http://www.6assist.net/ - call for test

[Jeroen Massar]

[reply-ing to several mails in one go to limit my amount of spam ;) ]

On 2013-05-10 12:02 , Tayeb Meftah wrote:
> Algeria

There are 5 prefixes in Algeria:

http://www.sixxs.net/tools/grh/dfp/all/?country=dz

Two have 94%[1] connectivity thus should be pretty well reachable, the
other three are not seen at all. It does mean that the two have proper
IPv6 transit going out of the country.

You might want to poke any of them, and of course your IPv4 ISP and see
how they can get you connected too.

2001:4340::/32 (AARN) uses DANTE as transit, they are academic.
2c0f:fe50::/32 (ANWARNET) uses a mix of HE.net (likely a tunnel) and
Level(3), which shows you can really get out of the country pretty well.

[1] could just mean that a few of the GRH peers are not properly connected.


On 2013-05-10 12:20 , Max Tulyev wrote:
> On 10.05.13 12:58, Jeroen Massar wrote:
>> If you want to help ISPs get connectivity, get them on this list,
>> and I am sure there are a couple of ISPs here who are more than
>> happy to get them connected.
>
> We have serveral(!) customers connected via tunneled BGP from Poland,
> which is EU, as well as Slovenia and Portugal.

Those "customers" are they paying customers or just "free"? Also do they
use it maybe as a backup to something? Or are they just end-sites that
do not want to pay for a bit of transit?

None of those three countries have any need to use tunneling, as there
is lots of native IPv6 present:

 http://www.sixxs.net/tools/grh/dfp/all/?country=pl
 http://www.sixxs.net/tools/grh/dfp/all/?country=sk
 http://www.sixxs.net/tools/grh/dfp/all/?country=pt

I would start nicely pointing them at the BGP tables for the ISPs
present in those list as a good help to where they can get native IPv6.

> There are also Cambogia, Russia, Ukraine...

I assume you mean Cambodia, it makes a bit of sense that they would have
a hard time getting native IPv6 but it seems quite a few are able to get
their bits in and out of the country:

http://www.sixxs.net/tools/grh/dfp/all/?country=kh

PWWC, NTT, and of course tunneled through HE.net; thus there is not a
problem either.

> We have a lot of situations that in country or even in city there is
> everything fine with IPv6 native connectivity, but it is unable to
> provide due to monopoly of some crappy ISP inside the exact buliding
> or district. And that companies already have IPv6 PI and ASN...

To me you are describing a business case. Put a few boxes in that
building a set up your own network outbound. I am sure you will be able
to compete unless it is a government enforced monopoly...

Remember, you do not have to do native yet to the end-user, tunneling
that is fine. But doing transit over tunnels is just plain wrong in 2013.

On 2013-05-10 12:34 , Sander Steffann wrote:
> One of them is Lebanon. All international connections must go through
> the incumbent telco, and they don't/won't do IPv6. Annoying, insane, >
but a fact of life for the ISPs in such countries. So all the ISPs
> that do IPv6 have to do it with tunnels to HE, OCCAID etc.

And by doing a tunnel over IPv4 they are effectively bypassing the
restrictions put upon them which can put them into a rather weird
political situation. You might want to advise them differently.

Yes, they should be moving to IPv6, but if their government does not
allow them due to the law in place, then they should be changing the law
and fix that nonsense...

(Side-note: I like that they are defying such a silly restrictions, the
Internet is not a Point-To-Point system and should have diverse path)

On 2013-05-10 13:32 , Max Tulyev wrote:
> I mentioned Slovenia as we have a request for BGP-enabled tunnel from
> Slovenia ;) So for some reasons people still want to use BGP-enabled
> tunnels in real life, even in conuntries with well implemented native
IPv6.

Likely that is a cash reason, not a "we could not get native IPv6"
reason, see above for the lists of transits that are there.

> The second reason to use 6assist instead of regular TB it is not
> depend of the actual load of tunnel server. If somebody download
> something huge through a tunnel broker server - the other people just
> share the tiny rest of the bandwidth...

Just like with 6to4 and Teredo relays, but easier with this as you know
who is sending/receiving bits, if you can't provide enough bandwidth
then tell your users that there are bandwidth restrictions and let them
choose a more optimal solution for their problem. It also shows why one
should not be tunneling.

http://www.sixxs.net/misc/traffic/ shows that people are able to do on
average 1 Gig/s of traffic, but can peak it up to 1.80 Gig/s, all those
boxes in that list have a lot more capacity left though...


A different on this 6assist idea is that, just like the 6bone of old
days, it is very simple to set up standard proto-41 tunnels. There is no
need to come up with a new protocol which does multi-point (and using an
RIPE IX prefix for that is likely out of scope for that allocation).
Most router OSs can set up proto-41, just do that with an agreement
between the parties and you know where your traffic goes and you can
select the best path where that traffic goes.

In short: instead of providing this service, maybe better to make a
list/point where ISPs can exchange where they could get connected?
Although this very list and peeringdb already provide that function of
course...


Greets,
 Jeroen