Speaking of Standards

There’s a fascinating exchange of views over at Ars Technica on the question of “Should there be a free market for IPv4 addresses?” Or, to put it another way:

Should companies be able to buy and sell their IPv4 address blocks?

If you recall, back in March Microsoft purchased a block of IPv4 addresses from Nortel for $7.5 million, and with the ongoing depletion of IPv4 addresses available from registries, this approach of purchasing IPv4 addresses may become more common.

The two sides of the debate are represented by:

• Timothy Lee: The case for a free market in IPv4 addresses
• Iljitsch van Beijnum: Trading IPv4 addresses will end in tears

Both make for interesting reading.

I definitely agree with Iljitsch that on a technical level, a free market for IPv4 addresses will lead to severe fragmentation of the overall routing tables… and just make a big mess in general. I also agree with Iljitsch that broader adoption of IPv6 would take care of these issues… but as strong an advocate as I am of IPv6, I’m skeptical that companies will move until they are forced to… or until it becomes extremely easy for them to do so.

That said, as I mentioned in our recent webinar about IPv6 and communication applications, I fully expect to see more of these kind of transactions occurring. There are simple economics – for many companies the current cost of transitioning to IPv6 (even just undertaking the planning) outweighs the current cost of purchasing IPv4 address blocks.

Will it evolve into the full-blown free market that Timothy Lee would like to see? I don’t know… I think at some point the cost of IPv4 address blocks will start to escalate to the point where IPv6 transition will suddenly seem like a good deal. So if a free market is to exist, I see it as a temporary situation at best (where “temporary” may admittedly be measured in years)

Regardless, it’s a discussion that needs to be had because this kind of exchange of IPv4 addresses is certainly one way that companies will try to stay on IPv4 for as long as possible.

What do you think? Should there be a free market for IPv4 addresses? Or should that be restricted and not permitted?

If you are a network geek (like me) who likes to understand how networks are put together, there’s a great Internet-Draft out about how IPv6 works in 3GPP mobile networks such as EPS and LTE. The draft is at:

http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-v6ops-3gpp-eps

And comes complete with ASCII network diagrams that include clouds!

Seriously, though, this is a well-done document that provides a great amount of insight into how 3GPP networks work in general and how IPv6 is used within the network. Definitely worth a read for anyone interested in IPv6 and/or the evolution of mobile networks.

Here’s the beginning of the introduction to give you the context:

IPv6 has been specified in the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standards since the early architectures developed for R99 General Packet Radio Service (GPRS). However, the support for IPv6 in commercially deployed networks remains low. There are many factors that can be attributed to the lack of IPv6 deployment in 3GPP networks. The most relevant one is essentially the same as the reason for IPv6 not being deployed by other networks as well, i.e. the lack of business and commercial incentives for deployment. 3GPP network architectures have also evolved since 1999 (since R99). The most recent version of the 3GPP architecture, the Evolved Packet System (EPS), which is commonly referred to as SAE, LTE or Release-8, is a packet centric architecture. The number of subscribers and devices that are using the 3GPP networks for Internet connectivity and data services has also increased significantly. With the subscriber growth numbers projected to increase even further and the IPv4 addresses depletion problem looming in the near term, 3GPP operators and vendors have started the process of identifying the scenarios and solutions needed to transition to IPv6.

This document describes the establishment of IP connectivity in 3GPP network architectures, specifically in the context of IP bearers for 3GPP GPRS and for 3GPP EPS. It provides an overview of how IPv6 is supported as per the current set of 3GPP specifications. Some of the issues and concerns with respect to deployment and shortage of private IPv4 addresses within a single network domain are also discussed.

Network World is out today with a report on a survey that they are headlining “Most IT pros say their websites, networks will support IPv6 by 2013“. The survey article and accompanying slide set do indeed have some fantastic numbers including that 65% of the respondents say they’ll have IPv6 running on their internal networks within two years.

As much as I am a huge advocate of IPv6, this survey data just seemed too good to be true… and indeed I have to wonder about the methodology. This sentence in the article is key to me (my emphasis added):

These IT professionals proclaimed strong support for IPv6 deployment in the online survey, which attracted 210 respondents.

How did Network World promote this survey? Was it through a general banner on their websites? Through email blasts or newsletters?

Or was it through links associated with IPv6-related articles? (In which case IPv6 advocates like me might read those articles and then follow the link to the survey.)

Don’t get me wrong… I’d love it if the data were really accurate… but that timeframe seems rather aggressive to me. It feels more like a number that might come out of a population of IPv6 enthusiasts/advocates.

Regardless, it’s good to see IPv6-related surveys out like this… perhaps it will encourage some other sites to run their own surveys. And perhaps this survey might also get some enterprises thinking about IPv6 so as not to be left behind!

How will IPv6 impact telecommunications? Out at eComm 2011 two weeks ago I gave a talk titled “How IPv6 Will Kill Telecom – And What We Need To Do About It” and while the video won’t be online for some time, my slides are available. Granted, the particular style of presenting I use means that the slides themselves may not be as valuable without the narration… but you may find the links and issues raised to be useful:

P.S. I have had a couple of people ask if I would be open to presenting a variation of this presentation for their company or conference… and my answer is that yes, I’m usually very open to giving presentations if my schedule allows. Webinars/webcasts are easy to line up… and delivering the presentation in person may certainly be an option. Please just contact me and we can figure out what makes sense.

If you’re looking for a humorous way to start off your Tuesday morning, here’s a video created using XtraNormal that someone shared in the IPv6 Enthusiasts group on LinkedIn:

Of course… you may only find this humorous if you are a network geek… (as I am).

So after all the buzz about “World IPv6 Day” on June 8th, how did the day turn out?

Well, the Internet didn’t break. In fact, for the vast majority of users, it was just another day on the Internet. I knew of a couple of folks who experienced slow access to sites, but they were very few. Arbor Networks had a great writeup on their blog: ‘World IPv6 Day: Final Look and “Wagon’s Ho!”‘ that included some great charts like this one showing the growth in IPv6 traffic during June 8th:

The folks over at Akamai were also monitoring IPv6 usage and provided this chart:

There was some good post-event media coverage – here is a sampling of the many articles I saw:

• CNET: IPv6: Come on in, the water’s fine (includes a number of interesting charts)
• Information Week: What Did IPv6 Day Teach Us?
• Financial Times: Internet survived IPv6 “test flight”

So what of the participants?

Many dropped their IPv6 support as soon as the 24 hours were up. But some didn’t.

Microsoft decided to keep IPv6 enabled for their XBox properties:

Given the preparations and success of World IPv6 Day, the Xbox team decided to maintain IPv6 support indefinitely for their Web properties: www.xbox.com, live.xbox.com and marketplace.xbox.com. For those properties in particular, the effort for World IPv6 Day delivered much of the necessary infrastructure required for permanent support.

Facebook, too, was pleased by the results and opted to leave their developer site dual-stack:

Based on the encouraging results, we’ve decided to leave our Developer site dual-stacked, supporting both IPv4 and IPv6. And we will continue to adapt our entire code base and tools to support IPv6.

Google noted the success of the day (in the update at the bottom of their post) and indicated that IPv6 access would still be available for some:

The test flight was a success. World IPv6 Day is over, and IPv6 access to Google services remains enabled only for users in the Google over IPv6 program. We carried about 65% more IPv6 traffic than usual, saw no significant issues and did not have to disable IPv6 access for any networks or services.

From my own point-of-view, I found that I was able to use IPv6 to go to various websites that day without any issue.

Overall, the comments I’ve seen can be summarized as this:

The good news is that enabling IPv6 didn’t break the user experience for those on IPv4.
The bad news is that not a whole lot of people were actually connecting over IPv6.

Still, it was useful in my mind to get people actually testing IPv6 and using it. I give the Internet Society folks a lot of kudos for the work they did to make the day the big “event” that it was for those of us in the tech community.

My one critique of ISOC, though, is that this kind of summary information is not yet available on the World IPv6 Day web site. In fact, looking at the site you would think the event is still coming up. Hopefully that will change soon.

Did you experience any issues with World IPv6 Day? Did you get any of your sites IPv6-enabled for that day? Or set up your home office or network with IPv6?

And so begins World IPv6 Day… technically it was to start at 00:00 UTC … which was 2 hours 40 minutes ago as I write this at 10:40pm US Eastern time.

And indeed, a dig aaaa www.google.com gives this result:

www.google.com.         558723  IN      CNAME   www.l.google.com.
www.l.google.com.       300     IN      AAAA    2001:4860:800c::67

and a dig aaaa www.facebook.com gives this result:

www.facebook.com.       30      IN      AAAA    2620::1c08:4000:face:b00c:0:3

The team at Facebook gets bonus points for being very creative in the IPv6 address they assigned to their site!

So we’re live!

Google and Facebook are both returning both A and AAAA records for IPv4 and IPv6…

… and so the experiment begins!

“World IPv6 Day” is tomorrow, June 8, 2011. Are you ready to participate?

Google, Facebook, Yahoo and hundreds of other sites are preparing to enable IPv6 on their main websites. For 24 hours, the main websites of those organizations will be accessible over both IPv4 and IPv6, rather than requiring a separate domain name like “ipv6.google.com” or “www.v6.facebook.com“.

The day will be a day to test out how well various websites work using IPv6… and what experiences users have in connecting over IPv6.

Would you like to join in the testing and experimentation?

To do so, you need to have IPv6 connectivity, naturally. You can go to either of these sites to see if you currently have IPv6 connectivity:

• www.test-ipv6.com
• www.ipv6-test.com

If you do have IPv6 connectivity, then you are all set to participate and will have no problem connecting to sites using IPv6.

If you do not, but would like to join in the experiment, here are two articles I wrote about how you can easily configure a home network to use IPv6 using the free service available at Tunnelbroker.net:

• HOW TO Configure IPv6 On Your Home Network Using an Apple AirPort or Time Capsule
• HOW TO Configure IPv6 On Your Home Network Using Tunnelbroker.net

I also have other information available on our IPv6 Resource Page including tutorials, videos, and more.

How does IPv6 impact communications applications? How does it affect the SIP protocol? What do you need to think about with regard to real-time communication over IPv6?

Courtesy of our new ability to upload longer videos to our YouTube account, I’m pleased to be able to bring you the recording of our Developer Jam Session last month on IPv6 and Communications Applications. While we uploaded WMV and MOV recordings of the session to that Jam Session web page, with YouTube you are now able to also view the session on mobile platforms and other devices. Enjoy!

Want to learn about how IPv6 affects telecommunications? Want to understand how the SIP protocol is impacted by IPv6? If so, join in this free webinar:

IPv6 and Telecom Networks
Thursday, June 2, 2011
1:00pm US Eastern

Registration is free.

The webinar is hosted by US Telecom and the description is:

The networks that make up the Internet and IP communications are in the middle of a sea-change with the transition to IPv6. What impact will IPv6 have on telecom and communications networks?

Join USTelecom and Voxeo for a look at the various challenges that telecom and broadband services providers face in keeping their communication services working while transitioning to IPv6.

I’ll be explaining briefly why there is all the attention on IPv6 then getting into the basics of IPv6 addressing. After a brief overview, I’ll then dive into how IPv6 affects the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and get into some technical detail. I’ll then wrap up with some resources about how to learn more and get started with IPv6 and finish with a Q&A session.

If you attended the Developer Jam Session I presented back in May on IPv6, I’m going to be covering basically the same material although with a vendor-neutral perspective (i.e. I won’t be explaining and demonstrating how Voxeo Prophecy and PRISM now natively support IPv6). Obviously the live Q&A session will be new, too, and I find the questions around IPv6 always quite fun to discuss.

Please feel free to join us at 1pm US Eastern tomorrow. Registration is free – and if you can’t join live the session will be archived and available for viewing on US Telecom’s website for 90 days. With World IPv6 Day coming up on June 8th, it’s a great time to learn about what is going on with IPv6!

P.S. And if you are interested in IPv6 in general, don’t forget to check out our IPv6 Resource Page at:

http://bit.ly/voxeoipv6