IPv6 Transition to Cost US $75 Billion?

darthcamaro writes "There are alot of reasons why the US isn't moving as quickly as Japan and Europe in migrating to IPv6. One of those reasons is likely cost. An article on Internetnews.com cites an unreleased 'Dept. of Commerce report estimating it will take $25-$75 billion to pay for the transition.'"

That's nothing...

[Aqua OS X]

That's nothing.

With all the money we've saved from taxes well be able to... ohh wait, nevermind.

Outrageous

[Anonymous Coward]

Twenty-five to Seventy-five Billion! That's maddness! Why ... we'd have to cancel the war in Iraq for a month or two to pay for that!

K

Sounds Like BSA Estimate

[faqmaster]

Who did that estimate? The BSA?

And the contract goes to...

[PetoskeyGuy]

Haliburton's new IPv6 division.

Re:A LOT is TWO WORDS

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed; alot of people make that mistake.

Re:$25-$75 billion

[metternich]

$50 Billion here, $50 Billion there, pretty soon you're talking real money...

Umm...

[kadathseeker]

Just phase out IPv4. Have all new equipment/software include IPv6 by default. Time for "Best of Bash.org":

Some cool info: Tibeten monks, after twenty years or so of practise in the Himalaya, control their brain stem - they can control their heart beat, blood pressure etc.
After thirty years they can connect to the internet purely by meditation, setting TCP stacks in their neurons and stuff.
Right now I am chatting with a monk who is sitting naked in an ice storm on his towel, his only possesion.
He's using ipv6.

I blame Al Gore

[Daveznet]

This is all Al Gore's fault; he invited the internet. If it wasnt for him none of this would have happened.

Re:A LOT is TWO WORDS

[Anonymous Coward]

You suck... like.. alot.

Re:A LOT is TWO WORDS

[HTTP Error 403 403.9]

Dear Slashdot editors,

Please don't perpetuate the misconception that "alot" is an English word. It's TWO WORDS the first is "a" and the second is "lot".

Thanks, Concerned Slashdot reader

Your rite - their is many loosers that have pour grammer.

Re:$25-$75 billion

[Anonymous Coward]

This reminds me of China's ability to build its new Shanghai rail based on the magnetic levitation system, while other well-established rail-using nations like Singapore may find it difficult to switch. Talk about right place right time.

Yeah. That's true. Early adopters (those who have implemented railroads in the last 150 years) can often get burned by the fast pace of technological change. Sometimes getting your hands on early technology isn't worth the costs. It's hard to justify a measley 100 years of railroad use when they could have just waited for magnetic levitation systems.

To think my grandparents wasted all that money on a party-line telephone, when they could have saved their money and done VoIP.

Re:Wrong angle

[Headcase88]

And that closes the circle right back to silicon! Looks like the administration does care about electronics after all ;)

Is that all?

[Xaroth]

I mean, if they really think it can be done for that, I'd be willing to pony up the $25 myself.

Oh, wait.

Where's this cost coming from?

[jd]

• Windows Updates: Free. Microsoft Research already provides a stack which is (therefore) already paid for.
  
• Linux Updates: Well, you want the USAGI patches if you want top-of-the-line IPv6 support, but either way it's free.
  
• *BSD Updates: The KAME stack is already in there.
  
• Cisco Updates: Any reasonably recent version of IOS or PIX will have IPv6 as standard. Therefore it's already paid for, therefore it is free. If you've already got a support contract, updating the firmware should also be free.
  
• E-Mail Updates: Most e-mail clients (and servers) should already support IPv6
  
• Web Updates: Apache is about the only server that matters and that already supports IPv6. I believe all the major clients do, too
  
• Multiplayer Games: Probably the one area that doesn't have IPv6 as standard, but it should be possible to provide IPv4-over-IPv6 tunnels for those
  

As far as I can tell, the sum total cost for all of this uber-expensive upgrade would cost (in old English currency) about 2'/6, and would take the United States less time than it currently takes for Joe Average to reboot from a BSOD. For this reason, I would like to make the US Government and the various Internet providers a special deal. I will set up IPv6 for them, with full one-year warranty, for a mere $15 billion, paid in advance. If this sounds satisfactory, just mail me the keys to the server rooms and passwords for the servers and routers, and I'll get started.

Re:A LOT is TWO WORDS

[Anonymous Coward]

the number of people who care is alittle.

Re:A LOT is TWO WORDS

[zenneth]

Just an FYI, but I know someone who used "alot" in their masters' thesis at Belmont U. It's kind of ironic, really, because she always put forth a front of being a very literate individual. She advised a high-school student that "alot" was indeed a legitimate word and when that student's teacher marked the "word" out and corrected the mistake, said student was quite unhappy. She defended herself for her mistake, as well, by using her thesis as an example. Just struck me as funny when I read the parent's post.

New Orleans

[wheatwilliams]

Hmmn. $25-75 billion? We could completely storm-proof New Orleans for less than that.

Re:$25-$75 billion

[mctk]

(not that I claim to know what I'm talking about here, but it sounds right in theory at least)

Ahh, the old slashdot EULA.

Re:A LOT is TWO WORDS

[deafpluckin]

Link to John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory [penny-arcade.com].

Re:$25-$75 billion

[TedCheshireAcad]

7/10 people prefer to make estimates on things they know nothing about.

Re:$25-$75 billion

[Loconut1389]

more like: 3 to 10 people make estimates on things they know nothing about. :o)

Re:$25-$75 billion

[appleLaserWriter]

I would like to take this opportunity to announce that I am willing to move the US to IPv6 for $24 billion.

Re:What is the basis for the cost?

[g-san]

This actually goes back to a research project at DARPA last year. They had two networks, and IPv6 network and IPv4, and a team of network admins to work on each one. Turns out the IPv6 team was slower, because of the length of IPv6 addresses. Apparently it took that much longer to write down an IPv6 address, or read it off to someone over a phone, or key into a Blackberry. People thinking they could remember an IPv6 address while walking across the room also introduced several errors into the configuration on the IPv6 network. This would of course result in less work done per manhour and therefore increases the cost of a unit of work given the same amount of workers. A quote from an Admin on the IPv6 network:

"OMFG, for the last time, did you say two zero zero one colon dee five six see colon zero one one two colon five ef bee three colon nine zero zero zero colon colon one colon nine... cause I still can't ping it! Oh wait, typo! No, it's still not working... DAMN!"

Re:I blame Al Gore

[sharkey]

This is all Al Gore's fault; he invited the internet.

In all fairness, it seemed like a great party (with porn and online dating and Simpsons quotes and Natalie Portman naked and petrified), so you can't really blame the internet for accepting his invitation.

Re:$25-$75 billion

[jZnat]

Damn Mexicans and their cheap infrastructure upgrades...

Cost

[buss_error]

IPv6 Transition to Cost US $75 Billion?

Yeah, but only if you have four 6313's. If you have more than four, Cisco will want LOTS more money.

Re:$25-$75 billion

[rob_squared]

The other 4 are just bad at math.

what is going on over there?!?

[SethJohnson]

Actually, the current estimate on the war in Iraq is $350 billion.

Wait a minute! I thought this Iraq affair was part of the IPv6 migration plan. Cheaper gas, faster internet I was told.

Now that I've checked around on some websites, it looks like the current story is something about preventing torture and human rights abuses. Either that or implementing them abroad-- the photos and the text aren't matching up.

Anyway, the big obstacle seems to be these fundamentalist zTerm zealots kidnapping our telecom engineers and holding them hostage trying to block multimedia internet content and return us to tools like lynx and gopher.

Seth

Re:$25-$75 billion

[Sathias]

$50B difference is huge, this goes to show nobody knows what's going on.

Or maybe the $25B is the actual cost, and the $75B is if they out-source it to Halliburton contractors ;)

Re:$25-$75 billion

[Fred_A]

New new !
3Com hubs now IPv6 compatible !
Upgrade now !

Don't be left behind with your old crappy IPv4 hubs, our new hubs are ready for the Internet of the future !

Upgrade now for $99.95 !

(hum)

Yes, well, it would work with a lot of users)