[ipv6-ops] Experiences with IPv6 peering?

[Daniel Roesen]

On Wed, Mar 02, 2011 at 08:35:07AM -0800, Aaron Hughes wrote:
> Hopefully Cogent and H.E. will come to some flavor of agreement before
> we all have to deal with the split IPv6 Internet we do today..
> Personally, I believe Cogent will lose this battle.

I doubt. As soon as real traffic gets going on IPv6, all the freebie
transits will go away as it will start to cost real money to provide the
capacity. After all, HE.net is trying to make money. And suddently HE's
cone will get a lot smaller.

Effectively, in the end, I believe the present real IPv4 tier1s will
remain so in the IPv6 landscape and not allow others to join the club
that easily. Paying customers (singlehomed and/or with traffic) do
count in that game, not freebies. Looking at how most IPv4 Tier1s
handle IPv6 peering, they just follow their policy, totally AFI
agnostic. And that makes sense to me, from their perspective.

I can only recommend everyone NOT to RELY on transit from
(wannabe-)Tier1s. You'll end up being victim of peering disputes every
now and then. Especially with the wannabe-Tier1s trying to gain real
Tier1 status (or pseudo-Tier1 with some Tier1s reached via paid peering).
:-) If you want to have good connectivity, go for Tier2/3 with no
ambitions to gamble with their customer's connectivity.

Globally and operationally, the lack of an IPv6 Tier1 is a problem due
to incomplete routing tables, but a problem that will fix itself as soon
as the v4 tier1s dualstack their networks and roll out peering. Who's
still missing of those (I don't track global IPv6 routing closely
anymore in the last few years)?

Nevertheless, it will be interesting to watch. :-) Popcorn!

Best regards,
Daniel