June 3, 2014 archive

Jun 03

Why And How Did RCS&RDS, Romania’s Largest ISP, Deploy IPv6?

Romania IPv6 usageWhy did RCS&RDS, Romania’s broadband market leader, deploy IPv6 in their network?  How did they do it?  What did they have to do?  And what were the results they saw?

In this excellent case study provided to us by Liviu Pislaru, the Chief Architect for IPv6 for RCS&RDS, he answers all of those questions and much more.

I want to pull out a couple of specific points, in particular his answer to why they did this:

The trigger for IPv6 deployment wasn’t IPv4 depletion. We still have plenty of IPv4 addresses and this is gold nowadays. We wanted our engineers to gain experience with IPv6 when the size of the IPv6 internet was less the 1% and chances to affect customer services was minimised.

They went ahead now because they knew that sooner or later they would need to make the transition… and wanted to get the experience before it became critical for them to have it.  As Liviu notes, they were ready for World IPv6 Launch in 2012 and rapidly became one of the leaders globally in IPv6 adoption.

Now, for people looking at this today, the global IPv6 Internet has already grown past 1% by any of the statistics sites such as Google’s IPv6 stats… but Liviu’s point is a good one – NOW is the time to gain the experience before you need to do so!

Liviu notes how much traffic they now see over IPv6:

Nowadays our IPv6 traffic goes to 30-35G in peak time, mainly because there’s more IPv6 content on the Internet. Our measurements show that 25% of a dual stack residential customer traffic is IPv6 traffic.

This is consistent with what we’ve heard from other ISPs (some of home have even said higher values such as 40%) and makes sense when you realize that many of the sites that home users would visit are all IPv6-enabled, such as all of Google’s properties (including YouTube), Facebook, Wikipedia, Yahoo, Bing, Netflix and more.

While they had great initial success in 2012, the rate of IPv6 adoption has not climbed greatly in Romania and Liviu gets into some of the reasons he believes this hasn’t happened. He also provides a link to a site where you can monitor the status of IPv6 on RCS&RDS’ network.

All in all it is an excellent case study and I would strongly encourage you to read it! Thank you to Liviu for providing us this case study and for all of his hard work there in Romania bringing about this great level of IPv6 deployment!

Interested in more stories of IPv6 deployment?  Check out our IPv6 case studies page – and if you want to get started with your own transition to IPv6, look at our “Start Here” page to find IPv6 resources most appropriate to your type of organization.

Jun 03

Case Study: Mexico’s AXTEL Outlines Phases of IPv6 Deployment and Recommendations

AXTEL is the second-largest telecommunications operator in Mexico, running its own network in 39 major cities in Mexico and having connectivity to 200 more cities across the country.  They have implemented IPv6 for their business and VPN customers and are currently analyzing how best to roll out IPv6 to their residential customers. In this 2014 case study (PDF) they walk through the multiple phases of their IPv6 implementation, including:

  1. Project kickoff
  2. Initial analysis
  3. Network deployment
  4. Service deployment

In each phase outlining what they did and providing a good checklist for any other service provider to consider. Their slides are available for viewing:

AXTEL IPv6 case study cover image

In particular, their “In Retrospective” section states that if they could return to the beginning of their IPv6 project, they wish they could have had:

  • More insight regarding how each of our different equipment providers were doing towards their evolution to IPv6.
  • The possibility to talk to another provider that had already implemented IPv6 in their network and learn from their experiences.
  • Support from our providers with people/team that had hands-on experience in an IPv6 evolution project.
  • To have had IPv6 support, even years before the beginning of the project; as a required functionality in all or our network and IT equipment requirements.

They go on to provide their recommendations for other companies seeking to move to IPv6:

  1. Communicate to all company levels the urgency and importance of IPv6 evolution.
  2. IPv6 is a primarily a business continuity case.
  3. Test in a lab environment all your IPv6 deployment scenarios
  4. Begin IPv6 training in all the different technical, sales and marketing teams ASAP.
  5. Evaluate the necessity of running a network audit or assessment to know where your network stands regarding IPv6.
  6. Assist to technology forums and ask other people about their experience in the IPv6 evolution. There are a lot of us in the same situation.
  7. Work closely with your equipment providers.
  8. Implement double stack wherever possible.
  9. Avoid NAT techniques wherever possible.
  10. Don’t be afraid of the IPv6 transition; as with many things the beginning is the toughest part.

All of which are solid recommendations!

This case study was provided by Cesar Joel Ramirez Garcia, IP Architect Engineer and IPv6 Leader with AXTEL in Mexico.

If you would like to get started with IPv6, please visit our IPv6 resources or begin with our “Start Here” page to help find resources most appropriate for your type of organization.