I hope it’s not too late to comment on this. So first of all, please don’t let the nay-sayers discourage you, this is a great site that I look forward to reading at the end of every week. Please keep up the great posts.

So let’s take these one at a time:
1) Stick with limited IPv6 deployments or don’t deploy – Consider joining us on the IPv6 Hackers mailing list where Marc Heuse (the quoted source of the article) hangs out here:
http://lists.si6networks.com/listinfo/ipv6hackers/
On this list we have been discussing this article. In a nutshell, Marc was somewhat misquoted, I know – shock right! Also, Marc is frustrated with vendors like Microsoft who have dragged their feet to patch vulnerabilities. He doesn’t really believe that we shouldn’t deploy IPv6. However I agree that articles like this aren’t helping. However, I think hard core security researchers believe security is more important than anything else. Even though they implicitly acknowledge that by not deploying IPv6 we are disincentivizing vendors to patch IPv6 because of lack of use. I think Owen DeLong calls this the IPv6 death spiral.

2) Business case for IPv6 is not interesting/no short term benefits – common objection. However, I think you would agree that this isn’t true. First of all LTE is coming out in a big way and this fall Apple’s iOS 6 and Android 4.0+ (already out) devices will be growing fast. As you know, LTE is IPv6 so this will start bringing a lot more IPv6 traffic on the Internet. I like to ask businesses – so, when your users start using IPv6 on their LTE mobile devices how will it impact their use of your network services? I often get blank looks of disbelief. Really? You mean IPv6 is real? Dooh!!! In addition to business continutiy – how many of your users will be understanding if they can’t get to something on the Internet because you didn’t deploy IPv6? The especially crucial reason for businesses to start deploying IPv6 now though is cost avoidance. If you start now and figure out what needs to be upgraded you can plan for it and do it as part of your standard refresh cycle. If you don’t you’ll be forced into rip and replace later. Right now too, the usage of IPv6 on the Internet backbone isn’t huge bit it’s growing at a 2-3x rate per year so we don’t have long to start rolling it out. Businesses that wait will be scrambling to deploy at much greater cost. Finally as is repeatedly pointed out to me you will discover key applications that don’t and “won’t” support IPv6. I say that’s awesome! This always surprises the nay sayer. I say to them, go back to the vendor and say you expect IPv6 support. If they won’t offer it then demand a discount. Use it as leverage to get a better price. Isn’t this obvious? If you start now you can deploy IPv6 without spending a lot. However, the longer a business waits, the more the costs increase.

–Jim

I hope you are right Zomgondo, that we can replace the NATs with proper firewalls. And yes, there will be more articles on various levels, from beginner to expert, from techie to manager levels. Trying to provide a bit of inspiration for everyone