> > Think back to the days when the OSI protocols were > expected to be the > > next big thing > > No doubt the savvier members of the investment community will > remember those days, and the predictions of how much money > would be made/lost by those who did/didn't invest in OSI, and > will take that into account when they hear similar claims > (such as yours) about IPv6. > > I can see the marketing slogans now: "IPv6, the OSI of the > 21st Century!" In my analogy, IPv4 is the analog of OSI, and IPv6 is the analog of the 1990's Internet Protocol. In the 1990's people could see that the DECNET/IPX/Banyan/NetBIOS/LU6.2 was not workable in an internetworked world. It was clear that we needed a common-denominator protocol to interwork between them all. OSI and IP both targeted that space but OSI lagged behind in implementation of tools and protocols. The analysts missed this, and even believed that IP was lagging behind, because they did not take open-source deployments into account. In today's world, it is clear that IPv4 networks cannot grow beyond three years from now, but IPv6 networks can grow. There is no competitor to IPv6 other than the possibility of making IPv4 even more complex with triple and quadruple NAT or some other weird stuff. The market impacts of open source are now well known and carefully studied, so when someone says that Linksys has no home gateway boxes, a savvy investment analyst knows that they are leveraging Linux technology and since Linux fully supports IPv6, Linksys can ramp up production very quickly if they are motivated. This time we know that there is a tipping point about to happen and this time, the investment community knows a lot more about technology and how a technology shift can turn up-and-comers into buggy-whip manufacturers. Given the large percentage of VC funded businesses who tie their business growth to the Internet (and often to its growth), I fully expect them to start asking tough IPv6 questions before this year is out. --Michael Dillon _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf