THEY had no problem.

You just didn't hear about their stories in the PC ragazines since it 
didn't make for good press.  But admins that did their homework found
the popular press was sensationalizing the issue and went ahead and
deployed.

Windows 7 is really just Vista with the "Win 7 Service Pack" applied.
The entire Win 7 launch was a huge marketing campaign, fundamentally
there is no difference between Vista and Win 7 except for the XP
compatability box, which took care of enough of the older problematical
XP apps that MS can now afford to ignore the remaining troublemakers.

The notion that no enterprises deployed Vista is a myth that is being
helped along by MS since they want everyone to pay them more money
for Win 7 upgrades on their Vista desktops.

> they have been stuck
> with XP until Win7 was released.  Using IPv6 with XP is infeasible
> at least at a larger scale, so they were effectively stuck with IPv4,
> too.
> 
> Now that Win7 is available they have to get all the software they use
> to work with Win7,

Something that the XP compatibility in win7 makes really easy now.

> and possibly even get it certified one way or
> another,

  Large enterprises have the money club that makes this happen really fast

  before they can move on to Win7---and they have to do so
> before Microsoft stops providing security fixes for XP.  That's their
> primary concern.
>

excuses, excuses.  There's no reason most enterprises couldn't have 
deployed IPv6 once Vista came out other than sheer mental inertia.
Only the ones with stale apps that they would have to sit on the
vendor to update might have had an excuse, and by the time the first
Vista SP came out they could have gotten it done.


Ted