[6bone] separating IPv6 experimental from production traffic

[Bill Manning]

% > 	If we want things to work, we need to use them.
% Most of my traffic goes over v6.

	Hence you (and I) feel the pain of a system that works
	in a less robust mannor than the one we "left".  
	
% > 	For myself, I find that the term "production"
% > 	is vague at best.  I don't think we (as users
% > 	of v6 protocols) can dictate such a change.
% > 	A majority of my v6 peering/transit providers
% > 	are -UNWILLING- to run infrastructure in dual-stack
% > 	mode due to code/feature stability. 
% 
% Why should they? If I understand correctly, IIJ is offering
% commercial IPv6 service over a separate infrastructure.

	Not everyone can afford to pay IIJ rates.
	IIJ services are not available in my area.
	One of the promises of v6 was that -AS A TRANSITION-
	folks could run dual stack.  Not to pick, but
	the router vendors I've looked at do not have 
	similar code quality or feature sets between v4 and v6.
	I'm doing my part to leverage vendors to syncronize
	the feature sets and merge v4/v6 support.

% I agree "production" is vague. For me it means something like:
% recent software, no dozens of tunnels all over the world, no
% transit by small sites/ISPs, about the same number of transit
% upstreams as you have for v4, monitoring and management
% similar to v4.

	means different things to different people.
	so does "experimental" 

% At my previous job at SURFnet in the Netherlands we build a 10 Gbps
% dual stack network with GSR routers. As of October last year it's
% used daily by the Dutch research and university community. Although
% most traffic is v4, the network supports both v4 and v6.  Both v4
% and v6 are "production".

	Ok, JP and SURFnet.  And now the I2 network.  Waiting
	on  (telco/ISPs) in the US to join the party.
	As for me, I've been running dual-stack GSR code for
	about the same period of time. Don't use alot of the
	nifty bells/whistles since I'm a low-frills, bit-pipe
	only kind of shop. I don't have to deal w/ accounting,
	VPNs, QoS, RED... ad.nausa. that commercial providers
	do.  R&E use is distinctly different than commercial
	providers.  They need to be able tosupport AUP/SLA
	crap that we don't.                        

% > 	If we don't use(and fix) what we create, it will never
% > 	be used. 
% 
% More and more OSes run IPv6 out of the box. End users start using
% IPv6 and notice problems because there are too many routing problems
% on the 6bone. So they switch off IPv6 again. We are scaring people
% away from IPv6 because of the tunnel mess, old router software
% and sites that don't monitor the transit they are giving to everyone.

	Same was true with inital IPv4 deployment.

% 
% 	rvdp
% 


-- 
--bill