Service Providers on IPv6 Bleeding Edge Say Content Sources Lag
SAN FRANCISCO -- The pioneering slog by companies such as Comcast to promote IPv6 deployment is painful, not least because many content providers lag in the transition, executives of the companies said. John Brzozowski, Comcast’s chief IPv6 architect, acknowledged in a presentation late Wednesday to the Internet Society’s Internet On conference the “very painful learnings we've had here in the western division.” He told us afterward that he was referring to the kinds of “deployment bugs” and “challenges” encountered with any new technology. IPv6 would make available a vast number of new Internet addresses and it’s widely considered crucial as addresses in the current IPv4 quickly run out. Cameron Byrne, a principal engineer at T-Mobile, who heads its IP strategy work, credited Comcast, Google, Netflix and CNN as being among the leaders in IPv6 adoption.
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Comcast is starting a “native dual-stack trial” in Colorado, Brzozowski said. Native IPv6 services are introduced alongside the conventional IPv4 offerings, he said. “We're going to enable people here and there,” gradually expanding toward “widespread enablement,” Brzozowski said. He wouldn’t discuss deployment timing. Many “home networking devices do not support IPv6 and/or do not meet the necessary requirements,” but “CPE support for native dual stack is starting to increase,” according to one of his presentation slides.
"We've been at this for over five years,” Brzozowski stressed to us. Comcast has benefited from the ability to “gradually and responsibly introduce” the new technology, he said. “We're making progress.” More than 7,000 subscribers have enrolled in the company’s trials, which started in January, Brzozowski said.
In a nine-month-old T-Mobile “friendly user trial” of IPv6, an “Achilles’ heel” is “IPv4 literals” -- IPv4 addresses embedded in website code, Byrne said. NewYorkTimes.com presents this problem, he said. “Amazon.com works” in the trial of IPv6 with Nokia handset owners, “but if you try to stream video” from the site, “it doesn’t work,” Byrne said. Still, “we see more of the content owners getting in” the swing of the transition to IPv6, he said. Brzozowski said Comcast can see clearly that IPv6 content is lacking and work with creators is needed to change that.
Real Time Streaming Protocol content doesn’t work with IPv6, T-Mobile has found, but “it’s not that big of a deal,” Byrne said. Neither do the Fring, MSN Messenger, Qik, Skyfire or Telenav applications, he said. “The things that don’t work aren’t going to hold us up,” because “Web and e-mail works” with the new protocol, and so generally do other apps, he said. New Android handsets will soon start to support IPv6, Byrne said.