IPv6 woes - RFC

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1

Hi,

Does anyone have any recommendation for a viable IPv6 tunnel broker / provider in the U.S.A. /other/ /than/ Hurricane Electric?

I reluctantly just disabled IPv6 on my home network, provided by Hurricane Electric, because multiple services my wife uses are objecting to H.E.'s IPv6 address space as so called VPN or proxy provider. Netflix, HBO Max, Pandora, and other services that I can't remember at the moment have all objected to H.E.

Disabling IPv6 feels *SO* *WRONG*! But fighting things; hacking DNS, null routing prefixes, firewalling, etc., seems even more wrong.

Is there a contemporary option for home users like myself who's ISP doesn't offer native IPv6?

Please consider this to be a Request for Comments and suggestions.

Thank you and have a nice day / weekend / holiday.

2

Hi,

Does anyone have any recommendation for a viable IPv6 tunnel broker / provider in the U.S.A. /other/ /than/ Hurricane Electric?

SixXS shut down 4 years ago, to get ISPs to move their butts... as long as there are tunnels, they do not have a business case.

See also Sunset :: SixXS - IPv6 Deployment & Tunnel Broker and the "Call Your ISP for IPv6" thing in 2016: Call Your ISP for IPv6 - SixXS Wiki along with plans.

You people keep on giving money to ISPs that are not providing the service you want.

I reluctantly just disabled IPv6 on my home network, provided by Hurricane Electric, because multiple services my wife uses are objecting to H.E.'s IPv6 address space as so called VPN or proxy provider. Netflix, HBO Max, Pandora, and other services that I can't remember at the moment have all objected to H.E

Tunnels are VPNs

So, that makes sense that services that need to 'protect their IP' (silly property) because they did not figure out people might live anywhere in the world might want to pay for things and receive service... [sic]

IPv6 tunnels where meant as a transition mechanism, as a way for engineers to test IPv6 before it was wide spread.

Deploying IPv6 is easy, and due to IPv4-squeeze (unless you have slave monopoly money and can just buy 2% of the address space), you could have spent the last 25 years getting ready for this day. And especially in the last 5 - 10 years, deploying IPv6 has been easy, due to all the work by many many many people around the world in testing and actively deploying IPv6. Of course there are still platforms that don't support DHCPv6 for instance, but things are easy, stable and often properly battle tested.

Disabling IPv6 feels *SO* *WRONG*! But fighting things; hacking DNS, null routing prefixes, firewalling, etc., seems even more wrong.

Is there a contemporary option for home users like myself who's ISP doesn't offer native IPv6?

As this is NANOG.... and people on the list are ISPs and it is 2021, thus IPv6 being 25+ years old, the best that is left to do is:

Go Jared!

Greets,
Jeroen

3

Jeroen,

You people keep on giving money to ISPs that are not providing the service you want.

Not everyone has the luxury of picking their ISP, and the common consumer doesn’t know or care about IPv6. They want Netflix to work and that’s it.

Ryan

4

Jeroen,

> You people keep on giving money to ISPs that are not providing the service you want.

Not everyone has the luxury of picking their ISP,

But this list is NANOG.... Network Operators. We are the ISPs....

and the common consumer doesn't know or care about IPv6.

And they indeed should not have to care. Good that this is not a consumer list, or a ISP complaint line (though, I guess complaining about peering or broken connectivity is in the charter)

They want Netflix to work and that's it.

They thus have no need for IPv6, which was the question...

Netflix works mostly fine over IPv4 (or heck CGN as that is what one is likely headed to if your ISP did not get chunks of free IPv4 address space), it is actually still IPv6 where they sometimes have a few PMTU blackholes... :wink: [though, have not noticed one in a while now]

Greets,
  Jeroen

5

* ryan@rkhtech.org (Ryan Hamel) [Sat 04 Sep 2021, 23:04 CEST]:

Not everyone has the luxury of picking their ISP, and the common consumer doesn't know or care about IPv6. They want Netflix to work and that's it.

We just had a 100+ post thread about Netflix not working because CGNs were misclassified as VPN endpoints.

  -- Niels.

6

According to Jeroen Massar via NANOG <jeroen@massar.ch>:

Jeroen,

> You people keep on giving money to ISPs that are not providing the
service you want.

Not everyone has the luxury of picking their ISP,

But this list is NANOG.... Network Operators. We are the ISPs....

Well, some of us are. I have a choice of an excellent local fiber ISP that
does not offer IPv6 or Spectrum cable which is generally awful but does have v6.
So I use a tunnel.

I have asked my ISP about IPv6 and their answer is that that they're not opposed to
it but since I am the only person who has asked for it, it's quite low on the list
of things to do.

R's,
John

7

I have asked my ISP about IPv6 and their answer is that that they’re not opposed to
it but since I am the only person who has asked for it, it’s quite low on the list
of things to do.

Sounds like a consulting opportunity :slight_smile:

Thank you
jms

8

Supporting the routing and forwarding of IP addresses is just about the most basic thing any ISP should do.

If that is low on their to-do list, what else could they possibly be doing?

Mark.

9

Counting all the profit they make from a captive audience with no competition? :wink:

-A

10

SixXS shut down 4 years ago, to get ISPs to move their butts... as long as there are tunnels, they do not have a business case.

I saw that.

See also Sunset :: SixXS - IPv6 Deployment & Tunnel Broker and the "Call Your ISP for IPv6" thing in 2016: Call Your ISP for IPv6 - SixXS Wiki along with plans.

I have contacted my ISP and inquired about IPv6 one or more times every year that I've been using them.

You people keep on giving money to ISPs that are not providing the service you want.

Are you talking generally or are you using me as an example (read: scapegoat)? -- It's okay if you are. I'd like to delve further into this idea.

I have three ISPs in my town of just shy of 100k people within an hour drive of the largest city in the state of more than 700k people.

  - Municipal fiber - 1 Gbps - IPv4 only - $50 / month
  - Local cable co. - ~100 Mbps - IPv4 and IPv6 - for $100 / month
  - ILEC xDSL - ~50 Mbps - why would I look - for $100 month

There may be cellular Internet options, but those aren't ... economical, especially for streaming.

Of those three which would you choose?

So ... I think I'm in quite the same position as John L. is.

Tunnels are VPNs

I concede the technical point and move on.

So, that makes sense that services that need to 'protect their IP' (silly property) because they did not figure out people might live anywhere in the world might want to pay for things and receive service... [sic]

I agree there is some questionable ... /thought/ going on somewhere. -- I'm reluctant to call it /logic/.

I agree that some people are trying to circumvent geographical restrictions.

However, my wife and I are not. We want to access content that's for the address we have on file with the companies, that we have service at, and that we receive the paper bills at. -- As I've stated before in other threads, I believe that companies are capable of adding 1 + 1 + 1 to get 3. If they /wanted/ to. As such, I can only surmise that they do not /want/ to correlate the multiple addresses and allow us to view content for the same market.

IPv6 tunnels where meant as a transition mechanism, as a way for engineers to test IPv6 before it was wide spread.

And seeing as how I can't get IPv6 natively from multiple providers that I've worked with in the last 20 years, I can only surmise that we as an industry are still transitioning from single stack to dual stack.

Deploying IPv6 is easy, and due to IPv4-squeeze (unless you have slave monopoly money and can just buy 2% of the address space), you could have spent the last 25 years getting ready for this day. And especially in the last 5 - 10 years, deploying IPv6 has been easy, due to all the work by many many many people around the world in testing and actively deploying IPv6. Of course there are still platforms that don't support DHCPv6 for instance, but things are easy, stable and often properly battle tested.

And yet here we are.

As a consumer I have no effective influence.

As this is NANOG.... and people on the list are ISPs and it is 2021, thus IPv6 being 25+ years old, the best that is left to do is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASXJgvy3mEg

And that's arguably what my city did. They got together and installed municipal fiber. Save for the lack of IPv6, it wins on all counts; faster, cheaper, better customer service, and other non-technical perks. Just no IPv6. Hence why I have historically augmented my municipal GPON with an H.E. IPv6 tunnel. -- In fact, I am going to continue with said H.E. IPv6 tunnel, just without advertising it to the network (RA / DHCPv6). I will have to statically configure IPv6 on things that I want to use it on. The rest of the home network will be IPv4 only.

I feel like 1995 called and want's their single stack Internet back. <ASCII tear>

So, Jeroen, what would you recommend that people like John L. and myself do?

11

Municipal fiber. Which is the point, you cannot capitalise offering
IPv6, so offering it is bad for business. People who have adopted IPv6
have eaten into their margins for no utility.
I view IPv6 as the biggest mistake of my career and feel responsible
for this horrible outcome and I do apologise to Internet users for
it. This dual-stack is the worst possible outcome, and we've been here
over two decades, increasing cost and reducing service quality. We
should have performed better, we should have been IPv6 only years ago.

I wish 20 years ago big SPs would have signed a contract to drop IPv4
at the edge 20 years from now, so that we'd given everyone a 20 year
deadline to migrate away.
20 years ago was the best time to do it, the 2nd best time is today.
If we don't do it, 20 years from now, we are in the same position,
inflating costs and reducing quality and transferring those costs to
our end users who have to suffer from our incompetence.

12

Municipal fiber.

:wink:

Which is the point, you cannot capitalise offering IPv6, so offering it is bad for business. People who have adopted IPv6 have eaten into their margins for no utility.

I don't understand. :-/

I view IPv6 as the biggest mistake of my career and feel responsible for this horrible outcome and I do apologise to Internet users for it.

*blink* ... *blink*

First, thank you. I say that sincerely from and end user point of view feeling like I'm between a rock and a hard place, one of which is closing in.

Second, I can't say that similar thoughts haven't crossed my mind.

This dual-stack is the worst possible outcome, and we've been here over two decades, increasing cost and reducing service quality. We should have performed better, we should have been IPv6 only years ago.

I remember LAN networking back in the '90s where multiple / mixed protocols was a Bad Thing™. I view IPv4 and IPv6 as tantamount to the same (or at least very similar) thing. What's worse is that IPv4 and IPv6 have extremely similar sounding names. Though I think in some ways that IPv4 and IPv6 are effectively as technically different from each other as IP(v4) and IPX. Though at least they had the decency to have more different names.

I wish 20 years ago big SPs would have signed a contract to drop IPv4 at the edge 20 years from now, so that we'd given everyone a 20 year deadline to migrate away.

Hindsight is 20/20 for a while. Then ... bit rot.

20 years ago was the best time to do it, the 2nd best time is today. If we don't do it, 20 years from now, we are in the same position, inflating costs and reducing quality and transferring those costs to our end users who have to suffer from our incompetence.

Sadly, I think that we are back to the multi-protocol days of old. And I believe that we are going to be stuck here for much of my career. :frowning:

13

In fact, I am going to continue with said H.E. IPv6 tunnel, just without advertising it to the network (RA / DHCPv6). I will have to statically configure IPv6 on things that I want to use it on.

There we get to the heart of things.

The problem is not with IPv6 or your ISP (*), but with the Netflix software.
Doing happy eyeballs and selecting an IP address out of the ones available that they *then* reject because they don’t like it: beyond broken, just plain stupid.
Netflix should be using only those IP addresses that it likes (**).

Grüße, Carsten

(*) Well, an ISP that does not offer 128-bit IP *is* a problem, but not the one that led to this thread.

(**) if it needs to deal in address liking at all, which is also fundamentally broken, but seems to be an addiction of their specific industry.

14

Well, with no more IPv4 to route and no IPv6 to deliver, those profits won’t be lasting many more years. Mark.

15

I have asked my ISP about IPv6 and their answer is that that they're not opposed to
it but since I am the only person who has asked for it, it's quite low on the list
of things to do.

Supporting the routing and forwarding of IP addresses is just about
the most basic thing any ISP should do.

If that is low on their to-do list, what else could they possibly be doing?

$DAYJOB (at a business SP) is much busier installing more VPNs in the form of SDWAN than anything IPv6 related. There is a hell of a lot more customer demand for tools that route packets with finer control than just dest-based routing, not to mention the security add-ons.

The fact that folks can achieve multi-homed Internet connectivity without the financial burden of a /24 helps SDWAN's case. Turns out Mom and Pop, and even John Q. down the street, wants fast failover in case of circuit trouble just like the big boys.

That said, I do hear prospects and customers asking for IPv6 more often now than a year ago. But it's nowhere near the popularity of SDWAN: It's gone from maybe 2-4 requests per year in 2019 to 2-4 requests per quarter today.

Sorry, the market *still* doesn't care much about IPv6. Believe me, I hope people will continue getting interested, but I'm done holding my breath.

Maybe we should collectively focus instead on raising the default MTU for the Internet to 2000 bytes to accommodate all these tunnels. :wink:

Mark.

-Brian

16

There we get to the heart of things.

The problem is not with IPv6 or your ISP (*), but with the Netflix software.

Hum....

Doing happy eyeballs and selecting an IP address out of the ones available that they *then* reject because they don’t like it: beyond broken, just plain stupid.

I feel like that might be conflating a couple of things; the selection of $SERVICE's destination IP address, and the $CLIENT's inherent source is coming from.

The $SERVICE can choose any number of destination IP addresses. The $CLIENT only has minimal control over which protocol is used; IPv4 or IPv6.

I do feel like the $SERVICE could rely on something a bit more intelligent than DNS such that they make a more informed decision based on the $CLIENT's inherent source address(es).

Netflix should be using only those IP addresses that it likes (**).

I don't know if it's the case or not, but I believe that simple DNS based name resolution tends to be largely ignorant of knowledge of the $CLIENT's IP address. -- Yes, there are some options, but those tend to take us way off into the weeds.

(*) Well, an ISP that does not offer 128-bit IP *is* a problem, but not the one that led to this thread.

Agreed.

(**) if it needs to deal in address liking at all, which is also fundamentally broken, but seems to be an addiction of their specific industry.

First: I like the "seems to be an addition of their specific industry".

Second: I think that there are technological solutions that would present a better end user experience. E.g. serve a page / redirect that sends the client to an IPv4 only destination. Or at the very least provide a more graceful UX that briefly describes the problem instead of the service falling over leaving the end user -> consumer -> paying customer holding the ball and wondering what's wrong. In many cases, the end user -> consumer -> paying customer is quite likely the party least equipped / ill-equipped to deal with the ""problem. Especially when the so called problem is really something that the $SERVICE provider dislikes and is not a real technological problem preventing communications.

17

Saku Ytti <saku@ytti.fi> writes:

I view IPv6 as the biggest mistake of my career and feel responsible
for this horrible outcome and I do apologise to Internet users for
it. This dual-stack is the worst possible outcome, and we've been here
over two decades, increasing cost and reducing service quality. We
should have performed better, we should have been IPv6 only years ago.

I believe this is slowly sinking in among the technology evangelists and
geeks who managed to drive the half-assed dual-stack transition a decade
or two ago. No one will argue for dual-stack anymore.

So where does that put us in a decade or two? Which protocol is
optional?

Bjørn

18

* bjorn@mork.no (Bjørn Mork) [Sun 05 Sep 2021, 18:24 CEST]:

So where does that put us in a decade or two? Which protocol is optional?

The one that costs money. You can already see this in mobile networks.

  -- Niels.

19

$DAYJOB (at a business SP) is much busier installing more VPNs in the form of SDWAN than anything IPv6 related. There is a hell of a lot more customer demand for tools that route packets with finer control than just dest-based routing, not to mention the security add-ons.

My question wasn't serious, if you've been around long enough :-).

Sorry, the market *still* doesn't care much about IPv6.

I doubt it's me (or those who have deployed IPv6) that will be sorry, in the long run.

Mark.

20

You will join the IPv6 train whenever you do.

I don't waste anymore time asking people to deploy it. I'm better off spending my time drinking wine.

Mark.