ipv6-ops Digest, Vol 2, Issue 9

[Brent Sweeny]

I presume that the "no decent service...by Abilene" statement 
is overstated enough that it doesn't need answering?  I hope
that there's *some* benefit... :|

It's true that so far Abilene's only direct commercial peerings
are on the west coast, but that's not an issue of "capability",
just current status. We're at exchange points in Chicago (Star
Light), NYC (Manlan), and have indirect access to the NAP of the
Americas in Miami through AMPATH. We've also been trying for some
time to find additional east-coast v6 commercial peers but haven't
been able yet to make anything work out (and we'll continue to
try).   That doesn't preclude some of our university members in
the Eastern US from passing commercial v6 prefixes to the rest of
Abilene, though I'm not aware of any at the moment who do. Since
almost all of them have broader local infrastructures than the
few Abilene POPs, they could bring in peerings that we can't reach.
So yes, because at the moment Abilene's commercial v6 peerings
are all on the west coast, peers who use Abilene to get from the
east coast or Europe to European commercial networks have to cross
the US. (that's not true for R&E prefixes, which connect and are
transited freely at all four borders.)

To be practical, how can this be improved? obviously additional
east-coast v6 peerings for Abilene would help immensely (anyone at
32 AoA want to talk?)  Perhaps, in the absence of that, European
R&E nets might want to choose better paths to some US commercial
v6 customers than via Abilene, but as you point out below that's
chiefly a dis- advantage for east-coast users, not west-coast
ones, and many foreign networks probably can't distinguish a part
of a distant network very well from another part.  We'd be happy
to improve it.  Thanks for your suggestions.
-- 
Brent Sweeny
Indiana University Information Technology/Abilene Network Operations
PGP fingerprint = 0F 6B 7E 1D 3A AD F3 01  63 1E 2B B3 1E B1 FA 7F

> Date: Tue, 24 May 2005 22:23:40 -0400
> From: James <james at towardex.com>
> Subject: Re: Canarie / 2001:410::/32 (Was: Filters) (fwd)
> Cc: ipv6-ops at lists.cluenet.de
> 
> On Tue, May 24, 2005 at 08:25:05PM +0200, Bernhard Schmidt wrote:
> 
> [ snip ]
> 
> > 
> > I can't currently see any decent service provided by Abilene. GEANT
> > being the european REN isn't that much better.
> 
> Now that we are talking about RENs :)  One of the GEANT routing policies[1]
> I've heard from several sources is that they will take commercial transit
> (GBLX) for European v6 destinations, but yet, take Abilene for all non-EU
> routes, i.e. US destinations.
> 
> While I agree that this may be a sane choice of policy, I would hope that
> people understand that Abilene currently has capability to peer with
> commercial/commodity v6 players in the west coast US only (PAIX-PA, and
> possibly LAIIX/PacWave).  Being a US network myself, this gives me quite
> *bad* routing to European NREN destinations for our end-users who reside
> in the east coast of United States, while it is fine for west coast users,
> as return packets from European RENs go all the way to west coast via
> Abilene, then come back to east.
> 
> What is even more interesting is that this "take Abilene for US routes"
> "policy" is not just GEANT only, it also seems to be exercised by regional
> EU NRENs as well (i.e. SURFnet), even though such regional networks have
> direct transit from C&W or other similar commodity transit.
> 
> 
> [1]: Accuracy of this statement is not guaranteed and I may be wrong. 
>      So please feel free to correct as needed.
> 
> -J
> 
> -- 
> James Jun
> Infrastructure and Technology Services
> TowardEX Technologies
> Office +1-617-459-4051 x179 | Mobile +1-978-394-2867
> james at towardex.com | www.towardex.com