A pair of top cable engineers--Jay Rolls, senior vice president of technology for Cox Communications and Kevin McElearney, senior vice president of network engineering for Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA)--see the move from IPv4 to IPv6 as a challenge that can be overcome. But not without some bumps along the way.
"The interesting thing about the v6 transition is that we can do all we want to prepare for that but it's really an entire ecosystem. There's a lot of interdependence between the operators and the other people offering services on the Internet ... and there will be some bumps on the road; we foresee that for sure," said Rolls, speaking as part of a webcast introducing Cisco's upgraded line of ASR 9000 service routers.
McElearney even took issue with the thought that the industry is transitioning to IPv6.
"We're merging the infrastructure into it. "It's not just how we're going to reclaim IPv4 space and re-use it; it's getting the Internet ready as a whole for it so we can run next-generation services for the explosion of devices that are out there," he said.
Comcast, McElearney added, is ready for the move.
"The core has been ready for some amount of time right down to running trials to home users with dual stack v6 capability," he said. "We feel we're prepared pretty well."
For more:
- listen to the webcast
Special Report: Six faces of IPv6
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