Internode may be alone for some time in IPv6 trial
- 13 November, 2009 12:33
IPv6 will take over from the legacy IPv4
Internode is going it alone in offering a trial of IPv6 services in native mode on its national ADSL network as other large ISPs report they won't be following suit in the near future.
Internode recently announced an IPv6 trial across the company's national network and provides concurrent IPv6 and IPv4 PPP access for any router or computer that supports it.
In the wake of shinking IPv4 space, there have been several calls for more adoption of IPv6, including from Internet pioneer, Vinton Cerf — but there has been little action to date.
And aside from Internode's trial, there doesn’t appear to be much concern among Australia's ISP community.
iiNet, Exetel, BigAir and iPrimus told Computerworld they have no immediate plans to undertake an IPv6 trial, although iPrimus said it is considering it. AAPT said an IPv6 trial was "under investigation".
Optus would not comment, while Telstra's responded: "Telstra has been planning for this transition for a number of years. We have a well-defined transition strategy and a comprehensive IPv6 implementation program underway". It would not clarify whether the implementation program would involve an IPv6 trial in the near term.
At a consumer, residential broadband level it is more a novelty than anything at this stage
"We have a massive roadmap in front of us of things to do. IPv6 to customers is on there, but it is well down the list in terms of priorities," Bader said. "We want to deliver things that are offering real value to customers — IPTV et cetera. That said, obviously as we build our networks, our core infrastructure, all of that is capable and most of the equipment that is shipped today is capable.
"It's really a question of us putting in the effort to manage the allocation of v6 address space and we will do that. I'd like to think that if it ever came down to a day where IPv4 ceases to exist, we need three to six months notice to modify all of our internal provisioning and management systems to cater for it. At this stage CPE is too expensive and there is no real demand. At a consumer, residential broadband level it is more a novelty than anything at this stage."
Bader also pointed to research conducted by Arbor Networks that states by the end of July 2008, tunnelled IPv6 traffic accounted for a tiny 0.0026 per cent of overall IPv4 traffic.
Research undertaken by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), however, points out that experts estimate IPv4 addresses will run out in 2011 or early 2012 based on current trends.
According to the OECD report, Australia is in the top five countries in terms of the number of allocated IPv6 addresses distributed, along with the US, Germany, France and Japan.
“Australia has taken a lead in deploying IPv6 networks. The Australian Government Information Management Office has a revised strategy for the transition to IPv6 which will see the Australian Government agencies being IPv6-capable by the end of 2012,” the report states.
Australia allocated 54 IPv6 prefixes in 2008. The only country to have added more IPv6 addresses was the US, which allocated 221 IPv6 addresses. Worldwide, a total of 1004 IPv6 addresses were added in 2008, according to the report.
Yet, the report says "there is a need for all network operators to upgrade to a new Internet scheme, Internet protocol version 6 (IPv6)."
Next: Internode's comments
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In Europe, few organisations have upgraded to IPv6 according to a survey commissioned by the European Commission.
Of 610 government, educational and other industry organisations surveyed throughout Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia, only 17 per cent had upgraded to IPv6. Broken out separately, ISPs fared poorly, with 92 per cent either not using IPv6 or reporting little IPv6 traffic on their networks.
There's a vicious circle: While IPv4 addresses remain plentiful, end-users see no reason to upgrade
"There's a vicious circle: While IPv4 addresses remain plentiful, end-users see no reason to upgrade," Internode network engineer, Mark Newton, said. "Which means they don't demand IPv6 features from their router vendors or ISPs. Which means IPv6 features and support doesn't make its way into network equipment. Which means the ISPs and end-users don't have the capability to deploy IPv6, which feeds back into the demand side of the cycle."
Newton said the first week of the trial had produced mixed results with take up on par with expectations.
"We've been moderately surprised with how straightforward it has been for customers to make it work, with a few deployment modes we hadn't investigated seeping out of the woodwork— for example, PPPoE passthrough — we didn't test that before the trial started," he said.
The trial has also exposed some router equipment bugs, Newton said, which was one of its specific goals. While he wouldn't expand further on what bugs and with which brands, Newton said the ISP was "working closely" with vendors to resolve them.
"The best thing we've found already, though, is buy-in from ADSL router vendors," he added. "There's an Open-WRT image that owners of various WRT-based routers can run to connect to our trial service relatively painlessly, and we're in discussion with a couple of other brand-name router vendors who are using our service as a test bed."
As a result, Internode says it is quietly confident we'll soon see ADSL equipment on the market which "interoperates painlessly with IPv6 without customers needing to get involved in the technical details".
"That'll be a game changer, removing one of the major barriers to widespread adoption," Newton said.
For more information on IPv6 check out http://www.ipv6.org.au/.
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