Re: IPv6 Transit?

* Jeroen Massar · * Mon Apr 10 12:08:41 2006

On Mon, 2006-04-10 at 16:25 +0100, Mat Sharpe wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Does anyone have any info on IPv6 deployment at the Tier-1 / Tier-1.5 level?
> 
> We are multi-homed to both Level3 and Abovenet in the UK and Level3 only
> in the US.

The big question with IPv6, from a provider perspective, is of course:
what kind of address space do you have and if none what kind do you
require. Or otherwise put: how do you want to 'multihome' ("oh not that
discussion again" ;)

> Level3 did have a promising sounding beta program last year but that
> seems to have stalled. Abovenet apparently have no schedule to deploy v6
> at the moment.

I haven't seen a connection request from Level3 towards GRH yet, thus I
think it is indeed mostly non-existent (correct me if I am wrong ;).
I do hope for them they resolve that sooner or later though.

> I would like to be able to v6 enable our network but without a transit
> provider that’s going to prove a bit tricky.

Try to get native connectivity where possible, when not, you can always
throw a tunnel to the upstream. Do try to keep your tunnel to match up
with your existing infrastructure as closely as possible. Also see
http://ip6.de.easynet.net/ipv6-minimum-peering.txt for more details on
that subject. Doc is already becoming of age but works pretty well.

Next to that you might want to check out a list like:
http://lists.cluenet.de/mailman/listinfo/ipv6-ops
which contains a good deal of of the global IPv6 operational folks,
usually nice and quiet but when you yell you will get an answer.

> Any thoughts appreciated!

Check for yourself, who has at least some connectivity and what kind of
routes they are carrying, which can tell things about the connectivity
they provide by looking at GRH: http://www.sixxs.net/tools/grh/

I know that a number of folks at least had good experiences with amongst
others (alpha order): Cable & Wireless (1273), Easynet (4589), Global
Crossing (3549), NTT (2914), Sprint (6175), Tiscali (3257), UPC/Aorta
(6830), Verio (2914).

Most of these you can see and checkup in GRH. Of course real-life
experience can only be told by the folks actually buying their services
also a lot depends on where one is located.

> P.S. I hope I’m not about to re-start the who is/is not a Tier-1 /
> Tier-2 argument! :)

Just tie them together into the Internet and all is fine ;)

Greets,
 Jeroen