ipv6-ops Digest, Vol 2, Issue 9

[Bernhard Schmidt]

Hi Brent,

> 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... :|

Well, I agree that it was a little mit overstated, but not completely.
Since there currently is no IPv6 killer application in sight an
important task in the IPv6 transaction would be making services and
clients dualstacked and see what happens. Unfortunately this is pure
poison for the transaction process when the client suddenly speaks IPv6
and the connectivity is that bad that the user cries "it's so slow, stop
this damn IPv6 I can't work anymore".

Now for the cause of this bad connectivity. I agree that connectivity
_is_ decent (more than that) for NREN members and customers of the few
commercial peers I can make out. But, for the whole remaining networks,
it just plain sucks. Have a look at GRH at Abilene's prefix, a _large_
cloud of networks see something starting like this as best path to them

6939 4716 11537

There we have America-America going through some Asian prefix. 6939 on
itself, which seems to be the only way out of 4716, is deprefed at many
operators due to needless fulltable-swaps and bad long-range tunnels, so
not really good connectivity there, too. Some other paths:

29670 12732 20646 1752 5511 2500 4725 11537
3292 6175 4555 6939 4716 11537
12871 24587 6453 10566 17715 4725 11537

I think one can let those paths speak for themselves.

The other direction isn't much better unfortunately, since Abilene again
prefers an Asian ASN (prolly NREN) to go to European networks. Just a
few examples pulled from the GRH output:

2001:650::/32    11537 17579 9270 7660 2500 1273
2001:668::/32    11537 17579 9270 7660 2500 2497 3257
2001:6c8::/32    11537 17579 1237 17832 9270 7660 2500 4691 2914 3292
2001:788::/32    11537 17579 9270 2200 20965 1299 1759

> 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",

Peering isn't the only solution. You can peer with dozens of networks,
as long as you don't have _upstream_ some commercial networks will see
you through the peering, but the great remains will see you through some
routeswaps on another continent.

GEANT did the only solution for this kind of situation, they got
commercial _transit_ from Global Crossing and Telia, so as long as they
don't send traffic to European prefixes to Abilene by mistake their
connectivity is actually quite good.

Current state from a few boxes I maintain:
64 bytes from ping-wash.abilene.ucaid.edu: icmp_seq=1 ttl=34 time=421 ms
64 bytes from ping-wash.abilene.ucaid.edu: icmp_seq=1 ttl=34 time=393 ms
64 bytes from ping-wash.abilene.ucaid.edu: icmp_seq=1 ttl=38 time=432 ms

all of them have decent commercial transit, but even they only get the
prefix through Asia.

We can move this discussion to private mail if you want, but I do
support my claim that IPv6 support at NRENs is improvable, to say the least.

Bernhard