| Q. |
Can you please provide some key points about the NTT Com
IPv6 backbone?
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| A. |
Since 2003, NTT Com has been operating its Global IPv6 Backbone offering IPv6 as a commercial off-the-shelf service. No service provider other than NTT Com can provide a truly global IPv6 backbone network covering Asia, the U.S., Europe, and Oceania. NTT Com's IPv6 Backbone possesses the largest number of IPv6 prefixes/routes.
NTT Com not only provides network services but also is active in various kinds of IPv6 promotional activities, such as application/solutions development as well as work in IPv6 standardization.
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| Q. |
Can you please provide some additional information about the
Native, Dual Stack and Tunneling Service?
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| A. |
Native service provides IPv6 access in the same manner that most service providers provide access to IPv4 today. The Dual Stack service provides both IPv4 and IPv6 access on the same physical connection. Both these services are only available to customers that connect directly to the NTT Global IP Network.
The IPv6 Tunneling Service provides any customer that is attached to any provider using globally routable IPv4 addresses access to IPv6 using the same basic technology that an IP-based VPN uses.
In all cases, the customer must have suitable CPE equipment capable of routing IPv6 in a manner compatible with the service NTT is providing. In general, most routers that support IPv6 already support these capabilities.
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| Q. |
Who and where are NTT Com's IPv6 peers?
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| A. |
NTT Com peers with other sTLA holders via private peering arrangements and at IPv6 Internet Exchanges (IX). Most of NTT Com's IPv6 peering is native, however some IPv6 over IPv4 tunneling connections remain where required by the peering partner.
Here is a list of exchange points where NTT Com has a peering presence in the U.S., Europe and Asia:
U.S.: PAIX, EQI6IX (east & west)
Japan: JPNAP6, NSPIXP6
Hong Kong: HK6IX
Europe: UK6X, LINX, AMS-IX, DE-CIX, PARIX, ESPANIX
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| Q. |
What SLAs does NTT Com offer with the IPv6 service? Will they
be the same as what you offer for IPv4?
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| A. |
NTT Com offers the same, industry-leading network SLAs that are offered for IPv4 service. These include latency, packet loss, availability, and jitter. Our SLAs may be viewed online at http://us.ntt.net/support/sla.
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| Q. |
What customer support does NTT Com provide for IPv6?
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| A. |
NTT Com offers the same high level of support that we offer for our IPv4 service.
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| Q. |
Can NTT Com support BGP? What about for multi-homed environments?
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| A. |
Yes, NTT Com supports both BGP and multi-homing in both an IPv4 and IPv6 environment.
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| Q. |
What are NTT Com's BGP routing policies? Does NTT Com support RADB?
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| A. |
It was a global IPv6 test bed that analyzes IPv6 connectivity and its function. http://www.6bone.net The 6bone and its 3FFE prefixes were phased out on June 6th, 2006.
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| Q. |
What is the Regional Internet Registry?
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| Q. |
What is the RIR policy?
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| A. |
This is a document that specifies RIR policies and procedures for assigning/allocating IPv6 address space. NTT Com assigns IPv6 addresses to its customers in accordance with the policies in this document.
The text of the policy can be found at http://www.arin.net/policy/nrpm.html#ipv6.
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| Q. |
What is the sub-TLA (sTLA)?
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| A. |
Sub Top Level Aggregation (sTLA) addresses are IPv6 addresses that are meant for ISPs to allocate to their customers for actual use. IPv6 addresses in the sTLA space start with "2001:". NTT Com has been allocated sTLA addresses from ARIN and APNIC. NTT Com assigns /48 address space from its sTLA to its IPv6 customers.
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| Q. |
What Are the Key Features of IPv6?
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| A. |
- Larger IP address space. IPv4 uses only 32 bits for IP address space, which allows only 4 billion nodes to be identified on the Internet. 4 billion may look like a large number; however, it is less than the human population on the earth! IPv6 allows 128 bits for IP address space, allowing 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 (three hundred forty undecillion) nodes to be uniquely identified on the Internet. A larger address space allows true end-to-end communication, without NAT or other short-term workarounds against the IPv4 address shortage. (These days NAT is a headache for new protocol deployment and has scalability issues; it is necessary to decommission NAT networks for the Internet to grow further).
- Deploy more recent technologies. IPv4, which is over 30 year old, was not designed for the way the Internet is used today. A number of improvements were needed that either did not exist in IPv4, or were added on later as an afterthought. IPv6 includes a number of these improvements in its base specification, allowing people to assume these features are available everywhere, anytime. "Recent technologies" include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Auto-configuration. With IPv4, DHCP exists but is optional. A novice user can get into trouble if they visit another site without a DHCP server. With IPv6, a "stateless host auto-configuration" mechanism is mandatory. This is much simpler to use and manage than IPv4 DHCP. RFC2462 has the specification for it.
- Security. With IPv4, IPsec is optional and you need to ask the peer if it supports IPsec. With IPv6, IPsec support is mandatory. By mandating IPsec, it can be assumed that you can secure your IP communication whenever you talk to IPv6 devices.
- Friendly to traffic engineering technologies. IPv6 was designed to allow better support for traffic engineering like diffserv or intserv (RSVP). We do not have a single standard for traffic engineering yet, so the IPv6 base specification reserves a 24-bit space in the header field for those technologies and is able to adapt to coming standards better than IPv4.
- Multicast. Multicast is mandatory in IPv6, which was optional in IPv4. The IPv6 base specifications themselves extensively use multicast.
- Better support for ad-hoc networking. Scoped addresses allow better support for ad-hoc (or "zeroconf") networking. IPv6 supports anycast addresses, which can also contribute to service discoveries.
- A cure to routing table growth. The IPv4 backbone routing table size has been a big headache to ISPs and backbone operators. The IPv6 addressing specification restricts the number of backbone routing entries by advocating route aggregation. With the current IPv6 addressing specification, we will see only 8192 routes on the default-free zone.
- Simplified header structures. IPv6 has simpler packet header structures than IPv4. It will allow future vendors to implement hardware acceleration for IPv6 routers easier.
- Allows flexible protocol extensions. IPv6 allows more flexible protocol extensions than IPv4 does, by introducing a protocol header chain. Even though IPv6 allows flexible protocol extensions, IPv6 does not impose overhead to intermediate routers. It is achieved by splitting headers into two categories: the headers intermediate routers need to be analyzed and the headers the end nodes will examine. This also allows for hardware acceleration in IPv6 routers.
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| Q. |
How are IPv6 addresses written?
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| A. |
They are written as eight sets of four-digit hexadecimal numerals, separated by colons. When writing a network address, it is written as an address followed by an extension.
Example: 2001:0102:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000/32
Multiple zeros may be abbreviated as follows:
- Within each four-digit section, the lead zero or zeros may be omitted, for example, "0102" may be abbreviated to "102," and "0000" may be abbreviated to "0."
- Sets of four zeros that are in a row can be abbreviated with two colons (::). However, the double-colon abbreviation may only be used once in each address.
- The sample address that was given above may be abbreviated as follows.
2001: |
0102:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000/32 |
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Omitting initial zeros from each four-digit set. |
2001: |
102:0:0:0:0:0:0/32 |
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Replacing consecutive zero sets with a double-colon. |
2001: |
102::/32 |
Most people who are using applications will specify where they want to go using domain names. DNS servers automatically convert domain names into v4/v6 addresses. That means that ordinary users will hardly need to input IPv6 address directly.
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| Q. |
How do IPv6 packets travel along the backbone?
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| A. |
Unlike many other Service Providers that employ tunneling or parallel networks to support IPv6, NTT Com's backbone is completely IPv4/IPv6 dual stack. NTT Com customers can transmit IPv4 and/or IPv6 packets over their access link to the NTT Com POP, and those packets will be routed accordingly, over the dual stack NTT Com Global IP Backbone, based on either the IPv4 or IPv6 routing table. This is a 'clean' and cost effective way for customers to access the IPv4 and IPv6 Internets, and the dual stack method is the recommended transition technique recommended by IPv6 experts.
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| Q. |
I would like to have access to current news and movements as it relates to IPv6. Could you give me some pointers?
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| Q. |
What are the three different types of IPv6 addresses?
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| A. |
IPv6 addresses are 128 bits long, and there are three types: Unicast, Anycast and Multicast.
- Unicast addresses are used to identify an individual interface.
- Anycast addresses indicate a set of interfaces, but packets sent to an Anycast address are delivered to one of the interfaces indicated by the address, i.e. the nearest one.
- Multicast addresses also indicate a set of interfaces, but packets sent to a Multicast address are delivered to all interfaces indicated by the address. Multicast addresses supersede broadcast addresses.
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| Q. |
Does NTT Com have any IPv6 managed services or security products?
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| A. |
Yes, NTT Com's IntelliSecurity product supports IPv6. IntelliSecurity is a managed solution that includes real-time firewall monitoring and investigation by trained security experts. Although IPv6 offers a number of security benefits over IPv4, a corporate security policy is still needed. NTT Com can help the customer develop this policy, configure their firewall(s) and manage the devices via IntelliSecurity. NTT Com is proud that IntelliSecurity was the first managed service launched for IPv6 worldwide.
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| Q. |
Does NTT Com offer DNS support for IPv6?
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| A. |
DNS support for IPv6 requires two different elements: (1) IPv6 transport for record requests, and (2) support for IPv6 DNS record types. NTT Com's DNS servers and resolvers are all dual stack IPv4/IPv6. Therefore, NTT Com will support DNS requests via either IPv4 or IPv6 transport. NTT Com's DNS servers also support IPv6 record types (for example AAAA and ip6.arpa records) in addition to IPv4 record types – served over either IPv4 or IPv6 transport to suit any customer configuration.
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| Q. |
Does NTT Com offer IPv6 web hosting?
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| A. |
Yes, NTT Com's Virtual Private Server version 2 (VPSv2) is dual stack and supports IPv6. VPS technology partitions a single dedicated server into multiple "Virtual Private Servers." It is a fully managed hosting environment where customers get their own UNIX virtual machine. The VPS is much more than just a web server; it is a complete UNIX platform. It provides IPv4 and IPv6 support for Apache (including SSL), sendmail, POP, IMAP, SSH, FTP, ping and traceroute. Contact an NTT Com sales representative for more information. (877-8NTT-NET)
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