[arin-ppml] ARIN-prop-133: No Volunteer Services on Behalf of Unaffiliated Address Blocks - revised

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

A better choice than the D-link DIR-655 is the D-link DIR-825

The DIR-655 uses the Ubicom CPU/Chipset the DIR-825 uses the Atheros
AR7161 chipset

Until recently Ubicom did not release programming info so there is NO 
support for this router beyond that provided from D-link.  If the D-link 
firmware doesn't do it for you or has a bug, you are SOL.

The problem with all Ubicom CPU-based stuff is that Ubicom has not
supplied docs about their CPU microcode and so until recently no backend
existed for GCC that would allow you to compile code for it. This
originally didn't matter (to them) but recently they have seen sales
drop off as more and more router vendors have gone to Linux, and so
they released this thing they call GNUPro which appears to be a
proprietary IDE that is a mashup of GNU code and their own proprietary
code. Since it's incompatible with the build environments used by both
OpenWRT and DDwrt, it's sole purpose appears to be to allow Ubicom to run
around claiming that their stuff is now "OpenWRT compliant" when in
reality nobody has been willing yet to rewrite all of the build scripts
and makefiles and such to actually compile openwrt on their stuff.

Now, you may be thinking if your large and putting out an RFP that
this doesn't matter because I'm big and this is the vendor's problem,
but the fact is that when you send money to vendors for models that use 
the Ubicom stuff your ultimately retarding the rollout of IPv6, since
year later when the vendor has stopped supporting these devices they
cannot then be repurposed on the secondary market to fully support IPv6.

The DIR-825 has a full 8MB of flash and in addition
to the factory firmware, it runs both OpenWRT and DD-WRT.

Note that Comcast's default IPv6 firmware for their IPv6 trial is
a modified version of OpenWRT that is built for the Linksys WRT160NL
which also has 8MB of flash and uses an Atheros chipset (the AR9130)
It would be trivial to build their load for the DIR-655 and it might
even run unmodified.

The factory load on the DIR-615/655/825 series does not support
dhcpv6-pd from what I have read, nor does it support ANY firewalling
for IPv6.  That is the primary difference
in functionality from the Comcast build for the 160NL that is
on Sourceforge.  Note that there is not enough space on the 4MB
flash routers (like the DIR-615) to run dhcpv6-pd & ipv6tables (needed
for the SPI stuff for IPv6)

One last thing too - if you have any of those older "turbo
boost 108Mbt" 802.11g cards in older laptops/etc. note that these are 
all Atheros-based and only run the turbo mode when the base unit is also 
an Atheros-based radio.  Otherwise they switch down to the normal 54Mbt 
"g" mode.

Ted

On 2/20/2011 4:11 PM, Frank Bulk wrote:
> Yes -- without naming names, one of the three leading CMTS vendors has no
> IPv6 support (Q3 at the earliest).
>
> In regards to CPE, the D-Link DIR-655 with the latest firmware is pretty
> IPv6 ready.  It sells for $70 at Amazon.com, probably a bit more at your
> local electronics retailer.  See
> http://www.getipv6.info/index.php/Broadband_CPE for more info (most don't
> have an SPI firewall).
>
> Frank
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: arin-ppml-bounces at arin.net [mailto:arin-ppml-bounces at arin.net] On
> Behalf Of George Bonser
> Sent: Friday, February 18, 2011 4:33 PM
> To: Owen DeLong; Jeffrey Lyon
> Cc: arin-ppml at arin.net
> Subject: Re: [arin-ppml] ARIN-prop-133: No Volunteer Services on Behalf of
> Unaffiliated Address Blocks - revised
> <snip>
>
> But is there any gear being sold today that doesn't support v6?  I know
> two vendors that can't do dynamic routing protocols on v6 yet but their
> gear is more aimed at the layer2 switching market anyway and do support
> v6 switching, addressing, and static routes which probably covers the
> vast majority of their use cases.  All of the stuff I have in the layer3
> area of the network supports v6 and that is four different vendors.
>
> At this stage finding vendors who don't support v6 is more difficult
> than finding the ones that do.  The one problem area is xDSL CPE.
> Everything else is pretty much there in one form or another and simply
> takes more usage in order to shake the cobwebs out of it.
>
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