AT&T: We're Doing Just Fine on IPv6 Transition

Oh AT&T.

...I hope this doesn't affect me.

My "podunk" cable company (can't find jack about these guys - no website, nothing on google) seems to be directly "re-sold" AT&T. If they directly allocate from them, I'm wondering what the chances are that my connection will suddenly be switched over. Suppose the chances might also be just as good for keeping a "real" IP address, but I have no way of knowing.

If it's AT&T WorldNet (well, that's what they used to call AS7018), your cable company's IP allocation won't magically disappear. So you should be fine. This only affects customers of AT&T DSL (or its variants, e.g. U-Verse).

That's what I'd think too... just a thought...
Looks like I'm actually on AS7132, according to »cqcounter.com/whois/

I am curious though, after running a tracert to dslreports.com, what this is about (the 2nd hop.......... it is not part of my home network...)
My IP that's shown on the outside world, however, is a 'real' IPv4 address, which is not shown anywhere on the trace.
Consequence of the fact that it's "re-sold" service, perhaps???

-----
Tracing route to dslreports.com [209.123.109.175]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms xxxxxxxxxxxx[10.x.x.x]
2 20 ms 25 ms 37 ms 10.40.4.1
3 13 ms 31 ms 8 ms 75.18.x.x
4 25 ms 31 ms 27 ms 12.124.x.x
5 28 ms 32 ms 34 ms cr2.kc9mo.ip.att.net [12.122.150.138]
6 27 ms 27 ms 32 ms cr1.dlstx.ip.att.net [12.122.28.85]
7 24 ms 31 ms 28 ms gar26.dlstx.ip.att.net [12.123.16.85]
8 27 ms 28 ms 26 ms 4.68.62.229
9 32 ms 39 ms 46 ms vlan70.csw2.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.69.145.126]
10 40 ms 46 ms 56 ms ae-73-73.ebr3.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.69.151.146]
11 49 ms 61 ms 56 ms ae-7-7.ebr3.Atlanta2.Level3.net [4.69.134.22]
12 62 ms 46 ms 58 ms ae-2-2.ebr1.Washington1.Level3.net [4.69.132.86]
13 53 ms 62 ms 48 ms ae-71-71.csw2.Washington1.Level3.net [4.69.134.134]
14 47 ms 51 ms 47 ms ae-72-72.ebr2.Washington1.Level3.net [4.69.134.149]
15 58 ms 51 ms 73 ms ae-4-4.ebr2.Newark1.Level3.net [4.69.132.102]
16 75 ms 74 ms 60 ms ae-21-52.car1.Newark1.Level3.net [4.69.156.37]
17 105 ms 101 ms 88 ms NETCCESS.car1.Newark1.Level3.net [4.26.16.190]
18 65 ms 82 ms 69 ms 0.e3-3.tbr2.mmu.nac.net [209.123.11.77]
19 67 ms 67 ms 73 ms 0.e1-1.tbr2.oct.nac.net [209.123.10.21]
20 67 ms 74 ms 68 ms vlan808.esd1.oct.nac.net [209.123.10.42]
21 66 ms 70 ms 68 ms www.dslreports.com [209.123.109.175]

Trace complete.
---

Companies will often use 10.x.x.x IPs for their internal network routers, to save on v4 space. I know TWC does (Comcast doesn't).

Did AT&T ever provide clarification on why they're needing 10.x.x.x back? I know the strong speculation is CGN, but I don't see any further information than we had last week. Any updates?

Please see »www.networkworld.com/col ··· pin.html

That if AT&T takes my public IP address, and then will ask $15 to get one back, that will be the day I will call Time Warner Cable.

What is to prevent Time Warner Cable from NATTING too?

If AT&T makes 6RD their method to get IPV6 working on their network, users will end up locked in to only the couple home routers AT&T will support or rent to you as a combined router/gateway. Their users won't be able to use std off the shelf consumer routers.

That's kind of what AT&T is doing already anyway. New "U-verse DSL"/IPDSLAM connections only work with a couple different gateways.

Where've you been? AT&T has been doing that from day one with Uverse. Even if you have compatible technology (PTM/ADSL gear is hard to find), you won't be able to athenticate to the network. You must use the trash they provide -- and when it breaks, you have to buy another one.

...where Comcast and AT&T U-Verse are my only options, I'd rather go Comcast if I could only pay for Internet service as I don't watch cable TV.

So it will come down to this:

AT&T: CGN with 6rd
Comcast: Dual IPv4/IPv6 stack without any tunneling

AT&T provides Internet-only service, which is U-Verse Internet, but since my Debian server is IPv6-ready and if I'm being forced to go with CGN, this will break my remote connection to my Asterisk PBX phone system and I won't be able to SSH into my server.

If at&t takes my public IP away, and/or charges for a public IP it will be the last day I use at&t. I will switch to another ISP. On this issue, I have to draw a line. Should other ISPs available to me pull this stunt, I will keep my money in my wallet. Sure, it will be hard to live without the services I have now, but I will adjust.

If I was an AT&T customer and this is what I was told, is that they are ready but I have to buy static IP to really use the internet the way it's meant to be used, I'd file an FCC complaint, and a BBB complaint, especially if I was a customer under contract, and then I'd cancel services without having to pay an ETF, because I wouldn't pay AT&T a "royalty $15 fee" just to use the internet the way it was/has been designed to be used.

Even when I worked at AT&T and heard of this I never thought it was a great idea, and at the time I knew they were doing this as a way to force users to pay more for the service, the sad part is even though the company says they will eventually transition IPv6 to the way IPv4 is today, I really seriously doubt that, AT&T wants to be the gatekeepers (is anyone here the key master?) and severely raise rates on their products just to please their investors. Oh well, I say let them continue, at this rate they are going to have customers running for the hills in droves a lot faster due to their inability to understand basic customer satisfaction. I just hope if they fail that they don't get bailed out...

Matt

6rd is very useful for a test deployment: as a way of getting users connected using IPv6 before your infrastructure is fully up to date. I was one such participant in Comcast's 6rd deployment. It worked, and worked well.

But for a general solution, its a Big Bucket o Fail: It requires new customer-premises equipment to encapsulate the V6 traffic into V4 packets, which are sent to the ISP's server which deencapsulates the traffic.

Yet the only advantage is that it doesn't require the ISP to update the path between the user and the ISP's 6rd gateway. But this cost is low, since most of this hardware has already supported IPv6 for years and if it doesn't, the vendor needs to be browbeat into fixing things.

And 6rd also removes the big advantage of IPv6: IPv6 enables DS-Lite, where the CPE encapsulates IPv4! in IPv6 which is then deencapsulated by the ISP. DS-Lite, unlike carrier-grade-NATs, has much better failure modes, scalability, and similar benefits when the ISP wishes to NAT the IPv4 addresses.

If AT&T's network is built with equipment that a) doesn't support IPv6, or b) has poor (i.e. non-hardware switching) support for IPv6, then the failure is not with the equipment vendor but with the complete morons who selected that gear in the first place. There's ZERO excuse for an ISP (a Teir 1 ISP even!) to not have efficient IPv6 capable hardware *everywhere* in their network.

6rd is yet another ploy to do something their customers cannot do on their own hardware. Plus, they're only doing it for UVERSE customers. Legacy DSL customers might as well not exist.

If I wanted IPv6 via tunnels, I'd've set that up myself years ago. Oh, right, I DID. (I've even used the (now defunct) Earthlink IPv6 tunnel service.)

I have one excuse:

Dividends

6rd is supposed to be a transitional technology for ipv6 connectivity... hard to believe at&t is thinking of using this long term

at&t only thinks about the short term and customers are just an inconvenience they have to put up with.

»AT&T IPv6 6to4 is broken

Sure, AT&T will provide 6rd at some undisclosed point in the future, but likely not for PPPoE/ADSL. But, in the meantime, they broke traceroute and ping to the 6to4 anycast IPv4 address. It was previously working.