Commercial opportunity for Netgate - IPv6
-
I've been thinking about this over the past 24 hours given my blunt response to some of negate's positioning on IPv6. I can also appreciate negate's frustration with the way each ISP implements IPv6 and how does netgate deal with that, given that netgate feels it is implementing it in a pure sense to the letter of the law of the IPv6 framework.
Which got me thinking. The IPv6 thread in this forum is only going to increase in people traffic over the next 12 to 24 months given that there is a significant ramp up globally in implementing IPv6.
So... here is a potential win / win for netgate. Why not productise a special IPv6 configuration offering where by you charge $x to help a customer get IPv6 working.
Buying technical support for one year isn't the answer and will be out of most people's budget.
So why not consider doing a consulting model for IPv6 whereby there are a number of people who offer paid consulting services to get it working? I'd happily pay someone something reasonable to get it working with my ISP. The ISP will have limited information available (has some) and I also have a contact at my ISP who is the backend support - and is also the largest ISP in Australia.
So to turn this around from being frustrating for everyone - this could be a significant revenue opportunity for netgate given the complexities of IPv6, and given that ISP's around the world implement it differently. It would also probably mean netgate evolve the pfsense code base on IPv6 to cope with the not pure implementations of IPv6 - because offering this service will mean netgate will end up building up a huge library of information of different ISP's around the world.
I think Netgate struggle to work out how to get revenue through the door - currently its through very expensive support contracts which most consumer people can't afford, and its also from expensive hardware that most people can't afford outside of the US given the strength of the US currency against other countries currencies (eg Australia). So why not create new revenue streams such as the above? Ride the IPv6 rollout and make a tonne of money off it - ethically by productising a service that helps people for a reasonable price.