AT&T UVERSE Native IPv6, a HOWTO

Tue Dec 3 00:15:28 UTC 2013

On Mon, 02 Dec 2013 17:59:51 -0500, Mark Andrews <marka at isc.org> wrote:
> ... A simple RA/DHCP option could do this.

Great.  Now I have to go upgrade every g** d*** device in the network to  
support yet another alteration to the standards.

> For the few residential ISP's that do this what is it? $5 / month
> per IP and how many ask for a second address? 1 in 10000, 1 in
> recover the setup costs.

It varies.  Bellsouth DSL, it was $15(?) for /32 (it was included in mine)  
Uverse is $15 for /29. TWC-BC $29(?) for /29. (twc-res doesn't offer it)

It turns out to be a mark-up of over 200x their annual cost (and they  
charge that per month) -- so it's a significant income stream. (how many  
people are buying, they aren't saying.)

> Go ask the bean counters about the cost of having different sized
> customers.  Those costs will dwarf the income from charging for
> bigger address space.  For IPv4 there wasn't a choice.  For IPv6
> there is the choice of one size for all vs the additional cost of
> managing different sized customers.

As one who has dealt with such accounting and billing systems, it's  
actually not that much work. (unless the system pre-dates the internet.)  
And even more so if the system was designed from the beginning to support  
it. (as this was already there for IPv4, it should've been included in any  
additions for IPv6 support.)  I doubt we're going to see anyone from the  
big boys popping up to admit having setup their systems to support  
micro-allocation billing, but it's a safe bet they have, or they're  
working on it.