[arin-discuss] urgency of IPv6

[George, Wes E IV [NTK]]

I rarely leave my sig file in postings, because I don't think it's relevant, but I'm going to this time, for obvious reasons. At the risk of feeding the troll, my comments inline below.

Thanks,
Wes
_________________________________
Wesley George
Sprint
Core Network Engineering - IP
http://www.sprint.net

-----Original Message-----
From: arin-discuss-bounces at arin.net [mailto:arin-discuss-bounces at arin.net] On Behalf Of Ted Mittelstaedt
Sent: Monday, June 28, 2010 5:15 PM
To: Owen DeLong
Cc: arin-discuss at arin.net
Subject: Re: [arin-discuss] urgency of IPv6



On 6/28/2010 1:36 PM, Owen DeLong wrote:
>>>
no, you are not
> correctly understanding how the cellular network you are using is actually working.
>
> First, neither of those networks is IPv6 yet, if you check, you'll see that your phones
> still just have IPv4 addresses.

While there is no way to go into any setting on the phone and check it's
IP address, someone wrote a (free) diagnostic network app you can run on
WM5 that DOES tell the actual number on the phone.  It IS an IPv6
number.   Most people probably are confused because going to
whatismyip.com or some such gives them an IPv4 address.
I'll check the Android phone but I strongly doubt, with their brand new
phone, that it uses IPv4.

[[WEG]] I can say with absolute certainty that we (sprint) *are* giving you an IPv4 address and are *not* giving you an IPv6 address systematically. However, there are several asterisks to that statement.
First, many (not necessarily all) WM phones have 6to4 (RFC3068) enabled. This means that if they get a routable IPv4 address, they'll generate their own IPv6 address. It'll be in the 2002::/16 range. This means that in theory they are doing IPv6, but they are beholden to the relatively broken set of 6to4 relays and asymmetric routing that this brings, not to mention any overzealous equipment in the path that blocks protocol 41, and it will only be used to connect to IPv6-enabled websites, not as a translation for IPv4.
Second, both the iPhone and Android have support for IPv6 in the OS -- on WiFi. If you connect it to an IPv6-enabled network, it will get an address, and theoretically will talk to IPv6-capable devices via IPv6. I don't have access to a WM phone with WiFi to determine if it does the same. It probably depends on the version.
http://www.personal.psu.edu/dvm105/blogs/ipv6/2010/05/ipv6-on-smartphones---its-happ.html
However, they do NOT do this over the 3G interface, at least not yet. Without getting into too much special sauce, on CDMA it's a chipset issue more than a software issue, so it's not always as simple as pushing a software update to phones to make it work.

I don't think they have enough numbers for that, frankly.
[[WEG]] We don't have enough IPs for all of our users (or even a significant fraction) to get an IPv4 address all of the time, and we're working to enable IPv6, but for reasons detailed above, some form of proxy/NAT etc for legacy devices is probably unavoidable. Heck, we'll need it for brand new devices unless everyone really gets cracking on dual-stacking everything our users want to talk to. I hate even considering it, but that's the unfortunate reality.

> Eventually, as I understand the plans from both of
> those providers, LTE will put you onto IPv6 most of the time with short-term leases
> of IPv4 addresses when you need IPv4 connectivity.
[[WEG]] Most IPv4 leases are already short-term. Beyond organic growth in data use, part of what's increasing our burn rate for IPv4 addresses is the increase in always-on or nearly-always-on applications that increase our IPv4 address hold times on devices and blow our estimates for IP address oversubscription.

>
> So, no, you are not currently using some bizarre ipv6-ipv4 proxy back at the
> cell company NOC or anywhere else. At least not yet.
[[WEG]] Owen is correct. At least right now, on Sprint you get a genuine public, routable IPv4 address. I won't go so far as to say that there's nothing in the middle and all types of traffic from all classes of devices will go unimpeded to/from your phone, but we're not NATing your traffic - yet.
Also, FWIW, TMobile has demonstrated an IPv6-only handset reaching IPv4-only sites using a NAT, http://www.youtube.com/user/IPv6guy for demos. Note that this is ONLY a test network, and is not available to the general public yet.
>

Sprint does their best to hide this from the general public but I can
provide screen shots if needed.
[[WEG]] Again with the big-company conspiracy theory! We're not trying to hide anything from anyone. We released a press release a few weeks ago saying that we were rolling out IPv6 on our wireless network in 2012, wireline this year, and VPN next year. You're not part of some double-secret IPv6-on-cellular club, sorry.


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