----- Original Message ----
From: Andreas Fink afink@list.fink.org
well, the Docsis 3.0 CMTS hardware is quite expensive, if not saying dramatically expensive.
Then, the Docsis provisioning software is also quite expensive,
I guess you simply bought a dead end solution. Good hardware vendors supply IPv6 out of the box or at least with firmware upgrades. There's no reason to be expensive
I haven't bought anything, I just know the Docsis technology market. The provisioning software is generally not v6-ready, and the hardware generally needs expensive upgrade.
in DSL market, it's even worse: the Broadband Forum has not released yet any ipv6 related document...
Who cares what the broadband forum says. We're in a IP world. There's 100's of RFC's documenting IPv6. I personally run IPv6 natively over a SHDSL link and it just works. As SHDSL shares the same basic ATM structure underneath like ADSL, I don't see why anyone could NOT do IPv6 if he just tries hard enough. IPv6 is at the end not that different to IPv4. Even with PPP it should work as PPP encapsulates link frames, not IP packets so you can easily stuff IPv6 packets into PPP.
The fact that Andreas or Tonnere is able to configure ipv6 at home does not create a business case. Go look at your nearest Interdiscount or Fust shop -- how many of the consumer routers/firewalls/modems would support ipv6? How many of the shop salesmen would ever hear such word?
Who cares what the broadband forum says.
any ISP with more than few thousand xDSL customers does. You know, they are lazy enough to build something that does not have a standard supported by vendor majority.
Besides, even if they start offering v6 today, users will not buy it, because of that Interdiscount/Fust issue. Also most windows PCs and home servers would need some tuning for v6.
So, give it another 4-5 years, it's coming, but not as fast as you'd like it to :)
apart from that, yes, the engineers are usually lazy :-)
Its also a management issue. in USA IPv6 is not that common simply because everyone can get tons of IPv4 addresses too easy (at least in the past). But you gotta start sometime. And the time is now. Everyone supports IPv6 these day and personally I would not choose a BGP4 uplink which does NOT suport IPv6 (we actually have thrown a IPv4 provider out just recently and replace it with a IPv6 capable one).
it's purely an economy issue. Big ISPs will not invest into something that the end-users don't require on massive scale. Those home end-users who have no idea what BGP or PPP means. They just connect their computers into the wall sockets and expect them to work.