IPv6 tunnel for ISP sought

Sat Mar 22 20:22:47 UTC 2008

On Mar 22, 2008, at 2:44 PM, Joel Snyder wrote:
>
> We would like to get an IPv6 tunnel to begin limited testing of IPv6  
> for customers.  Is there any IPv6-savvy ISP out there who will give/ 
> sell tunnels to other ISPs?
>
> Experimentation with SixXS.NET has proven to be problematic, so I'd  
> rather have a more stable and commercial relationship if possible.
>

You've got a few options.

First, if you're having a problem with SixXS, make sure you let them  
know. They're good guys there, and their support tends to be faster  
than some companies we've bought transit from. :) But, you're right,  
that isn't a commercial service and is more on the "best effort" side  
of things, instead of the SLA side. There are other services like  
SixXS that give out tunnels more-or-less automatically  
(tunnelbroker.net from Hurricane Electric, is the other big one), but  
that's also pretty much a best effort service.

If you're wanting more than an auto-created tunnel, because you want  
to run BGP or have your own space announced, or someone to yell at  
when it breaks, you'll probably need to find someone who will treat a  
tunnel like a customer connection.

Hurricane Electric was offering BGP over tunnels at one point, but I  
don't know if they still are. Sprint made an announcement years ago  
that they were offering free tunnels with BGP and treated them more or  
less like customer ports, but I don't know if that's still happening.  
If your use is really small, we've given some free "tunnels as  
customers" to a few ISPs, but I don't know if the level of support I'm  
offering is really what you're looking for either.

I don't know that anyone out there right now is doing a "Tunnels for  
Dollars" kinda situation, because it's so hard to support. If the v4  
path between you and the tunnel provider breaks, there's not always  
anything anyone can do about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IPv6_tunnel_brokers might be a  
good place to start.

-- Kevin