European ISP enables IPv6 for all?

Mailman List Mirror (Read Only)
1

In a recent Slashdot article (http://slashdot.org/articles/07/12/17/1451230.shtml) discussing IPv6, someone left a comment the read, in part "One of the largest IPSs (sic) in Europe turned on IPv6 to all 8 million users this week. They've done the right thing and made it opt-in for now, their customers have to go to their control panel web page and turn it on, but almost 50,000 people did in the first 24 hours."

Does anyone know which ISP the poster is talking about? Is there any truth to this at all?

Any feedback appreciated.

Sean Siler
IPv6 Program Manager
Microsoft

2

http://www.iliad.fr/presse/2007/CP_IPv6_121207.pdf

3

Thanks to all for your private replies - I have the answer now.

(It appears to be Free.fr, if you are interested.)

http://www.iliad.fr/en/presse/2007/CP_IPv6_121207_eng.pdf

Sean

Sean Siler|IPv6 Program Manager

4

I'm glad they managed to get in all the hype for v6 with little in the
way of reality though... nothing like making it simple for people to
get confused example:

"This connection system is backward compatible with the current fixed IPv4."

--or---

" Furthermore, IPv6 simplifies the configuration of devices when connected to
the Internet. It improves data security and supports quality of services."

how does it improve data security exactly?

-Chris
hurrah!

5

" Furthermore, IPv6 simplifies the configuration of devices when connected to
the Internet. It improves data security and supports quality of services."
how does it improve data security exactly?

attackers are daunted by the smoke and mirrors?

<sigh> this stuff is hard enough to roll without the hype.

randy

6

Apparently, from what I have gathered from other french people, Free has
rolled out a variation of 6to4 using their own prefix instead of the well
known 2002::/16. As they control their home gateway, this was fairly easy
for them to do and did not require much core infrastructure change. The
apparent benefit is that they control the routing of the return packets and
thus do not need to worry about packets going through Palo Alto, Switzerland
or Korea (well known 6to4 relays) on their way back from the 'native' IPv6
Internet...

   - Alain.

7

Back in 1994, it was expected to be true because v6 would mandate
IPsec, and v6 would be deployed long before the installed base of v4
machines would be upgraded to IPsec. Obviously, that's not what
happened; while IPsec was indeed late in coming, v6 was even later, so
the original belief has been OBE. The mythos, however, hasn't caught
up. Similar statements can be made about stateless autoconfig vs. v4
DHCP.

In a slightly more realistic vein, a huge address space makes life
harder for scanning worms. As Angelos Keromytis, Bill Cheswick, and I
have pointed out, "harder" is by no means equivalent to "impossible",
but the myth, new as it is, still propagates.

    --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb

8

how does it improve data security exactly?

Back in 1994, it was expected to be true because v6 would mandate
IPsec, and v6 would be deployed long before the installed base of v4
machines would be upgraded to IPsec. Obviously, that's not what
happened; while IPsec was indeed late in coming, v6 was even later, so
the original belief has been OBE. The mythos, however, hasn't caught
up. Similar statements can be made about stateless autoconfig vs. v4
DHCP.

Perhaps the concept also holds true because there's a
smaller target market for the moment, and attackers are
all about ROI. We've certainly seen this at other layers of
the stack. However, not sure I'd posit as such.

In a slightly more realistic vein, a huge address space makes life
harder for scanning worms. As Angelos Keromytis, Bill Cheswick, and I
have pointed out, "harder" is by no means equivalent to "impossible",
but the myth, new as it is, still propagates.

As will the worms and malware, I suppose, though perhaps
with more thought-out propagation vectors that employ not
only local prefix scanning, but nifty things like walking
ip6.arpa or the like for presumable denser host existence.
Then again, who needs self propagation, when client-side
attacks seem to be more than sufficient.

-danny

9

A self-selected group of victims really helps lower the reconnaissance opex, heh.

;>

10

There is an French ISP named Nerim who provides native IPv6 connexions
on xDSL links and dial-up (not much used) since 2002-2003. Mostly
everything from servers and core network is dual stack, and while the
ISP is not as large as today's Free.fr, it was the third DSL operator
in France by then.

XS4All (Netherlands) is providing the same service if I correctly remember.

11

Vassili Tchersky wrote:
[..]

XS4All (Netherlands) is providing the same service if I correctly remember.

They used to have a product called "PowerDSL", which did IPv6 over
PPPv6, but apparently due to changes in the infra they had to drop this.
XS4all does still, since about 2001 or so, provide a tunnelbroker to
their own users. Every user can simply go to the service.xs4all.nl site,
and view/modify their tunnel + subnet configuration there. Only static
tunnels are supported though (at least this is afaik).

Greets,
Jeroen

12

Vassili Tchersky wrote:
[..]

> XS4All (Netherlands) is providing the same service if I correctly remember.

They used to have a product called "PowerDSL", which did IPv6 over
PPPv6, but apparently due to changes in the infra they had to drop this.
XS4all does still, since about 2001 or so, provide a tunnelbroker to
their own users. Every user can simply go to the service.xs4all.nl site,
and view/modify their tunnel + subnet configuration there. Only static
tunnels are supported though (at least this is afaik).

It's kind of interesting that from 2001ish to current day and there is still
only a handful of service providers worldwide that seem to offer *any* kind
of support for IPv6.

After all the propaganda, is there actually any other major deployments in
the IPv6 space?

From the ipv6.org web site, I see "Most of today's internet uses IPv4, which

is now nearly twenty years old." - read as it works well!

" IPv4 has been remarkably resilient in spite of its age, but it is beginning
to have problems." - Really? Every network I know using IPv4 still works as
designed.

"Most importantly, there is a growing shortage of IPv4 addresses, which are
needed by all new machines added to the Internet." - I'm sure there's a lot
more ways around this - and I'm sure the NANOG archives have a lot of thought
food there.

"It also adds many improvements to IPv4 in areas such as routing and network
autoconfiguration." - I would really love to know what these are that DHCP etc
doesn't already do. I tried to check out the FAQ at http://faq.v6.wide.ad.jp/
but it wasn't reachable - maybe it needs IPv6 connectivity? As for routing
'improvements', doesn't more address space just give us more routes to handle?

"IPv6 is expected to gradually replace IPv4, with the two coexisting for a
number of years during a transition period." - so this 'transition period' has
been, what, 7 years so far? I'm still predicting that it'll be at least another
10 years before IPv6 amounts to much...

On a side note, does anyone currently have issues getting new address space
where it's operationally required? I don't know anyone first hand who has yet
to come across this issue...

13

Steven Haigh wrote:

Vassili Tchersky wrote:
[..]

XS4All (Netherlands) is providing the same service if I correctly remember.

They used to have a product called "PowerDSL", which did IPv6 over
PPPv6, but apparently due to changes in the infra they had to drop this.
XS4all does still, since about 2001 or so, provide a tunnelbroker to
their own users. Every user can simply go to the service.xs4all.nl site,
and view/modify their tunnel + subnet configuration there. Only static
tunnels are supported though (at least this is afaik).

It's kind of interesting that from 2001ish to current day and there is still
only a handful of service providers worldwide that seem to offer *any* kind
of support for IPv6.

After all the propaganda, is there actually any other major deployments in
the IPv6 space?

I wonder how your Martian hands look like, they must have many many fingers.

For a list of ISP's doing IPv6 check:

For a long long list of Japanese providers see:

As for all the ISP's who have received and are at least routing, check
GRH (Ghost Route Hunter :: SixXS - IPv6 Deployment & Tunnel Broker)

From the ipv6.org web site, I see "Most of today's internet uses IPv4, which
is now nearly twenty years old." - read as it works well!

That site is IMHO always quite out of date unfortunately.

Greets,
Jeroen

14

* Jeroen Massar:

For a list of ISP's doing IPv6 check:
FAQ : Connectivity (Tunnels and Subnets) : Where can I get native IPv6 / Which ISPs provide IPv6? :: SixXS - IPv6 Deployment & Tunnel Broker

Does PPPv6 still work on the T-DSL platform? 8-/

The list would be more convincing if it contained links to product
pages.

15

I'd say that the huge address space makes life impossible for scanning worms.

That doesn't mean that there can be no successful scanning at all with IPv6, but it needs to be highly targeted if you want results the same year, so just pumping random numbers in the destination address field like SQL slammer did so successfully doesn't cut it in IPv6.

16

* Florian Weimer wrote:

Does PPPv6 still work on the T-DSL platform? 8-/

Yes, it does.

sebastian

17

Florian Weimer wrote:

* Jeroen Massar:

For a list of ISP's doing IPv6 check:
FAQ : Connectivity (Tunnels and Subnets) : Where can I get native IPv6 / Which ISPs provide IPv6? :: SixXS - IPv6 Deployment & Tunnel Broker

Does PPPv6 still work on the T-DSL platform? 8-/

From what I understand it depends on the router/dslam/whateverthingy one
gets connected to. Some do, some don't is what I gathered.

The list would be more convincing if it contained links to product
pages.

Unfortunately not available for all of them.

If folks have references/updates/addons etc of course don't hesitate to
submit them, I'll be more than happy to list them.

Greets,
Jeroen

18

* Sebastian Abt:

* Florian Weimer wrote:

Does PPPv6 still work on the T-DSL platform? 8-/

Yes, it does.

Oh. What happened to the C10K PPPoE length field bug (CSCsd13298, if
I'm not mistaken)?

19

Sebastian Abt schrieb:

* Florian Weimer wrote:

Does PPPv6 still work on the T-DSL platform? 8-/

Yes, it does.

"sometimes, and sometimes not" would be more correct :slight_smile:

20

doesn't more address space just give us more routes to handle?

No. It only makes more possible prefixes. Migrating to IPv6 while keeping
the current (IPv4) routing and current business relations, there would be
somewhat less routes:

bigger address space -> bigger chunks -> less need to incrementally add
prefixes to the same place -> less prefixes

Andras