On Wed, 2009-02-18 at 16:45 -0600, Stephen Sprunk wrote: > I bet the latter is why the US DoD gave up on their hard IPv6 > requirements and now simply mandates that products be "software > upgradeable" to support IPv6... I think you will agree that vendor support for IPv6 has come a long way in the past few years. Even Force10 is shipping v6 capable hardware! ;)
The price of software licenses for v6 (when required) is now a figure we think about when proposing new equipment. Even customers who do not have a v6 strategy are at least conscious of the fact that they will need it eventually, and may rather pay a little more for a box that includes the feature now, than spend more on a license that includes things they don't need later on. I think, for example, that Juniper is making a mistake by rolling v6 capability into a license that also includes BGP and ISIS on some platforms. Cisco is guilty of this as well. I am not necessarily advocating that v6 must be a basic feature on every new box; but I don't think it is correct to force customers to buy a license that includes a lot of other bells and whistles just to get v6. It could be a separate cost. - j
