[ipv6-ops] Experiences with IPv6 peering?

[Mike Leber]

As you may only be familiar with us from our IPv6 network, many people 
do not realize that Hurricane Electric operates a global Internet 
backbone extending from Stockholm to Singapore.

We have approximately 6000 BGP sessions with 1650 different IPv4 
networks in Europe, North America, and Asia.  We are present at 
approximately 50 different exchange points and announce over 22,000 IPv4 
customer prefixes.  Our strategy is one of heavy interconnection for the 
purpose of making bits flow most directly.  We operate a transit 
network; the value of our network is the networks that we connect to.

Here are our IPv4 stats:

Ranked 6th globally by Peering (IPv4) on Fixed Orbit
http://fixedorbit.com/stats.htm

Ranked 8th globally by "customer cone size" (IPv4) on Caida
http://as-rank.caida.org/

Our IPv4 network is still growing with new core router locations coming 
online regularly.

So regarding the "cone" comment...  We are not only expecting to grow 
our IPv4 cone in the upcoming year, we are expecting that our IPv6 cone 
will eventually be larger than our IPv4 cone.  Our normal customers are 
multihomed networks that run both IPv4 and IPv6.

For completeness, our IPv6 stats:

1st largest IPv6 network globally by number of networks connected
1st largest IPv6 network by number of customer prefixes announced
http://bgp.he.net/report/peers

(Independent confirmation of the number of IPv6 adjacencies)
http://bgp.potaroo.net/v6/as6447/bgp-as-adj.txt

We were the first backbone in the world to connect 300 IPv6 networks:
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20081211006445/en/Hurricane-Electric-Achieves-IPv6-Milestone

We were the first backbone in the world to connect 1000 IPv6 networks:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/hurricane-electric-becomes-first-internet-backbone-in-the-world-to-connect-to-1000-ipv6-networks-2010-10-27

We now connect over 1200 IPv6 networks and rising daily.

Mike.
ps.  Yes, I agree regarding your Popcorn comment.

On 3/2/11 10:30 AM, Daniel Roesen wrote:
> 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
>