CircleID

Slowly, we're making progress mainstreaming IPv6. I wanted to post on a few interesting developments.

Netflix has IPv6

Late last month, Netflix got an IPv6 allocation from ARIN, and they're advertising it in BGP. It doesn't appear that they're offering any services over IPv6 yet, but this is a good first step. I look forward to the day I can stream movies to my Netflix set-top box over IPv6.

DynDNS has an IPv6 plan

DynDNS has announced an IPv6 plan. They still have a lot left to do, but they've already got a few boxes reachable over IPv6.

Cisco releases more "free" IPv6 support

Late last year, Cisco announced a change in their IPv6 pricing policy: They no longer plan to charge extra for IPv6 features in IOS. They've been rolling this policy out across their product lines. Last month, they released an update for the 3560/3750 series: IOS 12.2(50)SE. This release moves IPv6 support into the "free" IP-BASE version, and adds support for Layer 2 IPv6 security features as well.

IPv6 DNS

No update would be complete without my favorite pet topic: IPv6-reachable DNS servers. So far this year, seven more domains have added IPv6-enabled their DNS servers:

• .bs (Bahamas)
• .gw (Guinea-Bissau)
• .mv (Maldives)
• .mx (Mexico)
• .no (Norway)
• .pr (Puerto Rico) (note, Puerto Rico has IPv6 DNS last year, but lost it in November)
• .tt (Trinidad & Tobago)

In total, 213 of 280 top-level domains have IPv6 glue.

Also, two more Internet2 members have added IPv6 DNS: University of Louisville and Louisiana State University.

Improved Internet2 IPv6 Peering

Internet2 provides IPv6 transit for both commodity and research traffic. Last year, most of the IPv6 commodity traffic flowed through Palo Alto, California, where Internet2 peered with Hurricane Electric. As you can imagine, that made for sub-optimal performance. Over the past few months, Internet2 and Hurricane Electric have added additional peering sites, first in Chicago, and most recently in New York City. This significantly improves performance.

I have a free Hurricane Electric IPv6 tunnel at my house. It's now faster to use their IPv6 tunnel than native IPv4 to connect to Penn State. I'm sure much of this is due to Comcast's… sub-optimal routing, but I'm nonetheless enjoying the irony.

So, more deployment and better performance. I'll take what little I can get.

By Derek Morr, Senior Systems Programmer, Pennsylvania State University. Visit the blog maintained by Derek Morr here.

Related topics: IP Addressing, IPv6