On 27/10/09?10:42?-0400, Scott Berkman wrote:
It hasn't been introduced into most product lines for the same reason any other feature hasn't been implemented in a vendor's system - lack of financial motivation. These guys build for their biggest (volume and $$) customers and their needs, so obviously companies like Acme, BroadSoft, Sonus, Polycom, Aastra, Adtran, etc are simply not seeing a business need to take the time to develop IPv6 into their products yet.
As I've mentioned before, Acme has support for IPv6 in at least one of their products. Freeswitch is another good option. If a vendor is not producing IPv6 enabled equipment today, then it's operating under a shaky business plan. I understand the argument that a vendor must see financial justification before IPv6 enabling its equipment, but it must also anticipate future demand. As is the case for much of the industry, *someone* has good IPv6 support for any piece of the network you wish to deploy - even Cisco (I'm not sure where the idea came from that they have poor support). You don't need to dump all your equipment today, and go out and purchase new equipment that's IPv6 enabled. You still have time to replace equipment during your normal equipment replacement cycles and probably be in good shape. Where I'd recommend focusing your attention is on the access side of your network and your CPEs, which tend to have the longest life cycles, and which would be the most expensive to replace (at least for us). As you introduce IPv6 enabled equipment in your network, dual stack it and you'll be future proofing (at layer-3) that portion of your network. -- Dan White