Is v6 as important as v4? Of course not [was: IPv6 internet broken, cogent/telia/hurricane not peering]

[patrick at ianai.net (Patrick W. Gilmore)]

On Oct 12, 2009, at 5:23 PM, Randy Bush wrote:

>>> sure would be nice if there was a diagnosis before the lynching
>> If this happened in v4, would customers care 'why' it happened?
>> Obviously not.
>> Why should v6 be any different?  It either is or is not production
>> ready.  I'm interested in HE's view on that.
>
> many of us are interested in diagnosis.  few in your lynch rope.

I think you are stretching things to make a pithy post.  More  
importantly, you are missing the point.

For the v6 'Net to be used, customers - you know the people who pay  
for those router things and that fiber stuff and all our salaries and  
such - need to feel some comfort around it actually working.  This did  
not help that comfort level.  And I believe it is valid to ask about it.

Diagnosis is good.  Fortunately, anyone who cares knows exactly what  
happened on a technical level - HE has no v6 transit and does not peer  
with Telia; Telia had C&W transit, then they didn't, now they do.   
Took less time to 'diagnose' than your one-liners took to write.  Were  
you actually interested in diagnostics, you would have spent some time  
looking as opposed to trying to be pithy to 10K of your not-so-closest  
buddies.

Unfortunately, and you damned well know this, we are not going to get  
a /real/ diagnosis out of a busted peering relationship.  Especially  
when one party is an incumbent telco.  HE typically - and properly -  
will not discuss such relationships (modulo Mike's Cogent post, which  
even he says is unusual).  And Telia won't discuss squat, full stop.   
So why it happened is a mystery, and will be for, well, ever.   
Diagnosis ends.

However, the question still stands about the stability, and therefor,  
utility of the v6 'Net.  Is it still some bastard child, some beta  
test, some side project?  Or is it ready to have _revenue_producing_  
traffic put on it?  When a network as solid and customer-oriented as  
HE can have a long outage to such a large network as Telia, I submit  
it is not.  I know, everyone is shocked.  But operationally speaking,  
this matters.  We can either say "but it was just v6", or we can think  
about how to not have this happen again.  The former leads no where.   
Perhaps we should choose the latter instead of making pithy posts?

If that is a "lynch rope", I will not bother arguing with you.  Pigs &  
mud & all that.  But that doesn't make it wrong, or irrelevant.


In summary, we have the standard Chicken & Egg problem.  No one cares  
about v6, so no one puts anything important on v6, so no one cares  
about v6.  HE was trying harder to break that vicious cycle than  
anyone else, yet even they do not come close to supporting v6 as much  
as they support v4.  Sad times for the future of the Internet if we  
all need to use v6 Real Soon Now.

I asked for HE's view on that.  Would you mind explaining why you  
don't want to hear it?

-- 
TTFN,
patrick

P.S. Being a curmudgeon is useful from time to time.  But only if you  
are, well, being useful.