my view of windows 8 is not relevant in what I consider as disruptive.

Basically if you change someone's graphical interface its going to be disruptive regardless of how good that GUI may be, the only way it 'might' not be is if the staff have used that interface before. Even if in the long term is better it would be disruptive. Thats why I brought it up as you mentioned ipv6 would be disruptive and then I remembered you had rolled out windows 8.

Thats all

FWIW.

Plusnet have just announced: Plusnet IPv6 Trial Next Phase

http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,1211...

Pete

Hi,

You have mentioned that you consider CG-NAT as a terrible thing, and to be avoided at all costs. The problem is, CG-NAT will still be required even if you have an IPv6 address on your DSL connection when the ISP runs out of IPv4 addresses to give you. There will still be IPv4 internet that hasn't yet moved to IPv6, and that part is out of your ISP's control. To access that without a routable IPv4 address will require some kind of NAT. CG-NAT isn't aimed at giving connectivity to the IPv6 Internet from an IPv4 address. There are other transition mechanisms for that (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6_transition_mechanisms)

Enabling IPv6 on a service provider network is a lot more than just 'flicking a switch'. Addressing the core network is relatively simple, but LNS devices (Broadband termination from BTWS) are a lot more complicated. In a lot of cases, the main vendors don't support it, or have only recently released code that will allow it. Service providers typically do not run bleeding edge firmware on their routers if they can help it, as any bug/issue can affect service for thousands of customers. ISP's like their code well tested.

A few vendors and their products that work as LNS.

Juniper E/ERX - No IPv6 subscriber support
Juniper MX - Subscriber support for LNS only recently introduced (unsure about IPv6)
Redback SmartEdge - IPv6 subscriber support for LNS only recently introduced
Cisco ASR1k - IPv6 support for LNS subscribers works quite well.

You can see from this spread that actually, IPv6 code readiness is not really there yet; At least not across the board.

It is probably worth pointing out that google state that the US (among other countries) has a higher rate of adoption than most. I believe part of the reason they are able to do this is due to them being able to use BRAS termination for their subscribers (PPPoE from the customers premises to the ISP)

In the UK if using BTWS to provide the backhaul, you must use LNS termination (PPPoE/A from the customers premises to BT. PPP via L2TP from BT to the ISP). BRAS is a lot simpler to implement that LNS, and if you ever look at vendor road maps, you will usually see them roll out BRAS before LNS.

Other than the subscriber termination, there is the v6 enabled services that go along side it, such as DNS, NTP, Mail etc. The amount of services that a ISP needs to run in order for you to receive an internet connection would surprise you.

Finally, all this stuff takes time. Along with this, staff need to do build/upgrade/support the existing IPv4 network. Zen have recently extended their network into 200 exchanges, allowing them to lower the cost of their FTTC and ADSL products. When resourcing work, what will actually attract the majority of customers, and therefore is better to do? Work that reduces product costs and provides more services, or work that currently gives no noticeable benefit to the end user?

Work on deploying IPv6 within Zen I'm sure is progressing, but is likely slower than projects that will actually bring revenue into the business.

The views above are mine, and not that of my employer, past present or future etc, blah blah.

Dave

yeah crazy timing eh.

I think you have misunderstood me, cg-nat may still be required by some isp's yes because ipv6 adoption has been too slow, its now an "old" tech with poor takeup, its not "new".

However ipv6 is required to reduce future impact of cg-nat services, when ipv4 runs out and if ipv6 is not mainstream at that point then things get messy, with ipv6 takeup as low as it is its not looking like it will be mainstream any time soon.

Thanks for the info on the LNS terminations, but since aaisp are using ipv6 using BTw connections, any idea how they managing it?

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

any idea how they managing it?

AAISP use their own Firebrick product for their LNS termination. Maybe it doesn't scale to the size of BT retail etc.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

any idea how they managing it?

AAISP use their own Firebrick product for their LNS termination. Maybe it doesn't scale to the size of BT retail etc.

And look at the problems they have with it... (or at least used to have)

Crashes, random fail-overs etc. I'd rather take a tried & tested lump of hardware to head my my live customer connections.

I think their product is pretty stable now - certainly I am impressed by the capabilities suggested on the web page etc, and I think they like to do things right, but as James says, scale is a different issue.

I think you have misunderstood me, cg-nat may still be required by some isp's yes because ipv6 adoption has been too slow, its now an "old" tech with poor takeup, its not "new".

You're missing the point here. CG-NAT has nothing to do with IPv6, nor its uptake. Even AAISP who have supplied v6 for many years will need to use it if they run out of v4 address space.

An ISP could offer IPv6 only access when they run out of IPv4, however I suspect they would have a lot of angry customers unable to reach their favourite websites. CG-NAT is probably going to happen for all ISPs. Its just a matter of how long they can hold out on the addresses they have.

As a side note, RIPE (the organisation which supplies IP addresses to UK among others) ran out of IPv4 addresses in September 2012. All any ISP in the UK can now get is a /23 (512 addresses) which is hardly worth bothering with.

CG-NAT is for giving access to the IPv4 internet when you do not have a globally unique IPv4 address. Exactly the same as home routers typically work. You will get an RFC1918 address (typically 10.x.x.x or 192.168.x.x) and this is NATed to a routable address. In the case of CG-NAT however, a new block has been assigned for ISP use under RFC6598.

Most users likely won't actually notice in the short term. You have probably been using CG-NAT for years without realising. All mobile telephone providers in the UK that I'm aware of it use it to provide Internet access on handsets when connected via 3G etc.

Thanks for the info on the LNS terminations, but since aaisp are using ipv6 using BTw connections, any idea how they managing it?

As has been mentioned they use their own Firebrick. Unfortunately this is missing a bunch of features a lot of ISP's would require, such as OSPF, IS-IS, MPLS, and LDP. Also they are limited to 1GE ports, whereas a lot of the larger ISPs will be looking at 10GE and beyond.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

plusnet seem to be weird over it the same as zen however when BT roll it out plusnet will surely follow.

Plusnet ran a first customer trial which ended in July 2012.

They've recently been running a staff only trial and last week launched a second customer trial. A few users are now running on IPv6.