Thanks for sharing. I think your/our circumstances are shared by many folks who have a network to run, budgets to stck to, and technology to adopt. Not everyone has a massive core network with 10s of thousands of downstream clients.
A few years ago I attended a SIGCOM mtg and was on a pannel talking about IPv6. One of the pannelests was XingLi of CERN, who presented their v4/v6 translator code that supports over 400,000 chinese academics on native IPv6 - the IPv4 was relegated to the translator box and the DNS. I run the code at my home (we have been native IPv6 only for about 3 years now) on old hard ware (a 386 with 2...@100m nics) and it is rock solid. We have runs demos at ARIN mtgs, and I2/Joint Techs workshops for a few years as well. The IETF is grappling with the same issues, wiht multiple alternatives being discussed. Another technique, based on slightly different design criteria can be had from ISC (your favorite DNS and DHCP code supplier). Their product is called AFTR. For really high end stuff, my friend Charlie has developed a box that will translate for 100k/10m nodes or so - truely a carrier-grade box. Both IVI and (perhaps) AFTR will give you the ability to move small (100-1000) networks to a native IPv6, with a thin IPv4 veneer on the perimeter. So it is possible to decompose the problem into small, bite-sized chunks and not have to worry about your upstream leading the say. You can use old kit and not have to deploy lots of new gear. So it might be worthwhile to consider this from a "grass-roots" perspective. Another PoV to consider. --bill
