Bar Chart Race IPv6 Deployment in LAC Region - May 2014 to June 2023

An Interesting Change Is Coming to BGP

A route leak is defined as the propagation of routing announcement(s) beyond their intended scope (RFC 7908). But why do route leaks occur? The reasons are varied and include errors (typos when entering a number), ignorance, lack of filters, social engineering, and others.

Although there are several ways to prevent route leaks and, in fact, their number has decreased over the past three years (thanks to RPKI, IRR, and other mechanisms), I will try to explain what I believe BGP configurations will look like in the future. To do so, I will talk about RFC 9234, Route Leak Prevention and Detection Using Roles in UPDATE and OPEN Messages. And the part I would like to highlight is “role detection” as, after this RFC, in the future, we will assign roles in our BGP configurations.

To understand what we want to achieve, let’s recall some typical situations for an ISP: 

a new customer comes along with whom we will speak BGP,

a connection to an IXP,

the ISP buys capacity from a new upstream provider,

a new private peering agreement.

In all these cases decisions need to be made. There are multiple ways to configure BGP, including route maps, AS filters, prefix lists, communities, ACLS, and others. We may even be using more than one of these options.  

This is where RFC 9324 enters the picture: the document establishes the roles in the BGP OPEN message, i.e., it establishes an agreement of the relationship on each BGP session between autonomous systems. For example, let’s say that I am a router and I speak to another router and tell them that I am a “customer”; in turn, the other router’s BGP session can say “I am your provider.” Based on this exchange, all configurations (i.e., filters) will be automatic, which should help reduce route leaks.

These capabilities are then negotiated in the BGP OPEN message.

The RFC defines five roles:

Provider – sender is a transit provider to neighbor;

Customer – sender is a transit customer of neighbor;

RS – sender is a Route Server, usually at an Internet exchange point (IX);

RS-client – sender is client of an RS;

Peer – sender and neighbor are peers.

How are these roles configured?

If, for example, on a relationship in a BGP session between ASes, the local AS role is performed by the Provider, the remote AS role must be performed by the Customer and vice versa. Likewise, if the local AS role is performed by a Route Server (RS), the remote AS role must be performed by an RS-Client and vice versa. Local and remote AS roles can also be performed by two Peers (see table).

An example is included below.

BGP Capabilities

BGP capabilities are what the router advertises to its BGP peers to tell them which features it can support and, if possible, it will try to negotiate that capability with its neighbors. A BGP router determines the capabilities supported by its peer by examining the list of capabilities in the OPEN message. This is similar to a meeting between two multilingual individuals, one of whom speaks English, Spanish and Portuguese, while the other speaks French, Chinese and English. The common language between them is English, so they will communicate in that language. But they will not do so in French, as only one of them speaks this language. This is basically what has allowed BGP to grow so much with only a minor impact on our networks, as it incorporates these backward compatibility notions that work seamlessly.

This RFC has added a new capability.

Does this code work? Absolutely. Here’s an example in FRR:

Strict Mode

Capabilities are generally negotiated between the BGP speakers, and only the capabilities supported by both speakers are used. If the Strict Mode option is configured, the two routers must support this capability.

In conclusion, I believe the way described in RFC 9234 will be the future of BGP configuration worldwide, replacing and greatly improving route leaks and improper Internet advertisements. It will make BGP configuration easier and serve as a complement to RPKI and IRR for reducing route leaks and allowing for cleaner routing tables.

Click here to watch the full presentation offered during LACNIC 38 LACNOG 2022.

https://news.lacnic.net/en/events/an-interesting-change-is-coming-to-bgp

Why Is IPv6 So Important for the Development of the Metaverse?

 By Gabriel E. Levy B. and Alejandro Acosta

Over almost half a century, the TCP/IP protocols have helped connect billions of people.

Since the creation of the Internet, they have been the universal standards used to transmit information, making it possible for the Internet to function[3].

The acronym ‘IP’ can refer to two different but interrelated concepts. The first is a protocol (the Internet Protocol) whose main function is to be used in bidirectional (source and destination) data transmission based on the Open System Interconnection (OSI) standard[4]. The second possible reference when talking about IP involves the assignment of physical addresses in the form of numbers known as ‘IP Addresses’. An IP address is a logical and hierarchical identifier assigned to a network device that uses the Internet Protocol (IP). It corresponds to the network layer, or layer 3 of the OSI model.

IPv4 refers to the fourth version of the Internet Protocol, a standard for the interconnection of Internet-based networks which was implemented in 1983 for the operation of ARPANET and its subsequent migration to the Internet.[5].

IPv4 uses 32-bit addresses, the equivalent of 4.3 billion unique numbering blocks, a figure that back in the 80s appeared to be inexhaustible. However, thanks to the enormous and unforeseen growth of the Internet, by 2011 the unexpected had happened: IPv4 addresses had been exhausted[6].

IPv6 as a solution to the bottleneck

To address the lack of available address resources, the engineering groups responsible for the Internet have resorted to multiple solutions, ranging from the creation of private subnets so that multiple users can connect using a single address, to the creation of a new protocol called IPv6 which promises to be the definitive solution to the problem and which was officially launched on 6 June 2012[7]:

“Anticipating IPv4 address exhaustion and seeking to provide a long-term solution to the problem, the organization that promotes and develops Internet standards (the Internet Engineering Task Force or IETF) designed a new version of the Internet Protocol, specifically version 6 (IPv6), with provides almost limitless availability based on a the use of 128-bit addresses, the equivalent to approximately 340 undecillion addresses”**[[8]**.

It should be noted, however, that the creation of the IPv6 protocol did not anticipate a migration or shift from one protocol to another. Instead, a mechanism was designed to allow both protocols to coexist for a time.

To ensure that the transition would be transparent to users and to allow a reasonable amount of time for vendors to incorporate the new technology and for Internet providers to implement the new version of the protocol in their own networks, along with the IPV6 protocol itself, the organization responsible for Internet protocol standardization — the IETF — designed a series of transition and coexistence mechanisms.

“Imagine this is a weight scale where the plate carrying the heaviest weight currently represents IPv4 traffic. However, little by little and thanks to this coexistence, as more content and services become available over IPv6, the weight of the scale will shift to the other plate, until IPv6 traffic outweighs IPv4. This is what we call the transition”**[9]**.

If both protocols (IPv4 and IPv6) are available, IPv6 is preferred by design. This is why the balance shifts naturally, depending on multiple factors and without us being able to determine how long IPv4 will continue to exist and in what proportion. If one had a crystal ball, one might say that IPv6 will become the dominant protocol in three or four years, and that IPv4 will disappear from the Internet — or at least from many parts of the Internet — in the same timeframe”[10].

Without IPv6 there may be no Metaverse

Metaverses or metauniverses are environments where humans interact socially and economically through their avatars in cyberspace, which is an amplified metaphor for the real world, except that there are no physical or economic limitations[11].

“You can think about the Metaverse as an embodied Internet, where instead of just viewing content — you are in it. And you feel present with other people as if you were in other places, having different experiences that you couldn’t necessarily have on a 2D app or webpage.” Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO**[12]**.

The Metaverse necessarily runs on the Internet, which in turn uses the Internet Protocol (IP) to function.

The Metaverse is a type of simulation where avatars allow users to have much more immersive and realistic connections by displaying a virtual universe that runs online. This is why it is necessary to ensure that the Metaverse is immersive, multisensory, interactive, that it runs in real time, that it allows each user to be precisely differentiated, and that it deploys simultaneous and complex graphic tools, among many other elements. All this would be impossible to guarantee with the IPv4 protocol, as the number of IP addresses would not be enough to cover each connection, nor would it be possible to guarantee that technologies such as NAT would function properly.

Key elements:

• IPv6 is the only protocol that can guarantee enough IP resources to support the Metaverse.
• IPv6 avoids the use of NAT mechanisms that would create technological difficulties for the deployment of the Metaverse.
• IPv6 links have lower RTT delay than IPv4 links, and this allows avatar representations, including holograms, to be displayed synchronously.
• Considering the huge amount of data involved in the deployment of the Metaverse, it is necessary to ensure the least possible data loss. This is why IPv6 is the best option, as evidence shows that data loss is 20% lower when using IPv6 than when using IPv4[13].

The role of small ISPs

Considering that small ISPs are responsible for the connectivity of millions of people across Latin America and that, as previously noted, they are largely responsible for reducing the digital divide[14], it is very It is important for these operators to accelerate their migration/transition to IPv6, not only to remain competitive in relation to larger operators, but also to be able to guarantee their users that technologies such as the Metaverse will work on their devices without major technological headaches.

In conclusion, while the true scope of the Metaverse remains to be seen, its deployment, implementation, and widespread adoption will be possible thanks to the IPv6 protocol, a technology that has provided a solution to the availability of IP resources, avoiding the cumbersome network address translation (NAT) process, improving response times, reducing RTT delay, and decreasing packet losses, while at the same time allowing simultaneous utilization by an enormous number of users.

All of the above leads us to conclude that the Metaverse would not be possible without IPv6.

Disclaimer: This article contains a review and analysis undertaken in the context of the digital transformation within the information society and is duly supported by reliable and verified academic and/or journalistic sources, which have been delimited and published.

The information contained in this journalistic and opinion piece does not necessarily represent the position of Andinalink or of the organizations commercially related with Andinalink.

[1] Andinalink article: Metaversos y el Internet del Futuro (Metaverses and the Internet of the Future)

[2] Andinalink article: Metaversos: Expectativas VS Realidad (Metaverses: Expectations vs Reality)

[3] In the article titled: El agotamiento del protocolo IP (The Exhaustion of the IP Protocol) we explain the characteristics of the TCP protocol. 

[4] Standard reference document on the OSI connectivity model

[5] The article titled: ¿Fue creada Arpanet para soportar una guerra nuclear? (Was Arpanet Created to Withstand a Nuclear War?) details the features and history of Arpanet.

[6] LACNIC document on the Phases of IPv4 Exhaustion

[7] Document published by the IETF about World IPv6 Launch on its sixth anniversary

[8] Guide for the Transition to IPv6 published by the Colombian Ministry of Information and Communications Technology

[9] Guide for the Transition to IPv6 published by the Colombian Ministry of Information and Communications Technology

[10] Guide for the Transition to IPv6 published by the Colombian Ministry of Information and Communications Technology

[11] Andinalink article on Metaverses

[12] Mark in the Metaverse: Facebook’s CEO on why the social network is becoming ‘a metaverse company: The Verge Podcast

[13] Analysis by Alejandro Acosta (LACNIC) of the impact of IPv6 on tactile systems

[14] Andinalink article: Los WISP disminuyen la brecha digital (WISPs Reduce the Digital Divide)

IPv6 Deployment - LACNIC region

The video below shows the IPv6 deployment for the LACNIC region using a Bar Chart Race format

Made with https://flourish.studio/

The sad tale of the ISP that didn’t deploy IPv6

Once upon a time in the not so distant past, a large ISP dominated a country’s 

telecommunications market and felt powerful and without competition. Whenever someone 

needed to log on to the 

Internet they would use their services. Everyone envied their market penetration.

This large ISP, however, had never wanted to deploy IPv6 because they thought their stock

 of IP addresses was enough and saw no indicator telling them that they needed the new 

protocol.

During the course of those years, another smaller ISP began implementing IPv6 and slowly 

began to grow, as they realized that the protocol did indeed make a difference in the eyes of their 

clients and that it was helping them win over new users.

The small ISP’s market penetration continued to grow, as did their earnings and general respect

 for their services. As they grew, it became easier for them to obtain better equipment, traffic 

and interconnection prices. Everything was going very well. The small ISP couldn’t believe that

something as simple as deploying IPv6 could be paying off so spectacularly. Their customers

 told them their needs included running VPNs and holding conference calls with partners in 

other parts of the world, and that their subsidiaries, customers and business partners in Europe

 and Asia had already adopted IPv6.

Despite being so powerful, the large ISP began experiencing internal problems that were 

neither billing nor money related. Sales staff complained that they were having trouble closing 

many deals because customers had started asking for IPv6 and, although their ISP was so

 large and important, they simply did not have IPv6 to offer. Both corporate customers and 

residential users were asking for IPv6; even major state tenders were requiring IPv6.

When this started happening, the Sales Manager complained to the Products, Engineering and 

Operations departments. The latter were left speechless and some employees were let go by 

the company. In the end, Sales did not care where the fault lay – they were simply unable to 

gain new customers. Realizing that they were losing customers, some of the salespeople 

accepted job offers at the small ISP who was looking to grow their staff as they could now 

afford the best sales force. 

Then the same thing happened with the larger ISP’s network manager, an expert who knew 

a lot about IPv6 but who had been unable to overcome the company’s bureaucracy and bring

 the new protocol into production. Logically, the network manager was followed by his trusted 

server administrator and head of security. The large ISP couldn’t believe what was happening

 right before their very eyes. The sales force hired by the smaller ISP (those who used to 

work for the large ISP) brought with them their huge customer base, all of them potential prospects.

A stampede of the large ISP’s clients was on the way. The months went by and the smaller

 ISP was no longer simply offering Internet access – its Data Center had grown, major 

companies brought in new cache servers and much more. They were now offering co-location, 

hosting, virtual hosting, voice and video, among many other services.

When the large provider decided to deploy IPv6, it had to do so very quickly. Things went 

wrong; many errors were made. In addition, certain consultants and companies took 

advantage of their problems and charged higher rush fees. Network downtime increased,

 as did the number of calls to the call center. The large ISP’s reputation started to crumble.

As expected, in the end, everyone who was part of this story – clients and providers alike – 

ended up deploying IPv6. Some ended up happier than others, but everyone adopted IPv6

 on their networks.

By Alejandro Acosta

Google DNS --- Figuring out which DNS Cluster you are using

(this is -almost- a copy / paste of an email sent by Erik Sundberg to nanog mailing list on 

August 23).

This post is being posted with his explicit permission.
I sent this out on the outage list, with a lots of good feedback sent to me. So I figured it 

would be useful to share the information on nanog as well. A couple months ago had to 

troubleshoot a google DNS issue with Google’s NOC. Below is some helpful information 

on how to determine which DNS Cluster you are going to. Let’s remember that Google runs 

DNS Anycast for DNS queries to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. Anycast routes your DNS queries to 

the closes DNS cluster based on the best route / lowest metric to 8.8.8.8/8.8.4.4. Google 

has deployed multiple DNS clusters across the world and each DNS Cluster has multiple 

servers. So a DNS query in Chicago will go to a different DNS clusters than queries from 

a device in Atlanta or New York.

How to get a list of google DNS Cluster’s.
dig -t TXT +short locations.publicdns.goog. @8.8.8.8

How to print this list in a table format. 

-- Script from: https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/faq -- 

#!/bin/bash
IFS="\"$IFS"
for LOC in $(dig -t TXT +short locations.publicdns.goog. @8.8.8.8)
do
  case $LOC in
    '') : ;;
    *.*|*:*) printf '%s ' ${LOC} ;;
    *) printf '%s\n' ${LOC} ;;
  esac
done
---------------

Which will give you a list like below. This is all of the IP network’s that 

google uses for their DNS Clusters and their associated locations. 

74.125.18.0/26 iad
74.125.18.64/26 iad
74.125.18.128/26 syd
74.125.18.192/26 lhr
74.125.19.0/24 mrn
74.125.41.0/24 tpe
74.125.42.0/24 atl
74.125.44.0/24 mrn
74.125.45.0/24 tul
74.125.46.0/24 lpp
74.125.47.0/24 bru
74.125.72.0/24 cbf
74.125.73.0/24 bru
74.125.74.0/24 lpp
74.125.75.0/24 chs
74.125.76.0/24 cbf
74.125.77.0/24 chs
74.125.79.0/24 lpp
74.125.80.0/24 dls
74.125.81.0/24 dub
74.125.92.0/24 mrn
74.125.93.0/24 cbf
74.125.112.0/24 lpp
74.125.113.0/24 cbf
74.125.115.0/24 tul
74.125.176.0/24 mrn
74.125.177.0/24 atl
74.125.179.0/24 cbf
74.125.181.0/24 bru
74.125.182.0/24 cbf
74.125.183.0/24 cbf
74.125.184.0/24 chs
74.125.186.0/24 dls
74.125.187.0/24 dls
74.125.190.0/24 sin
74.125.191.0/24 tul
172.217.32.0/26 lhr
172.217.32.64/26 lhr
172.217.32.128/26 sin
172.217.33.0/26 syd
172.217.33.64/26 syd
172.217.33.128/26 fra
172.217.33.192/26 fra
172.217.34.0/26 fra
172.217.34.64/26 bom
172.217.34.192/26 bom
172.217.35.0/24 gru
172.217.36.0/24 atl
172.217.37.0/24 gru
173.194.90.0/24 cbf
173.194.91.0/24 scl
173.194.93.0/24 tpe
173.194.94.0/24 cbf
173.194.95.0/24 tul
173.194.97.0/24 chs
173.194.98.0/24 lpp
173.194.99.0/24 tul
173.194.100.0/24 mrn
173.194.101.0/24 tul
173.194.102.0/24 atl
173.194.103.0/24 cbf
173.194.168.0/26 nrt
173.194.168.64/26 nrt
173.194.168.128/26 nrt
173.194.168.192/26 iad
173.194.169.0/24 grq
173.194.170.0/24 grq
173.194.171.0/24 tpe
2404:6800:4000::/48 bom
2404:6800:4003::/48 sin
2404:6800:4006::/48 syd
2404:6800:4008::/48 tpe
2404:6800:400b::/48 nrt
2607:f8b0:4001::/48 cbf
2607:f8b0:4002::/48 atl
2607:f8b0:4003::/48 tul
2607:f8b0:4004::/48 iad
2607:f8b0:400c::/48 chs
2607:f8b0:400d::/48 mrn
2607:f8b0:400e::/48 dls
2800:3f0:4001::/48 gru
2800:3f0:4003::/48 scl
2a00:1450:4001::/48 fra
2a00:1450:4009::/48 lhr
2a00:1450:400b::/48 dub
2a00:1450:400c::/48 bru
2a00:1450:4010::/48 lpp
2a00:1450:4013::/48 grq

There are
IPv4 Networks: 68
IPv6 Networks: 20
DNS Cluster’s Identified by POP Code’s: 20

DNS Clusters identified by POP Code to City, State, or Country. Not all 

of these are 
Google’s Core Datacenters, some of them are Edge Points of Presences (POPs). 
https://peering.google.com/#/infrastructure and 
https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/ 

Most of these are airport codes, it did my best to get the location correct.
iad          Washington, DC
syd         Sydney, Australia
lhr          London, UK
mrn        Lenoir, NC
tpe         Taiwan
atl          Altanta, GA
tul          Tulsa, OK
lpp          Findland
bru         Brussels, Belgium
cbf         Council Bluffs, IA
chs         Charleston, SC
dls          The Dalles, Oregon
dub        Dublin, Ireland
sin          Singapore
fra          Frankfort, Germany
bom       Mumbai, India
gru         Sao Paulo, Brazil
scl          Santiago, Chile
nrt          Tokyo, Japan
grq         Groningen, Netherlans

Which Google DNS Server Cluster am I using. I am testing this from Chicago, 

IL
# dig o-o.myaddr.l.google.com -t txt +short @8.8.8.8 "173.194.94.135" 

<<<<<<DNS Server IP, reference the list above to get the cluster, Council 

Bluffs, IA 
"edns0-client-subnet 207.xxx.xxx.0/24" <<<< Your Source IP Block Side note, 

the google 
dns servers will not respond to DNS queries to the Cluster’s Member’s IP, 

they will 
only respond to dns queries to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. So the following will 

not work.

dig google.com @173.194.94.135 Now to see the DNS Cluster load balancing 

in action. 
I am doing a dig query from our Telx\Digital Realty POP in Atlanta, GA. 

We do peer 
with google at this location. I dig a dig query about 10 times and received 

the 
following unique dns cluster member ip’s as responses. 

dig o-o.myaddr.l.google.com -t txt +short @8.8.8.8
"74.125.42.138"
"173.194.102.132"
"74.125.177.5"
"74.125.177.74"
"74.125.177.71"
"74.125.177.4"

Which all are Google DNS Networks in Atlanta.
74.125.42.0/24

atl

74.125.177.0/24

atl

172.217.36.0/24

atl

173.194.102.0/24

atl

2607:f8b0:4002::/48

atl



Just thought it would be helpful when troubleshooting google DNS 

issues.

(this is -almost- a copy / paste of an email sent by Erik Sundberg to nanog mailing list on 
August 23 2017).
 This post is being posted with his explicit permission.

Joke-image: When you ask an engineer. MAC - IP Address

Animation: The sad tale of the ISP that did not deploy IPv6

Hello,

  The following animation is based on the story called: "The sad tale of the ISP that didn't deploy IPv6" [1]. Hope you enjoy it:

[1] http://portalipv6.lacnic.net/en/the-sad-tale-of-the-isp-that-didnt-deploy-ipv6/

IPv6 Song presented during Lacnic23 (Lima, Peru) - IPv6 Latin American Forum

(note that you can turn on captioning if you wish)

Antonio Esguerra: Head Engineer
Michael Schulze: Co-producer
Eidan Molina: Co-producer. Composer.
Music and Lyrics by Eidan Molina
Agrupacion de produccion: Fifth Floor Studios
Idea: Alejandro Acosta