[afripv6-discuss] What have you done for IPv6 lately, since the 1st of January, 2013?

[Andrew Alston]

> Is that where we should focus on first, identifying and getting rid of
said technologies? then talking about deploying IPv6?

Sadly, I don't think getting RID of the technologies is an option, getting
the vendors to actually create the technology would be far more useful.

>> Making the case for v6 is something that needs work, no question about 
>> it, even though to a lot of us its self-explanatory (v4 is finished, 
>> deal with it,  move on), but when you have to in the same sentence 
>> turn around and go "but implementing it, you're gonna lose the 
>> following functionality, and open the following security risks that we
don't have a way to address yet"
>> certainly doesn't help, and I would argue that it would be 
>> irresponsible NOT to address those concerns with anyone looking at 
>> IPv6, since people need the complete picture when making a decision.

> So how have major ISPs and Operators like Verizon wireless, AT&T, Comcast,
KDDI , Free and others be capable of running significant percentages of
their traffic their massive networks over v6?

The answer here is simple, bandwidth.  The costs involved in bandwidth
provision in the African context are *FAR* higher than in the rest of the
world.  Consider that if you want bandwidth into east Africa where it's
cheapest, it's still costing well over 100 dollars a megabit on the
International side, in Europe and the states you can buy transit for 1% of
that.  This means that margins are squeezed and people in Africa are still
trying to over-subscribe as much as possible without influencing
performance.  This means, technologies like Layer 7 shaping are a reality,
and they will be for a long time to come (as much as all of us wish this
wasn't the case).

I know MANY ISP's for example that *heavily* throttle torrent traffic during
undersea cable outages since it is not economically feasible to run
sufficient capacity to carry the entire ISP over separate cable systems.
The prioritization of http traffic over torrent traffic is another extremely
common scenario, and various other issues like this can be pointed out.  It
would be great to be able to fix the costs of bandwidth in a hurry, and sort
this out and do away with these technologies, and we'd ALL love to see it
happen, but sadly, it's a long long long way from reality.  (Look at
Namibia, where I have seen quotes for STM-1s from South Africa to across the
border priced at more than half a million dollars a month, or the DRC where
I have seen quotes where bandwidth is still costing in excess of a thousand
dollars a megabit, when you're that starved, you HAVE to be able to control
traffic)

Andrew