Re: [v6ops] Thoughts about wider operational input

[Nick Buraglio <[e-mail]>]

Enterprise input is difficult. Building interest is even harder for several
reasons, but the most prevalent reason I have seen is that there is a
severe lack of business case for deployment of IPv6 that enterprises can
see in short order. The key here is the timeframe. Most of even the largest
of enterprises are completely fine with - and even strongly advocate for -
private address space plus NAT, which many have conflated with a
security tool rather than a translation mechanism. Many larger enterprises
still rely on PA address space, IPv6 multihoming is significantly more
difficult for the same reasons that NAT is easy. Many of these
organizations do not have the expertise or the time to put IPv6 on the
radar until it is absolutely required by a business driver. These are
slowly coming, but they're slow. The slow rollout is adding to the
apprehension and laissez faire (at best) and outright refusal (at worst)
approach to consider IPv6.  De-mystifying the complex pieces are a huge
part of moving this forward. Making things approachable, easily consumable,
and friendly have been cornerstones to the experiences I have had
successfully deploying IPv6. To get enterprises interested it needs to be
worth their time in the short term and have wide and *emphatic* vendor
support across the enterprise platforms and for the protocol to be treated
as a first class citizen on those platforms, otherwise it is often viewed
as change for the sake of change. They need to be able to sample it and
model it in a way that is comfortable to them.
I don't believe that this is really a technology problem at its core.
Until we can make it work the same as what is believed to be "normal", it's
going to be a slog. When a vendor is asked if product X works without
legacy IP (or even supports IPv6) 95% need to say "well, yes, of course it
does" - or better yet, we should not need to ask. We don't need to ask if
things support IPv4, it's implied. The industry needs to be closer to that
mark.
Do I know how to get there? Not really. At this point I just yell as loud
as I can about IPv6 support everywhere I go and try to educate people the
best I can.

nb

On Mon, Mar 21, 2022 at 3:33 PM Fred Baker <[e-mail]> wrote:

> I have thought some about the discussion we had in the V6ops meeting about
> increasing operational input. Several suggestions were made: add a separate
> meeting, segregate parts of the meeting, attend the IEPG, use an interim,
> and so on. One thought that I had was to schedule a meeting at RIPE in May.
>
> None of these address what seems to me to be a core problem: ISPs are
> deploying, but enterprise isn’t. How do we get enterprise on board?
>
> Sent using a machine that autocorrects in interesting ways...
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