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Re: implications of 6to4 for v6coex



On Sep 16, 2008, at 18:39, Joe Abley wrote:

Perhaps you're asking the wrong question. Perhaps there's no reason for any operator not to deploy a 6to4 relay for use of their customers; perhaps the problem instead is that there is no clear reason in the eyes of those operators to bother.

Does it make the helpdesk phone ring less? Will it cause an average ISP to win more customers this month? I suspect the pragmatic answer to both is no.

Sigh. Again, here are the incentives providers have today for deploying 6to4 and Teredo relays:

+ To prevent P2P traffic between their customers using 6to4 at 2002::/16 and Teredo at 2001::/32 from having to be forwarded out of their networks for disinterested 3rd parties to relay on their behalf. Even for *IPv4-only* service providers, this either A) costs money for traffic across their borders that would otherwise not need to be carried (when the 3rd party relays are working), or B) prevents their IPv4 customers electing to use different IPv6-transition mechanisms on their own from communicating with one another (when the 3rd party relays are refusing to serve) and drives customers away to other providers where the relay service is reliable.

+ To wrest the control over the quality of service for their native- IPv6 customers communicating with 2002::/16 and 2001::/32 destinations on the public Internet away from the disinterested (and potentially hostile) 3rd parties who operate the relays advertised to them.

Despite these incentives, service providers are balking at deploying relays, and not merely for financial and practical reasons. Some have privately told me their technical objections to the standards themselves, which I have tried to relate here. (Sadly, the V6OPS minutes from the Philadelphia and Dublin meetings don't seem to be posted where I can find them, otherwise I would link to where I remember Alain Durand's remarks in the V6OPS session about how private 6to4 and Teredo relays cannot be deployed in a practical fashion.)

No, I don't imagine that 6to4 and Teredo traffic *currently* costs many providers enough money, or lost business, or help desk calls to justify the expense of deploying the relays (though, with the recent release of uTorrent 1.8, I suspect that may change). However, some providers certainly *do* have technical objections.


--
james woodyatt <jhw@apple.com>
member of technical staff, communications engineering