[AfriNIC-rpd] IPV6 Adoption

[Rob Hunter]

Hi

<snip>
Verizon claims to have plans - but they have a prefix but have never 
announced or given solid details of their plans.
</snip>

UUNET SA's first tests started in 2002 already. In fact, in almost all
the presentations at the recent AfriNIC meeting in Durban, the
traceroute6's people were doing was going via the UUNET (now VB) IPv6
tunnel brokers. At one stage, if you did a google for "UUNET IPv6" the
very first hit you'd find was a mail from myself to a public list,
stating that we were giving away free IPv6 transit to anyone who wanted
it, primarily via tunnels, to foster growth. We had better reacability
via V6 than V4 even. If you google hard enough, perhaps including
'6bone' or if Sixx still has it up (there was a .uk university that also
kept registry info) you'll even find registry info for each tunnel and
/48. UUNET SA and IS were doing native V6 peering @ JINX a number of
years ago already. The problem you'll find getting info on advertised
prefixes, is due to the migration from ARIN/RIPE to AfriNIC, not to
mention what we (and others) were doing before we had our own space. We
first took space from our brethren in the EU, then got 2001:588::/32
from ARIN, and then that got migrated when AfriNIC came into existence.
588 was most definitely routed and globally reachable.

<snip>
Neotel are not announcing their prefix - I find this most disturbing 
since they have built their network very recently, it should have been 
fairly easy to factor v6 in and run a dual stack immediately. They may 
or may not be doing this, however they do not make mention of anything
</snip>

Unofficially, it has been part of the plan since the earliest designs.
Keep in mind that with a startup this size, concentrating on building
services that actually generate revenue and appease customers who're
desperate for those services could in the short term be wiser than the
huge operational change required for IPv6. It's easy for us to figure
out because we've made the time. Try explaining to the person who
answers a support call, who's more than likely never understood V4
properly to begin with, how V6 works. You'll hear more from us when we
have more to say about the matter (I'm definitely not speaking on behalf
of Neotel) but I can say there is a plan, and it's being worked on.

Regards

--Rob


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