Ipv6 Sponsorship Proposal

Title: IPv4 to IPv6 experimental gateway and 1M native IPv6 bridge between APE & WIX

SUMMARY

CityLink approached InternetNZ with a proposal which Andy Linton presented to the Technical Committee on the 21st of November and has now submitted further detail via e-mail and telephone discussion (Appendix 1),

New Zealand has no native IPv6 link provided by any Network Provider between Auckland and Wellington. All IPv6 traffic between AKL and WGN must currently trombone through IPv4 tunnels via the United States. All other IPv6 traffic between parties who do not directly peer with each other using IPv6 at route servers at WIX or APE must also tunnel all IPv6 traffic via the United States.

This proposal enables experimental New Zealand IPv6 traffic whether native or tunneled (through IPv4) to be (theoretically) routed via either APE or WIX directly to other IPv6 New Zealand network nodes.

This facility will enable parties peering at WIX and APE to “experiment” using native IPv6 transit within and between Auckland and Wellington and will avoid any IPv6 traffic between these destinations transiting through the United States. This will reduce real-time latency from >300ms to 1-10ms for local traffic and avoid inducing excessive latency delays which may indirectly prejudice management perceptions of IPv6.

This facility will be jointly branded CityLink and InternetNZ :

InternetNZ will fund the build by CityLink of 2 (two) Debian based IPv6/IPv4 gateway / bridge devices. CityLink will install, host and maintain these gateway/peering/bridge systems as their contribution.

InternetNZ will fund a 1 (one) megabit IPv6 native link between APE and WIX for 3 * 2 = 6 months. No commercial traffic will be permitted.

CityLink will provide a website with information on how to use this experimental facility as well as (5 min) real time graphical reports such as MRTG and Beacon which will be published on CityLink with joint InternetNZ naming rights. InternetNZ will be permitted to display this real-time charting information within InternetNZ’s website. These charts display useful dynamic information showing the latency, load and activity on the various network elements such as the IPv4 gateways and metro link.

Objectives

1. Ensure IPv6 is available to all New Zealand users Asap.

2 Connect APE and WIX.

3 Support those networks and organizations working to implement InterOP trials of IPv6

Description/ justification

CityLink build the Linux Debian IPv4-IPv6 gateways (local tunnel terminators) and IPv6 inter-city link.

InternetNZ will fund the build and sponsor the IPv6 native data-link for 6 months.

The IPv4 to IPv6 local gateways will be accessible for non-commercial use by the New Zealand Internet community.

All New Zealand IPv6 users will have native transit access within and between WIX and APE.

InternetNZ will joint naming rights and have access to use and display graphical performance information.

IPv6 Multicast, VOIP and IPSEC trials can be undertaken using this base.

Financial

Details-

Recommendations

The Technical Committee support this project be approved as:

It enables InternetNZ to show it is committed to technical innovation

It is unique, no public accessible commercial or non commercial native IPv6 link exists between APE and WIX network.

It is complimentary with InterOP as it provides an open platform to commence experimentation and trials

Michael Sutton

Appendix 1:

> -----Original Message-----

> From: Andy Linton [mailto:asjl@citylink.co.nz]

> Sent: Saturday, December 06, 2003 04:24

> To: Michael Sutton

> Subject: IPv6 to IPv4 gateways in Auckland and Wellington

>

>

> As discussed with the technical committee of InternetNZ a couple of

> weeks ago we'd like to try to get some support from InternetNZ to make

> it possible for those in New Zealand who are interested in

> experimenting

> with IPv6 to exchange IPv6 traffic more easily.

>

> Why is this important? If we have a pool of people in the industry who

> understand how IPv6 is configured, routed and what advantages and

> disadvantages it brings, then we can make informed technical choices

> about if/when it should be deployed.

>

> At present no New Zealand ISP seems to be offering native IPv6 transit

> within NZ or to the backbone of the IPv6 Internet. Those who have been

> experimenting have done so by using the technique of

> encapsulating IPv6

> traffic within IPv4 streams (usually known as tunneling). These

> mechanisms are well understood and freely available for

> recent versions

> of Linux, FreeBSD, Microsoft Windows and MacOS (see

> http://www.freenet6.net/download.shtml for more details).

>

> There are a number of entities on the net who provide free access to

> tunnel endpoints outside New Zealand. For example:

>

> Freenet6 (http://www.freenet6.net/)

> Hurricane Electric (http://tunnelbroker.net/)

> AARNet (http://broker.aarnet.net.au/)

>

> While it is possible for those experimenting to construct tunnels to

> these endpoints, the round trip times from one system in New

> Zealand to

tt; another perhaps only a few blocks away in the same city can be very

> large. 'ping' times of several seconds are not atypical.

>

> To try to create an environment which removes the need for local NZ

> traffic to leave the country, Citylink have built and installed IPv6

> route servers at the Auckland Peering Exchange (APE) and Wellington

> Internet Exchange (WIX) and are offering this at no charge to those

> already peering with the APE and WIX IPv4 route servers.

>

> IPv6 experimenters who are connected to the APE and WIX can arrange a

> tunnel with one of the above mentioned tunnel providers (this list is

> not exhaustive), obtain IPv6 address space from their

> provider and then

> announce it to other IPv6 Exchange particpants. This allows a huge

> optimisation in traffic paths. In recent experiments between VUW and

> Citylink we reduced the IPv6 ping times from many hundreds of

> milliseconds to less than 1 millisecond.

>

> While this is good for those attached directly to the APE and WIX, we

> believe there are those who want to experiment with IPv6 who are not

> connected in this way. Many of the univerisities and other tertiary

> institutions and many enthusiasts with home connections are

> missing the

> opportunity.

>

> To help remove this barrier would like to construct two IPv6 tunnel

> terminators and attach them at then APE and WIX exchanges.

> These servers

> would peer with the APE and WIX IPv6 route servers and allow

> connectivity between the directly connected groups and the IPv6

> tunnelers. By creating these local endpoints for tunnels we would

> optimise traffic flows within NZ so that poor IPv6 performance was not

> an issue and help keep costs down for those experimenting.

>

> NZ experimenters would still go to one of the tunnel

> providers mentioned

> but in addition would create a second tunnel to an NZ tunnel

> endpoint as

> well. Traffic between local users would then be passed via the local

> tunnel. This is all perfectly doable - my home network is

> connected via

> such tunnels to Freenet6, AARNet's tunnel broker and to the Citylink

> office. IPv6 traffic for the office does not go off via Australia or

> worse via Freenet6's endpoint on the US East Coast!

>

> We have considered a commercially available platform such as the one

> used by Freenet6 and AARNet but have rejected these on grounds of cost

> (US$25000 per box). We believe that initially the numbers of

> participants will be relatively small and will be knowledgeable people

> who will not need their hands held. We feel that this work can be done

> using relatively cheap PC hardware running Open Source Software - we

> would propose using Debian Linux.

>

> As well as running the service as a public good, we'd also monitor the

> traffic flows and present graphs and other stats of how the service

> goes. We won't be offering 99.999% availability or out of

> hours support

> etc.

>

> We'd also like to run a small native IPv6 link between the APE and WIX

> so that the Auckland and Wellington islands are linked (see attached).

> This would also carry traffic from the 'tunnelers' who connect from

> different parts of the country. The hardware that provides the tunnel

> endpoints can easily handle this function as well.

>

> So how can InternetNZ help?

>

> 1) We'd like you to sponsor the hardware needed - we'll come back with

> exact numbers once you say yes but our estimate is that we can put

> hardware together for this for between $1500 and $2000 per box.

>

> 2) We'd like you to sponsor a 1M link between APE and WIX for IPv6

> experimental traffic. We don't think this should be on an indefinite

> basis - we think that an initial period of six months with a review of

> the viability of the experiment in the middle of that period

> would be a

> good place to start. Hopefully this experiment will be overtaken by

> other events such as the NGI and the Interoperability Trials but

> experience gained here will be invaluable as those projects proceed.

>

> Citylink already buys bandwidth that we can run native IPv6 traffic on

> between the APE and WIX so we can add an additional 1M to that for

> around $800 per month.

>

> So in total InternetNZ would be up for $3000 - $4000 for

> hardware and a

> cost of $4800 for 6 months of bandwidth.

>

> What would InternetNZ get out of doing this?

>

> 1) Apart from the warm glow of doing a good thing, you'd get

> acknowledgement on the relevant web pages describing how to get

> connected and on the stats pages describing how the experiment was

> progressing.

>

> 2) Doing this work is a small part of the work needed to get

> the NGI off

> the ground - we've appear to have very few people in NZ with practical

> knowledge of IPv6 and yet being able to run IPv6 is one of the design

> goals for the NGI at the network level.

>

> 3) An experimental platform like this should be expandable to do work

> with IPv6 multicast, VOIP and IPSEC (part of the IPv6 spec) -

> drawing a

> set of geeks out of the woodwork to experiment with this will be a

> useful end in itself.

>

> Please let me know if you need further information before the Council

> meeting next week.

andy