[6bone] separating IPv6 experimental from production traffic

[Pekka Savola]

On Thu, 22 Aug 2002, Gert Doering wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 22, 2002 at 04:17:46PM +0300, Pekka Savola wrote:
> > On Thu, 22 Aug 2002, Gert Doering wrote:
> > > "Full transit to everybody" was a good idea to get a pretty tightly 
> > > meshed IPv6 network into place, which is *good* because it means that
> > > you have (typically) only few AS hops to traverse - and thus fewer 
> > > networks in between that can mess up your routing.
> > 
> > And quality (or lack thereof) is equally indeterminate everywhere; as-path
> > length tells *nothing* about optimal paths, ...
> 
> Of course.  But if you have *enough* peerings, you'll be able to reach
> most networks in a maximum of 2 hops - and if you then apply some 
> MED fiddling to mark "slow" tunnels, you can achieve pretty good results.

This leads to an "arms race"; everyone will need to get even more tunnels, 
leading to even tighter spaghetti.

I don't think having to do manual fiddling should be necessary, but that's 
life I suppose.

> > Hierarchy is good.
> 
> Hierarchy isn't too bad *iff* there are major differences between 
> participants.

True, that helps in organization.
 
> As long as none of my upstream ISPs *offer* IPv6 connectivity, I don't 
> see any reason why some of the ASes out there should be "further up"
> or "further down" in the hierarchy than we are.

Have you asked them from IPv6 connectivity?  Have others, also customers 
in that upstream, asked for that?  Perhaps IPv6 availability should be 
given as one decisive factor when evaluating proposals (we certainly do 
that).

Native is not necessary, tunneling would work just fine too.
 
> I see this as a market issue.  As soon as someone is actually willing to
> spend money on *good* IPv6 connectivity, there is an incentive to avoid 
> routing over trans-continental (or even international) tunnels, and things
> will unravel on their own.

Well, not necessarily spending money, but *NOT* spending money on
upstreams that do not offer anything wrt. IPv6.  That'll send just the
right kind of signal to ISP's: that they should offer basic IPv6 services
if they want customers.
 
> Of course I'm all for adding native peerings, dropping tunnels to
> non-responsive peers (or to some that have a dendency to blackhole 
> things), and so on.  But I don't expect a change to a hierarchically 
> organized network of purely native links "really soon now".

Well, I'm a doubtful "6bone" as such will ever evolve into that.  People
who have native links & v6-enabled transits etc. will just start operating
"production" networks.  And then they either shut down connections to
6bone completely (to avoid problems), or give the routes learned from
there the least preference.

-- 
Pekka Savola                 "Tell me of difficulties surmounted,
Netcore Oy                   not those you stumble over and fall"
Systems. Networks. Security.  -- Robert Jordan: A Crown of Swords