Sonic.net

Sonic.net's IPv6 tunnels are intended to be used only with static IP service, but they work just fine with dynamic IP service as long as one goes to the Member Tools to request a new tunnel every single time the IP address changes. Hurricane Electric offers IPv6 tunnels functionally identical to the ones Sonic.net offers, but a special protocol is used to update them directly with new IP addresses in the event of a change with dynamic IP service, analogous to the Member Tools page, except without the web. How feasible would it be to allow SOME automated way to request a new tunnel rather than require the use of the Member Tools page for it? The current state is analogous to Dynamic DNS service that requires the use of an actual web browser to update the address record, instead of the familiar update clients.

Because Fusion residential service includes a free static IP, we haven't had any impetus to address the issue.

In future, we plan to move to a native IPv6 6RD support in our CPE, and the point will become moot. =)

dane wrote:Because Fusion residential service includes a free static IP, we haven't had any impetus to address the issue.

I disagree. We have residential Fusion with dynamic IP service, because it provides an unlimited number of dynamic IP addresses, whereas switching to static IP service would provide only one. Only one IP address at a time would be used for IPv6, though, and any others would be IPv4-only.

dane wrote:In future, we plan to move to a native IPv6 6RD support in our CPE, and the point will become moot. =)

Well, 6RD support in the CPE would require 6RD support on your servers. Since it could be field-tested with DynDNS-like 6RD clients (which I know exist, e.g. for DD-WRT and OpenWRT) in the meantime, it would be great if the server-side support could be made available in the short term. Thanks.

I'm afraid I am not the expert; I will ask network engineering to give this thread a look!

Thanks! I look forward to what they'll have to say about it.

It is certainly technically feasible but as Dane mentioned we're moving towards supporting 6RD and *probably* will not invest time improving our existing tunneling services. In any case, I'd expect you to have a host on your network running dhcp6 and/or ratd, etc, who's job it was to terminate v6 for your entire network. This hosts' IP address isn't likely to change unless it is rebooted.

Well, if the 6RD support replaces the 6in4 tunnels, then one might expect Sonic.net to have 6RD in place for a field test well in advance of any CPE, maybe even before the 6in4 tunnels go away. Am I correct in understanding this is already under way?

We don't have any plans to shut down the tunnel server even after 6RD is deployed. We haven't tested or deployed any 6RD equipment yet since we're more or less waiting for a CPE that supports it to begin testing.

kgc wrote:We don't have any plans to shut down the tunnel server even after 6RD is deployed. We haven't tested or deployed any 6RD equipment yet since we're more or less waiting for a CPE that supports it to begin testing.

That seems silly to me. DD-WRT and OpenWRT on a wide variety of devices can be used to test it while waiting for CPE devices that support it. Also, some CPE devices in existence (most notably ones made by Buffalo Technology for the European market) may be retrofitted with OpenWRT with integrated 6RD support.

Perhaps, but from our perspective, the only thing that matters is that the 6RD servers work with the CPE that we supply. If it happens to work with customer supplied equipment that's fine (and we wouldn't stop you from using it.)