IPv6 Operational Experience at CRC

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IPv6 Operational Experience at CRC

• NANOG 19
• June 10-13, 2000

William F. Maton wmaton_at_ryouko.dgim.crc.ca
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What is CRC?

• Communications Research Center
• Agency of Federal Ministry of Industry
• Clients
• National Defence
• Canadian Space Agency
• Industries and other research entities
• Telecos
• Wireless Communications Industry
• Governments

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CRC GigaPoP

• Comprised of a group of routers now
• Cat 5500RSMATM, 2xCisco 4500Ms
• Serving
• CRC
• National Defence Research
• OCRI
• National Capitol Institute of Telecommunications
• Canadian Space Agency
• Several Schools (K12)

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(No Transcript)
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Getting going

• First connection to the 6bone in September, 1998
• Cisco 4500 router with 11.3IPv6
• Native IPv6 connection running over ATM PVC
  provided under the CANet 2 program
• pTLA allocation out of 6bone test space

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Recent connectivity news

• CANet 3 is a POS network, no ATM
• Just switched to tunnels, just like Abilene
• No support in GSR core for IPv6
• Tunnel to Qwest for multihomed host testing
• 2Mb/s ATM link to Germany, just for IPv6
• Transit may one day be available
• Just got ARIN-assigned IPv6 prefix
• Cut-over from 6bone space was very simple

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CAnet 3 National Optical Internet
CAnet 3
GigaPOP
RAN
SRnet
WURCnet
MRnet
OC3
DS3
OC12
ACORN
BCnet
St. Johns
Calgary
OC3
Regina
RISQ
Winnipeg
Charlottetown
ONet
OC48
Fredericton
OC12
Montreal
Vancouver
Halifax
Ottawa
Seattle
STAR TAP
Toronto
Los Angeles
Chicago
New York
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First IPv6 GigaPoP

• In November of 1999, loaded an IPv6 image into
  our production GigaPoP router
• Uptime of close to 90 days
• It was fantastic!
• Could run IPv6 to any network natively
• Could even do MBGP, MSDP (not normally available
  then)
• until

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bgp log-neighbor-changes

• (Why use this command? cuz its there)
• NB Otherwise, this code was surprisingly stable

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A few things tried over time

• IPv6 host deployments
• Nothing left to chance, do configuration manually
• at the time (1998) Linux had some issues at many
  different levels (kernel, libc, etc)
• didnt try FreeBSD
• Combining IPv6 and IPv4 networks
• The GigaPoP router test proved it possible
• The IPv6 router participated in the CRC MPLS
  testbed (and continues production-wise)

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IPv6 and the GSR

• IPv6 testing with the GSR
• Why? CANet 3 uses GSRs
• Testing was done to see if CANet 3 could support
  IPv6 natively
• Current test image doesnt work with several key
  interfaces (like GE)
• lack of real IGP for IPv6
• Need to wait for core deployment
• Have to wait for the vendor -)

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IPv6 Host Deployment

• Goal To see how difficult it is to deploy
• Expectations
• It shouldnt be so hard to implement if
  dual-stacks are available
• end-users shouldnt even know theyre using IPv6
• In fact, they really couldnt (and shouldnt)
  care less.

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Being boring

• KAME, Solaris 8, linux make it really boring
• Done right, you wont notice the IPv6 stack is
  there
• As far as networking was concerned, having IPv6
  enabled on a host is a cinch
• About those applications.

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What we get already

• Many networking apps for FresBSD/KAME
• Do you Quake?
• Most Solaris 8 networking apps are dualistic
• IPv6 FTP is getting exercised
• a few networking apps for Linux
• its disorganization (The Bazaar) is its weakness
  right now
• Debian is trying to assemble packages

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It would be nice if...

• Solaris 8 FTP daemon offered better logging
• wu-ftpd really nice for this, but no plans for
  IPv6 yet
• but there are six separate ports for linux alone,
  ergo
• Linux got it together
• Need to unify IPv6 FTP server with IPv4 FTP
  server and put a web server, all on the same box
• More (game) applications appeared

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Research Applications

• Requirement to create a project that has
• Multicast
• QoS Management
• Builtin security
• CRC DIVE project is the culmination
• Virtual World using a combination of the above
• IPv6 chosen because it meets the requirements

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The future?

• More trials on hosts
• autoconfig address (DHCPv6)
• neighbor discovery
• In other words, gotta test how this works on the
  campus
• Isnt a mom-and-pop ISP like a campus after all?
• Abuse the network
• See what breaks around the IPv6 router
• Really start pushing per packet limit
• Sane IPv6 addressing scheme
• IPv6 for the masses

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Thanks

• Info about CRC
• http//www.crc.ca/
• CRC GigaPoP and IPv6 info
• http//nic.crc.ca/ (under perpetual construction)
• IPv6 hosts to try
• ftpmail_at_ftp.ipv6.crc.ca (for the mail-insane)
• ftp//ftp.crc.ca/ is available at
  ftp//bear.dgim.crc.ca/ via IPv6
• Youre very welcome to mirror the bear anytime
  - via IPv6 -)
• Web server address TBA on 6bone_at_isi.edu
• Info about the CANet 3 IPv6 project
• http//www.6pop.canet3.net/