[afripv6-discuss] IPv6 - The current status in the tertiary education sector in South Africa

[Andrew Alston]

Hi All,

I thought for interests sake I'd share with the list the current status 
of IPv6 from the Tenet point of view (What we have, what we currently 
are doing etc).

Tenet owns its own IPv6 Block, which obviously needed to be announced, 
and at the same time customers (the tertiary education units), needed to 
be able to start using this.  Currently there are no ISP's that I know 
of in South Africa doing native IPv6 internationally (if Im wrong here, 
someone please correct me).

So after some negotiations we dropped tunnels to 2 points into Europe 
and announced our 2001:548::/32 block via AS 6149.  

Tenet now offers any of its customers an IPv6 tunnel end point should 
they so wish.  Obviously said customers would need to apply for IPv6 
space from Tenet first. (Tenet is currently an LIR for IPv6 space in the 
academic environment).  Currently there are a number of v6 blocks 
allocated to institutions, with 2 institutions with active tunnels and 
live utilization of their v6 blocks.

At the moment there is a debate over the provision of IPv6 space to 
tertiary education units with regards to the size of the V6 blocks.  I 
discussed this matter in Barcelona at the IPv6 conference with some of 
the other NREN's and there seemed to be some fairly mixed opinions, but 
a lot of the NREN's were allocating /48s per facuilty, rather than per 
institution, which typically would mean the allocation of /44s, or 
perhaps /43s to the average university in South Africa.

At current institutions are allocated /48s, but the starting points of 
the blocks are spaced in such a way that should the eventual decision to 
be taken to allocate on a /44 basis rather, this could be done without 
renumbering existing people.

I have also attempted to contact various ISP's in South Africa who I 
have heard either have, or are planning some form of V6 implementation 
to discuss peering arrangements with Tenet, unfortunatly so far this has 
not yielded huge success, but I think as IPv6 rollout in South Africa 
grows, this will become easier. (If there are any ISP's in South Africa 
that are currently utilizing IPv6 that are interested in talking 
peering, please feel free to mail me off list).

So, with all that being said, where to from here.

I think to start with, we need to encourage the use of v6 in the 
institutions.  To this end there is a v6 workshop planned for the 
tertiary education units in September which will kindly be presented by 
6diss.  Hopefully this will produce positive reaction and encourage the 
rollout.

Anyway, thats where we currently sit with regards to v6.

Many Thanks
Andrew Alston
Tenet - IPv6 Consultant