[AusNOG] Prediction: Google et. al. may artificially penalise IPv4 clients

[Mark Smith]

On 2 May 2017 09:42, "Tim Raphael" <raphael.timothy at gmail.com> wrote:

>So TLDR: Lots of fundamental things are broken.


I don't think that is the case.

Look at the stats links I posted. If things  were fundamentally broken
then deployment of IPv6 would be declining not increasing.

I don't disagree with the issues Geoff points out, however none of
those issues are preventing large deployments into the least tolerant
of end-user environments - residential end-users and mobile networks.
If something doesn't work, they complain about it and have no interest
in finding out why. Their user experience expectations are as simple
as it works or it doesn't, and if it doesn't they don't want it.

When I'm at home, I try very much to be a typical end user - to the
extent that when I've worked at a residential ISP I used to use a
standard user account, and only switched to a privileged login when I
needed to do something privileged. I try very hard to "eat my own (or
my organisation's) dog food".

My residential IPv6 environment is pretty much vanilla residential
IPv6 (native from Internode, nothing special to me about the service,
single Wifi LAN) and I expect IPv6 capable devices that I buy and use
to just work when I plug them in (3 generations of Chromecasts,
Chromebook, Android phones, Fedora Linux and occasionally Windows) .
They do.

The only thing that isn't vanilla is that I'm using OpenWRT rather
than vendor CPE firmware. I have the minimum configured on OpenWRT to
make IPv6 work in a manner that is the same as what a vendor CPE
firmware would have enabled - and I wouldn't actually recommend
OpenWRT for a normal user because the IPv6 configuration options in it
are actually a bit confusing.

I've had this setup for more than 5 years, and I now end up using IPv6
more than IPv4 - from my router's IPv4 and IPv6 firewall forward
counters:

IPv4 forward: 7.08 GB

IPv6 forward: 19.83 GB

After all of these years I may have finally just encountered what
might be an IPv6 related issue - I occasionally can't play some of the
Redbull channel videos on my Chromecasts, although they do play on my
phone. It hasn't be consistent thought, so I'm only starting to narrow
down what are obscure possibilities.


> There is no point waiting on the standards bodies as it will be an eternity until all of this is addressed so what is the pragmatic way forward?

Experiment with it. Doing nothing does nothing to overcome fears of
the unknown.


>In this scenario, I can well understand smaller networks being cautious but there are plenty of small and medium networks using v6 just fine at the moment.
>Perhaps they don’t feel the same pain as they take the simpler approach and not buy into some of the currently / apparently broken or more complex technologies.

>Either way, it still sounds like we have a very long way to do.


> - Tim


> On 2 May 2017, at 9:37 am, Geoff Huston <gih at apnic.net> wrote:
>
>
>> On 2 May 2017, at 8:20 am, Tim Raphael <raphael.timothy at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Given it’s been a while since our last discussion… what are the remaining roadblocks for ISPs taking up v6?
>>
>> Lack of funds is not a valid point.
>>
>> - Tim
>>
>
> You asked.
>
> IPv6 Packet Fragmentation handling is broken.
>
> Equally, IPv6 Extension Header handling is a mess.
>
> SLAAC and RDNSS and DHCP6 is a chaotic mess.
>
> Routing coverage is erratic.
>
> As long as you treat IPv6 kindly, use very small TCP MSS values, avoid UDP, pay care in delivering all ICMPv6 messages, run host MSS caches af necessary, and be ultra careful about routing both in terms of the completeness of the routes you see and the extent to which your routes get propagated then IPv6 will likely work just fine once you’ve got past the auto-config stage. But push it harder in any of these areas and you'll regret it.
>
> So I suspect for many folk it requires a level of loving care and technical attention that they are not willing or able to expend right now. I can well understand that, and I’m not willing to castigate anyone for still being cautious. Whether you deploy IPv6 today or tomorrow you can’t stop the ongoing task of cramming more stuff into IPv4 just yet. So if your engineering and tech assistance resources are limited, I can readily understand anyone who is still waiting just a bit longer. With a bit of luck we'll find solid ways to avoid these issues in the coming months and the entire task will then be a lot less forbidding than it is now. Or we won’t. Can't tell yet.
>
> Geoff
>
>
>
>
>

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