How to force rapid ipv6 adoption

Fri Oct 2 20:33:19 UTC 2015

From: Cryptographrix <cryptographrix at gmail.com<mailto:cryptographrix at gmail.com>>
Date: Friday, October 2, 2015 at 12:35 PM
To: "George, Wes" <wesley.george at twcable.com<mailto:wesley.george at twcable.com>>
Cc: "nanog at nanog.org<mailto:nanog at nanog.org>" <nanog at nanog.org<mailto:nanog at nanog.org>>
Subject: Re: How to force rapid ipv6 adoption

Unfortunately, the files at the NANOG links you posted are not available, but I think I get the premise of them from their summaries and what you're trying to say - thank you for linking.

WG] hmm, hopefully someone reading from NANOG will unbork the URLs. If nothing else, they post the presentation videos to their youtube channel, so you can find it there by going directly.

It makes me curious about the churn rate between ISPs, but that's a different topic and everything you've said is spot on.\
WG] in this context I was talking about churn within the ISP rather than between them, and it probably would have been more accurate to talk in terms of net customer growth – how many customers do you lose vs how many new ones you add?

What seems really important/would be progressive at the moment is that vendors release IPv6-capable "plug and play" gear.
WG] and that's a mixed bag. Many routers, all computers, smartphones, tablets, etc are plug and play for IPv6, but the IoT widgetry, video streaming devices, etc have a ways to go yet. Lots of folks like me pulling every lever we can find to make sure our vendors and partners in CPE and content land understand that IPv6 is a requirement, but it's little by little and progress is slow.

Is there any vendor that's currently working on a home router that provides *only* IPv6 internally, with NAT64 IPv6->IPv4?
WG] well, TMobile has a considerable amount of IPv6-only Android devices on their mobile network using 464xlat as the shim. On the home router side, there are devices that are capable of terminating an IPv6 in IPv4 tunnel to allow people to hop over their ISP that isn't supporting IPv6 and dual stack their home. Lots of us use this method + a tunnel provider like HE to have IPv6 at home, but that's becoming less important as Comcast and TWC and other broadband providers enable IPv6 for real across their networks. There are also devices that can do DSLite so that it's IPv6-only out of the house (encapsulate IPv4 in IPv6 to a remote NAT), but still supports dual-stack in the house. The number of devices in the average house that don't support IPv6 makes IPv6-only in the house problematic and a much longer-term goal.

If we wanted to really get this started, that (and a bunch of articles about "use this router to get IPv6 in your house") sounds like it could be really productive.
WG] Generally my philosophy has been that customers just want their internet service to work, not know anything about which IP stack they're using, and thus IPv6 isn't a value-added feature that you can sell to the average folks buying a cheap plastic router off of Amazon. Now that we're seeing evidence that IPv6 is faster, there's a potential marketing angle for gamers (better network performance!!!) but we're still building the case for that, and tunnels tend to negate those sorts of benefits (you need native IPv6) so that's probably premature.

Additionally, is it possible for ISPs to offer IPv6 transit-exclusive plans for people that would like to get just that?
WG] I think that day is coming, but not yet. There has to be a critical mass of common/important IPv6-enabled content and devices, and the problem is that most of the folks who know enough about networking to know that they only need IPv6 probably still need IPv4 (see also previous comment). But if someone only uses their internet connection for webmail (G or Y!) and Facebook and maybe a little Youtube with a small subset of devices, it's workable today, and it keeps getting more workable, either with or without an IPv4 shim like 464Xlat or NAT64/DNS64. It's really a question of when you get far enough along to be confident that it's reliable enough for average customers (for some value of "average") without making the phone ring.

Thanks,

Wes

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