First ISP-hosted "transparent" test-IPv6.com mirror

Tue May 20 00:52:23 UTC 2014

Jason,

Love the service that you guys have. I use it as part of training helpdesk agents as well as field techs. My ISP wants to set up a transparent mirror, and I encourage other to do so as well.

Do you support us adding a hosted by logo, or a link to our IPv6 speedtest server?

Eric Miller, CCNP
Network Engineering Consultant
(407) 257-5115

-----Original Message-----
From: NANOG [mailto:nanog-bounces at nanog.org] On Behalf Of Jason Fesler
Sent: Saturday, May 17, 2014 12:52 AM
To: nanog at nanog.org
Subject: First ISP-hosted "transparent" test-IPv6.com mirror

TL:DR? “Thanks, Comcast!” and “Who’s Next?”

The test-ipv6.com site started out 4 years ago, at a table in Seattle, after an IPv6 round table meeting hosted by Internet Society. John Brzozowski and myself were each trying to come up with a way to help end users figure out that their IPv6 internet was good or bad.
Ultimately I kept plugging away at it, as John was distracted with some kind of broadband IPv6 rollout for his employer (Comcast). And the test-ipv6.com site went live about a month later, with solicitation to a few operations lists for feedback. All in all, pretty successful.

I’ve had two concerns since deploying test-ipv6.com: one, how to scale; and two, how to ensure the user’s connectivity back to the service is awesome (or at least, not bad). John was thinking the same thing - worried about sending too many of his customers to my site, and crushing it in the process. Not good for either of us.

Both of those are relatively easy to solve. Simply deploy tons of mirrors around the world, problem solved - if you have the cash and/or smart business plan to back it. I don’t monetize the site with advertising; nor do I charge fees. Nor do I have a crack CFO who can help me IPO, and make me rich in the process. I don’t really have the time or energy to solicit for corporate handouts. As it turns out, it appears that I’m bad when it comes to making money on this project. So any solution has to be cheap.

Asking folks to run regional mirrors (such as “test-ipv6.cz” or
“test-ipv6.co.za”) is great; it offers a community local resources that are more immune to global connectivity issues. However, people must explicitly decide to visit these mirrors; to chose the location they want to test from. Those regional mirrors are mostly light duty as a result. They are still invaluable - they provide the back end that the global connectivity test uses, for any IPv6-validated customer visiting any of the mirrors. With this global test, we effectively crowd source getting IPv6 peering problems fixed.

John and I decided to take things a step further; something I’m happy to see finally make it across the finish line after a fair bit of upfront dev work.

Comcast is now running two mirrors and preparing a third - which directly act as “test-ipv6.com”. Nothing changes for the user. John has to worry less about transient (and transit!) connectivity back to test-ipv6.com.

This is done with a poor-man’s GSLB (Global Server Load Balancer).
We’re using an in-house built DNS server that looks at the internet routing table to see what ISP the DNS queries come from. Based on the source BGP ASN, we can decide which ISP mirror gets the traffic. (PS:
thanks to routeviews.org and everyone who feeds data to it; that stuff is great!)

In the end: we both get to worry less about Comcast traffic volume to test-ipv6.com; as well as ensure a good user experience for the customers visiting.

What’s next? That’s where you come in :-).

If you’re ...

 * working at a large ISP
 * doing real IPv6 deployment
 * or considering using “helpdesk.test-ipv6.com” with customers

I’d love to help you set up a transparent mirror (acting as “test-ipv6.com”). For you, it means controlling the user experience using this site; as well as removing any capacity concerns. For me, it means the same thing. Win, win. More info at http://github.com/falling-sky/source/wiki/TransparentMirrors
(http://tinyurl.com/m7nnhfn).

If you want to help, or have questions, don’t hesitate to ask.

-jason

(link for sharing, if you're inclined: http://test-ipv6.com/comcast.html)