IPv6 content experiment

[Carlos Friacas]

On Sun, 8 Apr 2007, Kevin Day wrote:

Hi Kevin et all,

>
> Just a quick announcement that details of a new IPv6 experiment have been 
> posted at http://www.ipv6experiment.com
>
> As everyone's aware, there's the issue of not enough eyeballs to justify 
> content providers spending the time to deploy IPv6. End user ISPs won't do it 
> until there's content.

Or lack of IPv4 address blocks to be distributed by the RIRs... that's the 
real driver for IPv6, imho.


> Many say that there are ways (tunnel brokers, teredo, 
> etc) end users can get on IPv6, and the fact that they aren't using them 
> means it's up to the content providers to step forward.

My experience says this is a very ugly path... e.g. i've recently seen a 
slide from Microsoft about Vista, and teredo is the last resort option for 
IPv6-only p2p applications. ISATAP and 6TO4 show up before Teredo...


> Either way, "lack of 
> demand" is cited by many for the biggest reason why they aren't deploying 
> IPv6. So, what if we put some desirable content up and made it available only 
> on IPv6 and gave those who accessed via IPv4 detailed instructions on how to 
> get on IPv6?

I guess that isn't entirely an original idea... that's also trying to push 
the need for IPv6 to the end-user field, when deploying IPv6 should be 
mostly an ISP-driven task/requirement/issue...!


> How many are actually able to get on IPv6 if they want?

Bad quality IPv6... everyone with minimum technical skills, imho. It's 
just a matter of enabling the OS, and finding a tunnel broker.


> What problems do they run into when trying?

Most people will surely find that IPv6 is the slower path, if native IPv6 
is not available. There are also some browser fallback to IPv4 related 
issues, which some people continuosly report, mostly due to some 
misconfiguration (i.e. some people never felt it, though).


> Is their connectivity over IPv6 worse than IPv4? (number of hops, packet 
> loss, overall transfer speeds, etc)

Generically i would say YES. However there are some cases where IPv6 
latency can be better, and in fact used to improve IPv4's performance. I'm 
currently writing about it, and will present it next month at a 
conference.


> How many users have IPv6 configured, but don't actually have a working IPv6 
> connection? (i.e. how many people do you lock out by publishing AAAA records 
> for your site?)

I wouldn't say lock out, but instead slow down.
However, my organization's official website has an AAAA as well as an A 
for almost 2 years (www.fccn.pt), and so far we didn't get any complaint 
related with that... some others (mostly NRENs too, afaik) have done the 
same...


> (I'm being intentionally vague here about the details of the content, as not 
> to trip any email content filters. See the site for more details.)
>
>
> Before we begin with this experiment, I'd like to ask the community if there 
> are any other interesting metrics you'd like us to try to capture, what 
> methodologies you suggest we use, etc.

I'll forward your e-mail to my local IPv6 task-force mailing list. :-)


> If you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact me directly!
>
> -- Kevin


Best Regards,

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Carlos Friac,as                                            See:
Wide Area Network Working Group (WAN)                      www.gigapix.pt
FCCN - Fundacao para a Computacao Cientifica Nacional      www.ipv6.eu
Av. do Brasil, n.101                                       www.6diss.org
1700-066 Lisboa                                            www.geant2.net
Tel: +351 218440100 Fax: +351 218472167
www.fccn.pt
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