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

[Kofi Ansa Akufo]

Malick.Sy at swisscom.com (Malick.Sy) writes:
> 
> 1)Why is V6 migration a priority in Africa?

	It's not, deployment is. The mistake is in not taking the opportunity
	to deploy IPv6 while you're deploying/upgrading v4.

	v4 is not correctly deployed in many places in Africa - and the
	rest of the world. Africa is in the unique situation that there
	is lots of v4 space available. This is a great opportunity for
	designing clean architectures that minimize the use of NAT and
	other hacks. Obviously there won't be enough v4 in the long run
	to avoid these completely, but it would be daft not to get v6
	running at the same time.

> 2) Is the current urgency of V6 deployments in Africa a real priority or
> has it been given “false” priority over possibly more enabling
> technologies and solutions (this is where I mentioned the current
> healthcare case that is troubling the region and the globe).

	Not deploying v6 now even though it's happening elsewhere certainly
	won't stop the earth from spinning - but again, why not just do it ?

> By more
> enabling technologies I mean greater wifi expansion, 3G/4G expansion, more
> fibre deployments (GPON, EPON, good old single mode to bridge relatively
> small distances), power grid infrastructure support projects, educational
> institute connectivity projects.

	We do what's in our reach. Those that don't have the ability or skills to
	dig fiber or deploy 4G equipment, can still enable v6 on their network,
	and encourage their customers and upstreams to do the same.

++1 We should make the best out of what is available and take the opportunity to build dual stack nets rather than retrofitting later.

	Anyway, it's not an either-or proposition: blindly pushing v6 and, say
	DNSSEC, at the expense of other much needed improvements would certainly
	be a mistake - but I know for a fact that African engineers can do all
	of the above, as priorities and budgets allow.

In deed depolying dual stack networks now will enable us to experiment and tweak current applications and services that are not able to smoothly run concurrently on both protocols as Andrew pointed out. 

	Cheers,
	Phil

Cheers


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