Readiness for IPV6
As far as I can tell, neither Foundry Bigiron, nor Cisco 65xx support IPV6 (I could be wrong). While they probably aren't the most popular routers, they are very popular, and im sure plenty of cisco's smaller routers don't support it either. How ready is the 'net to transit to IPV6 in the future? Should everyone be factoring in replacing big routers with IPV6 being the only reason? Just curious on others' opinions on this. --Phil
On Mon, 8 Jul 2002, Phil Rosenthal wrote:
As far as I can tell, neither Foundry Bigiron, nor Cisco 65xx support IPV6 (I could be wrong).
While they probably aren't the most popular routers, they are very popular, and im sure plenty of cisco's smaller routers don't support it either.
I am on the 6bone using a combination of 2600 and Zebras. The 2600 doesn't do BGP6 yet, although it does RIP6 just fine. It's getting there...
How ready is the 'net to transit to IPV6 in the future?
Define "future". It's coming, although slowly. But then, why hurry? The "emergency" was just another skyfall... -- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin@mfn.org If Governments really want us to behave like civilized human beings, they should give serious consideration towards setting a better example: Ruling by force, rather than consensus; the unrestrained application of unjust laws (which the victim-populations were never allowed input on in the first place); the State policy of justice only for the rich and elected; the intentional abuse and occassionally destruction of entire populations merely to distract an already apathetic and numb electorate... This type of demogoguery must surely wipe out the fascist United States as surely as it wiped out the fascist Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The views expressed here are mine, and NOT those of my employers, associates, or others. Besides, if it *were* the opinion of all of those people, I doubt there would be a problem to bitch about in the first place... --------------------------------------------------------------------
-----Original Message----- From: Alif The Terrible [mailto:measl@mfn.org] On Mon, 8 Jul 2002, Phil Rosenthal wrote:
As far as I can tell, neither Foundry Bigiron, nor Cisco 65xx support IPV6 (I could be wrong).
While they probably aren't the most popular routers, they are very popular, and im sure plenty of cisco's smaller routers don't support it either.
I am on the 6bone using a combination of 2600 and Zebras. The 2600 doesn't do BGP6 yet, although it does RIP6 just fine. It's getting there...
How ready is the 'net to transit to IPV6 in the future?
Define "future". It's coming, although slowly. But then, why hurry? The "emergency" was just another skyfall... --- Yes, I don't think we need it 'right now'. My concern is that at this point many companies are still buying routers that as of today have no support for IPv6. Given that a BigIron/65xx is mostly hardware forwarding, I speculate that they wont be able to support IPv6 with a trivial software upgrade (at least not at the same performance level). So, is someone buying such equipment today 'wasting money' since it will be completely obsolete with the onset of mass IPv6 roll-out likely in 2004 or 2005? --Phil
On Mon, 8 Jul 2002, Phil Rosenthal wrote:
Yes, I don't think we need it 'right now'. My concern is that at this point many companies are still buying routers that as of today have no support for IPv6. Given that a BigIron/65xx is mostly hardware forwarding, I speculate that they wont be able to support IPv6 with a trivial software upgrade (at least not at the same performance level). So, is someone buying such equipment today 'wasting money' since it will be completely obsolete with the onset of mass IPv6 roll-out likely in 2004 or 2005?
*If* 2004/2005 is a realistic expectation for a full rollout, then *maybe*. The question becomes, is this realistic? I just don't think so. Judging IP6's current status strictly in light of how far along the large to mid sized providers are, I'd be surprised if a full scale rollout was closer than five years out (which puts us at ~2007). Based on this, and Moore's Law, the BigIron you bought today will be a BigScrapHeap by then anyway.
--Phil
-- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin@mfn.org If Governments really want us to behave like civilized human beings, they should give serious consideration towards setting a better example: Ruling by force, rather than consensus; the unrestrained application of unjust laws (which the victim-populations were never allowed input on in the first place); the State policy of justice only for the rich and elected; the intentional abuse and occassionally destruction of entire populations merely to distract an already apathetic and numb electorate... This type of demogoguery must surely wipe out the fascist United States as surely as it wiped out the fascist Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The views expressed here are mine, and NOT those of my employers, associates, or others. Besides, if it *were* the opinion of all of those people, I doubt there would be a problem to bitch about in the first place... --------------------------------------------------------------------
*If* 2004/2005 is a realistic expectation for a full rollout, then *maybe*. The question becomes, is this realistic? I just don't think so.
Judging IP6's current status strictly in light of how far along the large to mid sized providers are, I'd be surprised if a full scale rollout was closer than five years out (which puts us at ~2007). Based on this, and Moore's Law, the BigIron you bought today will be a BigScrapHeap by then anyway.
IPv6 is already heavily deployed here in Japan. here are some numbers I've got: - there are at least 1200 /48 sites in Japan alone http://www.jp.ipv6.org/sitecount/ - there are at least 5 ISPs doing commercial services (you can call up marketing, fill up the form, and you're done) - there are 25+ ISPs doing experimental services Note that the US government required IPv6 in their purchase requirement for DARPA-funded network a couple of months ago. IPv6 will happen, and will deploy rapidly. My take as an operator is, you realliy should start sooner, and act proactively before customers asking for it. We operators need to gather operational experiences much earlier than customers (otherwise we can't make advice to the customers). By the time customers start asking for IPv6, we need a working backbone - we need to be prepared (or you'll lose your potential customer). itojun
These are two seperate issues. One is, should you base your hardware choice on V6 support? The other is, will there be a mass rollout of v6 in the 2004-2005 time frame? The first issue is specific to your network, but I suspect it's a low priority for most. As far as a mass rollout of v6 - I'm not holding my breath, 3G or not. I suspect that v4 is here until we run out of address space, and from all indications, that is not happening any time soon. Foundry, in particular, has always tended to be very customer-driven in their feature sets. I suspect any support for IPv6 on their platform would be greatly dependent on customer requirements. Thanks, - Daniel Golding
Phil Rosenthal Said.... Yes, I don't think we need it 'right now'. My concern is that at this point many companies are still buying routers that as of today have no support for IPv6. Given that a BigIron/65xx is mostly hardware forwarding, I speculate that they wont be able to support IPv6 with a trivial software upgrade (at least not at the same performance level). So, is someone buying such equipment today 'wasting money' since it will be completely obsolete with the onset of mass IPv6 roll-out likely in 2004 or 2005?
--Phil
On Tue, Jul 09, 2002 at 01:32:42PM -0400, Daniel Golding wrote:
These are two seperate issues. One is, should you base your hardware choice on V6 support? The other is, will there be a mass rollout of v6 in the 2004-2005 time frame?
If you are selecting a new core router today, I would base it on support for v6. That won't be the only thing, but one should keep it in mind as you select a router/vendor. Make sure they haven't lost sight of all the emerging technologies you may need/want to run in the next 2-3 years.
The first issue is specific to your network, but I suspect it's a low priority for most. As far as a mass rollout of v6 - I'm not holding my breath, 3G or not. I suspect that v4 is here until we run out of address space, and from all indications, that is not happening any time soon.
Foundry, in particular, has always tended to be very customer-driven in their feature sets. I suspect any support for IPv6 on their platform would be greatly dependent on customer requirements.
- Jared
Thanks,
- Daniel Golding
Phil Rosenthal Said.... Yes, I don't think we need it 'right now'. My concern is that at this point many companies are still buying routers that as of today have no support for IPv6. Given that a BigIron/65xx is mostly hardware forwarding, I speculate that they wont be able to support IPv6 with a trivial software upgrade (at least not at the same performance level). So, is someone buying such equipment today 'wasting money' since it will be completely obsolete with the onset of mass IPv6 roll-out likely in 2004 or 2005?
--Phil
-- Jared Mauch | pgp key available via finger from jared@puck.nether.net clue++; | http://puck.nether.net/~jared/ My statements are only mine.
On Mon, 8 Jul 2002 19:47:52 -0400, "Phil Rosenthal" <pr@isprime.com> said:
As far as I can tell, neither Foundry Bigiron, nor Cisco 65xx support IPV6 (I could be wrong).
It is rumored that Cisco has software for the 6500 that does IPv6, albeit "in software" on the MSFC. And I'm sure they have plans to support IPv6 in hardware on this platform at some point. Foundry has something like "protocol-specific VLANs", which allows you to bridge IPv6 traffic, while (Layer-3-) routing IPv4.
While they probably aren't the most popular routers, they are very popular, and im sure plenty of cisco's smaller routers don't support it either.
The smaller routers are generally not a problem as long as they have enough memory to run recent IOS releases, and I think the bloat is mainly due to new functions other than IPv6. An interesting question is what it would take to support IPv6 on appliance-like routers such as IP-over-Cable or -xDSL CPE. In the retail space I actually see some interest in running IPv6, because it makes it much more feasible to operate a small network at home, and I have the impression that home users now lead enterprises in terms of IPv6-enabled OS deployment (Windows XP and Linux in particular).
How ready is the 'net to transit to IPV6 in the future?
Let's say that most ISPs could satisfy the current demand :-) Even though there are relatively few high-performance implementations (read: ASIC-based IPv6 forwarding as Juniper has) out there, a modest amount of IPv6 traffic could be carried "natively" on most networks. If you need higher performance and don't have hardware forwarding for IPv6, you can always tunnel in IPv4 (or, shudder, MPLS) at the edges. You may also want to do this if you don't really need the IPv6 performance, but would like to protect the control plane of your production (IPv4) service from the additional CPU load (IPv6 traffic as a DOS on your RPs :-).
Should everyone be factoring in replacing big routers with IPV6 being the only reason?
Sure, provided everyone has infinite amounts of money, or the additional revenue from IPv6 justifies the investment. Honestly I don't think either is the case today for most of us, except where some form of public funding exists, for example through innovation/research subsidies or tax breaks for enterprises using IPv6.
Just curious on others' opinions on this. -- Simon.
* simon@limmat.switch.ch (Simon Leinen) [Tue 09 Jul 2002, 10:51 CEST]:
An interesting question is what it would take to support IPv6 on appliance-like routers such as IP-over-Cable or -xDSL CPE. In the retail space I actually see some interest in running IPv6, because it makes it much more feasible to operate a small network at home, and I have the impression that home users now lead enterprises in terms of IPv6-enabled OS deployment (Windows XP and Linux in particular).
It would also be nice if operators with end users started offering native multicast. Although the AMS-IX multicast initiative started off with lots of enthusiasm, two years later it seems to have died almost completely. Back to the subject of IPv6: One operator here in The Netherlands (60K+ ADSL customers, I think) operates a tunnel broker for its customers and hands out a /60 prefix on request. I heard it recently enabled its 400th customer IPv6 tunnel. -- Niels.
participants (7)
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Alif The Terrible -
Daniel Golding -
Jared Mauch -
Jun-ichiro itojun Hagino -
Niels Bakker -
Phil Rosenthal -
Simon Leinen