Doug's Mailbag: Ready for IPv6?, Lingo Clarity
Here are some responses to Doug's question on what your shop is doing about Internet addresses:
A couple of years ago I attended an IPv6 class and learned some good information. They said it would take 10 years to transition to a full IPv6 world. Until that time we would be using both IPv4 and IPv6. I believe that IPv6 will happen when we have no other choice or a killer application is released. Of course the entire OSI model of equipment and software (NIC, router, firewall, DNS, OS, applications, etc.) needs to be IPv6 aware. I have played around with IPv6 even though we are still an IPv4 shop at this time. The path of least resistance is IPv4.
-Craig
This is exactly what happened with Y2K... Everyone and his uncle saw the Y2K problem coming as early as the 1980s, but people kept designing databases with 2-digit year codes because they were too damned lazy to do it right the first time. It wasn't until the late 1990s that anyone got serious, and millions more was spent that didn't need to be spent if they had only added those two bytes to the year fields of their databases in the first place.
Vendors are behind with IPv6 because the same reasons. They cannot justify spending product development money on products which nobody will buy and, until now, nobody was buying. Short sighted? Hell yes! Surprising? Not really. It's all about making money.
-Marc
We recently switched from a Novell shop to Windows 2008 R2 -- specifically to take advantage of DFS and replication. I found that if IPv6 is enabled, DFS will have problems. After working for three days with Microsoft support, it finally came up with the solution in KB929852 (option b) to solve the problem. Which in effect, turns off IPv6. Not good if you want to take advantage of the current features built into its OS that require IPv6. So if Microsoft can't get it right in its Server OS, what hope do we have until they do?
-Anonymous
A reader clues Doug in on the latest tech lingo:
"Am I stupid not knowing what 'pwn' or 'NPAPI' mean, or is Evans a moron for assuming that I do?"
Stupid? No. But since you're an online publisher of technical info, you should be well-versed on most Internet memes and 133tspeak.
Most people who read printed newspapers probably don't use 'pwn.' Â I'm sure that most Twitter users do. (See how I did that without calling anyone a dinosaur? )
NPAPI is more obscure, but that's why we have a Google toolbar to help us. (Back in my day, we had dictionaries printed on paper!)
BTW, Bng thinks that pwn is the Professional Women's Network. Google FTW!
And if you get desperate, you can always try Urban Dictionary.
-Todd
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Posted by Doug Barney on 05/23/2011 at 1:18 PM