Successful strategies for IPV6 rollouts, really

Abstract

IPv4 address space is depleted. People who have been ignoring IPv6 for years need to start paying attention. It is real-and really important. IPv6 deployment projects seem to be revealing two successful patterns and one unsuccessful pattern. The unsuccessful pattern is to scream that the sky is falling and ask for permission to upgrade "everything." The lessons we have learned: 1. Proposals to convert everything sound crazy and get rejected. There is no obvious business value in making such a conversion at this time. 2. Work from the outside in. A load balancer that does IPv6-to-IPv4 translation will let you offer IPv6 to external customers now, gives you a "fast win" that will bolster future projects, and provides a throttle to control the pace of change. 3. Proposing a high-value reason (your "one thing") to use IPv6 is most likely to get management approval. There are no simple solutions, but there are simple explanations. Convert that "one thing" and keep repeating the value statement that got the project approved, so everyone understands why you are doing this. Your success here will lead other projects. For a long time IPv6 was safe to ignore as a "future requirement." Now that IPv4 address space is depleted, it is time to take this issue seriously. Yes, really. © 2011 ACM.