IPv6 uptake (was: The Reg does 240/4)

Mon Feb 19 13:29:20 UTC 2024

If you ever want to know which providers in a country are lagging, Geoff Huston is here to help:

https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6/US

In the U.S., the largest operators without IPv6 are (in order by size):
Verizon FiOS (they deployed to 50%, discovered a bug, and rolled back)
Frontier
Lumen (CenturyLink)
CableVision
CableOne
Suddenlink
Windstream
US Cellular
Brightspeed

Comcast, Charter, and Cox each have fully deployed IPv6, along with AT&T and all of the mobile carriers.

Lee

-----Original Message-----
From: NANOG <nanog-bounces+leehoward=hilcostreambank.com at nanog.org> On Behalf Of Michael Thomas
Sent: Sunday, February 18, 2024 3:29 PM
To: nanog at nanog.org
Subject: Re: IPv6 uptake (was: The Reg does 240/4)

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On 2/18/24 8:47 AM, Greg Skinner via NANOG wrote:
> On Feb 17, 2024, at 11:27 AM, William Herrin <bill at herrin.us> wrote:
>> On Sat, Feb 17, 2024 at 10:34?AM Michael Thomas <mike at mtcc.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Funny, I don't recall Bellovin and Cheswick's Firewall book 
>>> discussing NAT.
>> And mine too, since I hadn't heard of "Firewalls and Internet
>> Security: Repelling the Wily Hacker" and have not read it.
> For what it's worth, both editions of Bellovin and Cheswick's 
> Firewalls book are online. [1]  Also, there are discussions about NAT 
> and how it influenced IPng (eventually IPv6) on the big-internet list. 
> [2]

FWIW, while at Cisco I started to get wind of some NAT-like proposal being floated by 3COM at Packetcable back in the late 90's, early 2000's (sorry, I have no memory of the specifics now). That was pretty horrifying to me and others as the implication was that we'd have to implement it in our routers, which I'm sure 3COM viewed as a feature, not a bug. We pushed back that implementing IPv6 was a far better option if it came down to that. That sent me and Steve Deering off on an adventure to figure out how we might actually make good on that alternative in the various service provider BU's. Unsurprisingly the BU's were not very receptive not just because of the problems with v6 vs hardware forwarding, but mostly because providers weren't asking for it.
They weren't asking for CGNAT like things either though so it was mostly the status quo. IOS on the other hand was taking IPv6 much more seriously so that providers could at least deploy it in the small for testing, pilots, etc even if it was a patchwork in the various platforms.

The problem with v6 uptake has always been on the provider side. BU's wouldn't have wanted to respin silicon but if providers were asking for it and it gave them a competitive advantage, they'd have done it in a heartbeat. It's heartening to hear that a lot of big providers and orgs are using IPv6 internally to simplify management along with LTE's use of v6. I don't know what's happening in MSO land these days, but it would be good to hear if they too are pushing a LTE-like solution. I do know that Cablelabs pretty early on -- around the time I mentioned above -- has been pushing for v6. Maybe Jason Livingood can clue us in. Getting cable operators onboard too would certainly be a good thing, though LTE doesn't have to deal with things like brain dead v4-only wireless routers on their network.

Mike