AT&T UVERSE Native IPv6, a HOWTO

Tue Dec 3 00:55:56 UTC 2013

In message <op.w7hpn2m5tfhldh at rbeam.xactional.com>, "Ricky Beam" writes:
> 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.

Guess what, networks evolve and have been evolving for as long as I've
been involved which is around 30 years now.  There is no reason to
expect that they won't stop evolving for the forseeable future.

> > 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.)

So you have no idea if it is a significant income stream or not.

> > 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.

Except it is not just the accounting and billing systems. Additionally
when you factor in everyone is getting multiple GUA by default the
number of customers that need to pay for additional addresses drops
by orders of magnitude it doesn't remain cost effective to charge
for address space.

If you are being charged anything to get a /48 over a /56 or a /60
you are being ripped off.  If you can't get a /48 you are being
ripped off.  The public will learn this as will the regulators that
protect customers.

There actually is a IPv4 address shortage.  There isn't a IPv6 address
shortage.

Mark
-- 
Mark Andrews, ISC
1 Seymour St., Dundas Valley, NSW 2117, Australia
PHONE: +61 2 9871 4742                 INTERNET: marka at isc.org