[afnog] XLAT646 deployment

[Mark Tinka]

On 7/5/21 18:25, Philip Paeps wrote:

> I wonder if I should feel inadequate for having only seven VLANs in my 
> two-bedroom apartment. :-)

So I've got only one VLAN for my entire house, but spread across 61 
Gig-E switch ports in 5 separate rooms. Not a major drama :-).


> So this is already happening. Or at least it's happening in Hong Kong.
>
> The Wi-Fi scan list in my living room shows a roughly equal number of 
> "FOOBAR" and "FOOBAR-GUEST" ESSIDs. There are several different 
> spellings of FOOBAR but they all translate to "cheap ISP CPE, settings 
> not touched by customer".
>
> The CPE my ISP tried to install for me has a friendly "guest Wi-Fi" QR 
> code sticker in the box.
>

So this is pretty typical of all "plug-and-pray" wi-fi routers that are 
shipping now. I make a habit of always manually configuring mine 
(switching them into AP-only mode and what-not), and the guest bits tend 
to mirror whatever you do for the main SSID. I shut those down, but as 
you rightly point out, most users won't even care.

It's not uncommon to walk into someone's home and see some odd combo of 
numbers and letters as an SSID ending on its own or as "-5G". For anyone 
I've helped clean up their home network, I simply run the same SSID on 
both bands, as modern devices nowadays will default to 5GHz if the RSSI 
is within thresholds. Has not been an issue so far.


> Casual inspection suggests IPv6 prefix delegation is taking place and 
> the guest Wi-Fi is a separate layer 2 broadcast domain. I never paid 
> much attention to the legacy IP address. I'm pretty sure there's 
> routable IPv4 rather than XLAT though. I never used my ISP's CPE and I 
> don't make a habit of spending too much time staring at tcpdump when 
> I'm invited to dinner by less technical friends. :)
>

Yes, SLAAC and PD are pretty standard now on half-decent wi-fi routers 
(not sure how they actually work, but the code is there). But definitely 
no CLAT function that I've come across with the mainstream vendors.


> I wouldn't be surprised to see a (probably small) decrease in fixed 
> line broadband services in some parts of the world.

In Uganda, for example, the local telco has been recording fewer and 
fewer landline customers for the past decade. It's shocking but it's not 
shocking.

I can't imagine other PTT's on the continent are doing any better.

In South Africa, the PTT is getting rid of ADSL. Fair point, they are 
rolling out fibre, but not as fast as there is copper. So areas that 
don't have fibre will have to move to 4G/LTE, even though copper is 
available. A bit odd, but okay...


> People who don't have own huge televisions or smart hair dryers or 
> toasters or whatever have no need for fixed line broadband. They watch 
> YouTube on their phablet on 5G.

This.

One would do well to appeal to this market, rather than try to get them 
to abide by "global standards".

Mark.
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