Are IPv6-only Internet services viable today?

Sun Jan 17 16:59:00 UTC 2010

It's unfortunate for me that nobody is interested in talking about the
question I asked in light of the data i supplied.  The question being,
is it possible for a mobile operator to offer an IPv6-only service
today to casual Internet users on new devices with new service plans?
Perhaps it is just a rhetorical question because the video obviously
shows it is possible.  But, i am legitimately interested in perceived
service gaps or issues, given this tightly controlled service
definition (web and email).

On Sun, Jan 17, 2010 at 7:04 AM, Durand, Alain
<alain_durand at cable.comcast.com> wrote:
> On 1/16/10 10:52 AM, "Cam Byrne" <cb.list6 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>A dual-stack capable host like windows 7 does not ensure any ipv6 network
>> access beyond the local LAN, especially given todays ipv4-only >service
>> dominance.  There are various ways to translate or tunnel to solve this
>> problem, connecting v6 and v4 islands, including nat64 and ds-lite
>
> ===> Well, it all depends on which applications are in use. If the app
> running on the windows 7 side only works in IPv4 or if the app on the other
> side is only serving IPv4, there is little choice but to tunnel IPv4 over
> IPv6 in the middle.

Once again, the focus is our ability to deploy today.  DS-lite is not
here today in off-the-shelf support.  It's not a core part of Windows
7 or Android. And, the focus is 90% of my users, not 1% that are
running windows 98 or Citrix clients.

>
> See, for many years, when we were thinking about IPv4/IPv6 transition, we
> looked at it a stack issue. I think we were missing something. We now have
> seen tons of IPv6 capable stacks (Win XP, Vista, 7, MacOS, Linux,
> Solaris,...) and still very little apps that take advantage of this, either

All the major web and email apps do IPv6 today (Outlook, IE, Firefox,
Chrome, Thunderbird ...), and i don't believe i need to support all
the legacy apps, i do have the ability to define explicit terms and
conditions of the service.  Once gain, i am looking at 90% of my
users,  not 1%.  And, I am further saying that this service would be
sold for new devices (new smartphones, new netbooks ...), not legacy
devices.  I understand your world may be different.

> on the client side, or on the content side. Just ask how many of the
> 100,000+ apps on the iPhone are IPv6 ready... Btw, on the content side, the
> situation is quite complex too, because it is not just about configuring
> apache for IPv6, this is about having a load balancing, content delivery,
> monitoring,... solution in place.

I call FUD.

On the app side, how many of those iphone apps just call the web
browser or in-built email client? .... such that enabling a few common
core elements make the majority of the ecosystem IPv6 enabled.  I
believe Fred Baker has said that the iphone apps store is an example
of IPv6 success in the making --

Quoting:

"As to applications, yes, of course. In point of fact, many
applications have already been ported to IPv6 and operate just fine. I
understand that Apple made a requirement that applications on the
iPhone must be IPv6-capable, and as a result several tens of thousands
of applications are in fact IPv6-capable."

http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/3gv6/current/msg00021.html

On the content side, please...  How many NANOGs in a row do major
players like Google, Netflix, Limelight and others trot on stage and
tell us how easy it is to roll out IPv6?   I have done content proof
of concepts in my lab, enabling my intranet for IPv6 via a VIP on
loadbalancer, it took about 45 minutes to figure it out and works
flawlessly.  Many major load balancer vendors take care of the dirty
work for us, such that putting an IPv6 face to the world is easy. The
fact that the server is technically IPv4 and the the load balancer is
doing protocol translation / proxying is irrelevant and steady-state
for the overall architecture in terms of where network state is
located.

Further, given the consolidation of content to a few major players
(2009 Internet Observatory Report), moving IPv6 from where it is today
to where it needs to be is getting easier.  If Google is ~20% of your
traffic, you are already 1/5 the way to being native IPv6.

>
> What DS-lite gives you is the ability to de-couple the deployment of the
> network (including the host stacks) with IPv6 from the deployment of the
> applications with IPv6. I do believe there is a lot of value in this.

Yes, value in some environments.  Once again, I am not trying to have
a religious war.  I am just to trying to explore a simple question for
my environment based on facts.

Thanks for this discussion.

-Cameron

>
>    - Alain.
>
>
> On 1/16/10 10:52 AM, "Cam Byrne" <cb.list6 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> A dual-stack capable host like windows 7 does not ensure any ipv6 network
> access beyond the local LAN, especially given todays ipv4-only service
> dominance.  There are various ways to translate or tunnel to solve this
> problem, connecting v6 and v4 islands, including nat64 and ds-lite
>
>
>