[afnog] What are the major challenges in enabling Services to run on IPv6?

[Malick.Sy at swisscom.com]

Hi,
I was wondering, what good business need is there to push IPv6 to the
network edge, specifically in Africa?
What would be the direct benefit to the customer or the service provider,
of investing in configuring, deploying and migrating to v6. V4 address
depletion is a reality, but in the Africa region, is there really a
shortage of IP addresses to assign or is there more a lack of services to
run on these IP addresses? Also, wouldn¹t the effort and expense to move
to v6 In Africa, be better used, if spent on harnessing WiMax? rolling out
fibre where possible? I creasing  Wifi coverage? rolling out
DSL/VDSL/xDSL? Increasing peering points? creating alternatives to the
current under sea cable transits (and reduce reliance on ACE, etc)?
With the relatively small penetration of broadband in Africa, should not
efforts be spent addressing broadband penetration rates and access to
information, rather than ³keeping up with the Jones² and rolling out
technology for the sake of technology?

In Europe, I am only aware of France¹s Free who have a full native IPv6
deployment, all other providers are managing to provide services without
too big an IPv6 footprint. In the Americas, I believe a number of
educational institutions have native v6, and most Sps can probably provide
it. My contention, IPv6 rollouts globally have been quite low speed and
that is probably because there are other priorities for the Service
providers.

So major challenges to enabling services on v6, I guess the demand for
such services, is probably going to be a major factor.If there is no
demand or minimal demand, and a current working system exists, why waste
time on it?
Just my 2 cents.

..........................................
Best Regards,
Malick Sy
Sr. Network Engineer

Swisscom (Switzerland) Ltd.
Hospitality Services
2, chemin du Pavillon
Case Postale 2200
CH-1211 Genève 2 


Desk Phone:+41 227 407 585
Cellular Phone:+ 41 794 426 765
Fax Number: +41 227 740 7542
Internet: www.swisscom.com/hospitality
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On 28/10/2014 07:18, "Mark Tinka" <mark.tinka at seacom.mu> wrote:

>On Tuesday, October 28, 2014 07:05:33 AM Andrew Alston
>wrote:
>
>> That challenge also prevents a
>> lot of providers from actually putting in the effort
>> (and sometimes expense) of rolling IPv6 all the way to
>> the edge with a lack of demand.  Its kinda a chicken and
>> egg situation for many, no IPv6 at the edge decreases
>> the number of people running IPv6, we decreases the
>> demand for IPv6, which decreases the motivation to roll
>> IPv6 to the edge.
>
>I'm still reasonably disappointed in the lack of drive from
>retail providers to offer IPv6 to their customers, i.e., the
>broadband/consumer space.
>
>Granted, it is a lot more challenging to deliver IPv6 to
>large scale consumers (more so in Africa, where a lot of
>consumers are running data off the mobile networks).
>
>But I think that deployment of IPv6 toward end customers in
>a manner where they do not have to directly participate in
>the process is where we shall see the most gains.
>
>The old mantra still holds true - users don't care, as long
>as it works.
>
>Mark.