Cost of IPv6 for IT operations team

[Jens Link]

Andy Davidson <andy at nosignal.org> writes:

> Stage one - write v6 support requirements into RFP for equipment before
> you plan to turn it on.  

That should have started a couple of years ago. About a year ago I did
some IPv6 training for a customer. They just bought a very expensive
commercial cloud solution (BULLSHIT! I win.) with no IPv6 support. 

> Stage two - training, get a tunnel into the lab, make comfort with v6
> part of your technical appraisal for the technology teams, so that when
> it’s time to turn it on your team are familiar and will make fewer
> mistakes.

That would be fine. Especially as I'm getting payed for IPv6
trainings. But you first have to realize that you need IPv6, than you
need the people how want to do IPv6. And you need the management who is
willing to pay for training ("We hired you to to your job. You don't
need any more training. If you want to do it on your own time and with
your own money").

> Stage three - roll it out at your network edge, core & dns.  Yes this
> is a project which needs time management and planning and incurs cost.

Thats eays if you didn't skip 1 and 2.

> Stage four - utilise your new training and v6 capable edge to roll out
> NEW services dual-stack.  

Or v6 only.

> The incremental cost of adding v6 support to a NEW rollout when you
> have to do a bunch of work to roll out a service at all is therefore
> zero.  

Sure. But people out there don't see it this way. They still plan and
build IPv4 only. About 3 or 4 years ago I helped with setting up a large
network which was planned IPv6 only 2 or 3 years earlier. "IPv4 should
only be tunneled" was one of the thing written in the original concept. 
When I joined most of the admins couldn't spell IPv6 and everything was
IPv4 only.  One of the internal colleagues attended the Cisco CCNÜ
routing course at that time. They skipped IPv6 completely. Trainer: "You
only need IPv6 to get 100% in the test." :-(

Jens
-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Foelderichstr. 40   | 13595 Berlin, Germany           | +49-151-18721264 |
| http://blog.quux.de | jabber: jenslink at jabber.quux.de | ---------------  | 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------