End user CPE's doing IPv6 (Re: Ipv6 Routing (from hell))

[Jeroen Massar]

Nick Hilliard wrote:
 >> Your parents? You misunderstood me completely. They just need to be
 >> able to plug in stuff, just like they do now, to make it clearer:
 >
 > Nope, they also need:
 >
 > - a factory reset button

Included on most boxes, but that would only reset the values, do 
remember that I mentioned that they effectively can't change anything. 
As such that button would only reset eg the wireless lan password.

 > - a very simple web interface for configuring things like wireless
 > settings, etc

WHich I mentioned, but do that on the ISP interface/management website 
where they have all their details in one go.

 > - an "advanced" button for people who need to do tech support on the 
boxes.

"It works" is good enough. The tech support could include a button for 
doing a traceroute and some other things, but that should be one "Test 
connection" button which outputs all the possible things that might go 
wrong, nothing else.

 >> Only bad thing is that the ISP will have to do a lot of development
 >> and testing on these boxes,
 >
 > But how is this quantitatively different from the boxes they outsource
 > at the moment?

Not much from how some ISP's do it. Most ISPs just allow people to plug 
in any kind of box though, and that is where your nightware begins.

 > They are ISPs - they don't want to develop software for
 > their own DSL boxes;  they want white-box solutions which they can
 > self-label, and that's all.  In-house development is a cost centre and
 > a support pain.

Let an organization do it for you then, they can then possibly resell it 
to other ISPs too.

IMHO some ISPs are large enough to do this for their own customerbase 
though completely independent from any other ISP. Note also that

 > ISPs don't want to own or manage the CPE devices, because that brings
 > in  a huge area of liability and support management.  It's a
 > money-losing pain in the ass, and they don't want to go there.

What is the difference between:
  - user calls to support desk with "I have brand XYZ and it is broken"
compared to:
  - user calls with "I have your box, it is broken"

Especially when with the latter you have full control and full knowledge 
of the box. The best remedy to support is having everything the same as 
then you will hit the same problem everywhere, and not in all kinds of 
weird corner cases on a lot of different combinations.

And when one is smart one builds in remote access so that one can remote 
debugging on the box when needed.

Michael Taht wrote:
[..]
>> Your parents? You misunderstood me completely. They just need to be
>> able to plug in stuff, just like they do now, to make it clearer:
>>
>>  - ISP buys boxes
>>  - ISP installs their custom distro
> I would kind of like to shortcut even that.
> 
> ISP buys boxes pre-flashed with their custom distro

If you have a large amount of customers that is most likely possible indeed.

>>  - ISP supplies box to user
>>  - user plugs in box
>>  - box works
>>
>> Then ISP wants to enable feature X, thus ISP logs in to box and
>> upgrades it. Yeah, feature X! 
> I love ipkg for this reason. And pdsh.

ipkg.... how can you love it, it always seems broken on my boxes ;)

>> Presto done. Feature X could be IPv6, or Multicast, or a special setup
>> for the user etc. Actually, when I think of it a bit more, I would
>> only allow the user to change 'their' config by them logging into the
>> management website of ISP, which then pushes configs out, that way the
>> ISP has all the configs, thus in the case of a new box or something
>> weird you can just push the config out or check them. Only thing that
>> the box would supply then is a status page with "it works".
 >
> I note that putting the web server on the router is very expensive in
> terms of cpu, memory, and flash. It generally dwarfs all the other
> things running on it. Making it pretty and user bugproof takes a long time.

True, which is why I mentioned using a central management site (thus 
somewhere on the internet), and only having "it works" on port 80 on the 
box itself and nothing else

> So being able to provision separately (as we do with SIP phones) makes a
> lot of sense. The dashboard concept of http://www.open-mesh.com/ has a
> lot of appeal.

Yep.

Greets,
  Jeroen

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