On 6/26/16 2:58 PM, S Moonesamy wrote:
> Hi Logan,
> At 22:03 25-06-2016, Loganaden Velvindron wrote:
>> coming years is, in terms of National strategy. The minister
>> mentioned that there are more smartphones sold in Mauritius that the
>> population of Mauritius itself. This suggests that there is still a
>> growing need for IP connectivity, despite the small size of the island.
>
> I agree that there will be an increase in connectivity as the island
> has a very high mobile phone penetration. I am not sure about the IP
> address usage as I have not looked into it.
>
>> I believe that everybody needs to be involved in any plan that can be
>> executed successfully.
>>
>> 1) Government
>> The ministry needs to encourage ISPs to grow their IPv4 resource
>> space in the short term with respect to their expected growth in the
>> coming years. We should be realistic as a lot of content on the
>> Internet is still accessible over IPv4 only. We will need IPv4, even
>> after a successful migration to IPv6.
>
> There are two ISPs: Mauritius Telecom and Emtel. It doesn't look like
> Emtel is encouraged by the government.
(Replying in my personal capacity)
The encouragement does not need to come directly from the government,
but rather the government engaging ISPs like Mauritius Telecom and Emtel
for their Innovation framework in terms of getting them onboard for the
IPv6/IPv4 transition. Emtel, Orange and the other ISPs are the one
building the "roads" for Internet of things "vehicles".
>
>> 2) Businesses
>> I've seen some interesting companies building Internet of Things in
>> Mauritius, that they sell either locally or Internationally. In the
>> US, the penetration of IPv6 is around 20%,
>
> I have seen some interesting stuff done locally. I wouldn't call it
> the Internet of Things as there aren't that many devices. I looked at
> the IP address usage for Mauritius. I didn't find any significant
> usage of IPv4 addresses by local businesses.
I have spoken to businesses who are interested in offering "Camera
Surveillance as a service". I've been told that they are looking at the
IP usage as they are looking for public IPv4 for each of them. In the
face of depleting IPv4 address space, they are talking to their
suppliers regarding the "Ipv6-readiness" of those devices.
>
>> (Figures from here:
>> <https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=per-country-ipv6-adoption&tab=per-country-ipv6-adoption>https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=per-country-ipv6-adoption&tab=per-country-ipv6-adoption)
>>
>> If those IOT companies target the EU/US market, they need to have
>> products that have been tested on IPv6, before shipping them to those
>> countries, or there might be massive product recall. It's important
>> to understand the trend that the growth of IPv6 in EU/US is
>> EXPONENTIAL, not linear.
>
> It is easy to guess why there has been an increase in IPv6 adoption in
> the U.S. :-) I doubt that it is related to IoT.
>
It is related to the depletion of IPv4 in the ARIN space. However, with
the upcoming iot market, this presents an interesting opportunity for
Mauritius.
I personally believe that Mauritius can learn from the failures of IPv6
transition in the US, such as purely dynamic IPv6 address from comcast,
which cause end-users issues. I believe that /48 static IPv6 is the
proper way forward, via a mechanism like DHCPv6 Prefix delegation for
Fiber/copper cable links. For cellular networks, I believe that 464xlat
looks like a good solution forward in the face of no ipv4 addresses
left, and still maintaining connectivity to content available only over
IPv4.
>> I don't think that local iot businesses would like reviews/product
>> recalls like NEST:
>
> Are there product recalls in Mauritius?
>
There haven't been that many product recalls in Mauritius. however, if
we export our iot products to EU/US, we should expect recalls if they
don't work.
>> 3) End-users
>> How many end-users are buying products that are linked to the
>> Internet nowadays ? Many. One might argue that cramming those devices
>> behind a single public IPv4 address is an acceptable solution.
>> However, will this still be the case as other parts of the world are
>> taking advantage of Ipv6 for better user experience ? With IPv6, One
>> could get roughly 1,208,907,372,870,555,465,154,560 IPv6 address from
>> a reasonable ISP.
>
> It seems like you are making a case for IPv6. I'll wait to be invited
> for questions about that. :-)
>
I would be happy to engage with the local Internet communities during
AFRINIC-25.
>> 4) Content providers
>>
>> Going through the list of TOP 10 content providers for Mauritius from
>> Alexa:
>> list obtained from
>> (<http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/MU>http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/MU),
>> and some quick tests using ping:
>>
>> 1- youtube - IPv6 enabled.
>> 2- facebook.com - IPv6 enabled (still some issues with chat window)
>> 3- google.mu - IPv6 enabled.
>> 4- google.com - IPv6 enabled.
>> 5- lexpress.mu - NO IPv6 connectivity. (Simple test : ping6
>> <http://www.lexpress.mu>www.lexpress.mu, result -> unknown host)
>> 6-yahoo.com - IPv6 enabled.
>> 7-bing.com - NO IPv6 connectivity (ping6
>> <http://www.bing.com>www.bing.com -> result - unknown host)
>> 8-topfmradio.com - NO IPv6 connectivity (ping6 topfmradio.com ->
>> result unknown host)
>> 9-wikipedia.com - IPv6 enabled.
>> 10-live.com - NO IPv6 connectivity (ping6 live.com -> result unknown
>> host)
>
> Some of those web sites switched globally instead of enabling IPv6 by
> country. It does not make any difference for Mauritius as there
> aren't any ISPs offering IPv6 access for residential customers. I
> doubt that
WIth the current depletion rate of IPv4 address space, I believe that
all stakeholders should re-evaluate their position with respect to IPv6
transition. For a smart island, we should be able to raise our
performance index.
> there are many business customers with IPv6 access. It is encouraging
> to see that the University of Mauritius enabled IPv6 for its web site.
>
It's a very good step forward. I hope that they will also deploy IPv6 on
their campus using static Ipv6 addresses, instead of dynamic IPv6
addresses a la comcast.
>> I would argue that right now, those content providers who HAVE NO
>> IPv6 connectivity are experiencing a degraded user experience
>> world-wide as 12% of the world can reach google through IPv6. This
>> means that in order to access those sites from regions that use IPv6
>> (due to Ipv4 depletion), there has to be a translator mechanism to
>> allow those Ipv6-only end-users to access those websites that are
>> IPv4-only. A translator mechanism would incur additionally latency,
>> and therefore affect the user experience. Negative user experience
>> means losing revenue for content providers.
>
> From a network perspective local companies are not content providers.
> At the moment I would list them as digital content providers. It
> would be difficult to argue for IPv6 in the current ecosystem.
I take your suggestion of calling them "digital content providers" into
account. Depends on their audience. lexpress.mu also has traffic from
outside from Mauritius. Those are usually Mauritians who are living in
other countries:
It has around 7.8% of its traffic from France, and 6.7% of its traffic
from the UK, according to alexa(
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/lexpress.mu).
>
> Outside Mauritius, negative user experience can cause a loss in
> revenue. I wonder whether that is the case in Mauritius as I have
> encountered a few web sites which perform poorly for several months.
> The additional "translation" latency is insignificant in comparison
> with the high latency people are used to in Mauritius.
>
They should look at their on-line revenue earnings, and do some analysis
to determine that.
>> 5) ISP
>>
>> ISPs need to be able to provide both IPv4 and IPv6, as realistically,
>> A lot of content is still accessible over Iv4 only. However, with the
>> Ipv4 depletion, we will reach a point where we will only be able to
>> give Ipv6 addresses, and we need to make sure that the IPv6 network
>> that the ISP provides is as good as it's IPv4 network.
>
> Yes.
>
>> Let me explain this point:
>> If an ISP offers IPv6, and the customers complain that Google is
>> "slow" with IPv6. It might be an issue with the ISP not being able to
>> build a high quality IPv6 network.
>
> I don't think that it is a problem for Mauritius Telecom as it has a
> Google cache on its network.
A better example would wikipedia I suppose ?
>
>> Of course, with shrinking Ipv4 addresses, it will be harder for ISPs
>> to cope with the demand for Internet, and they need to plan and
>> deploy Ipv6 soon.
>
> There is already extensive use of NAT locally. At the moment it looks
> like it is the favoured approach as there does seem to be the type of
> need for interconnectivity.
>
NAT has scalability and support cost issues , and I do not believe that
this is the right way forward. Someone mentioned to me that teaching
instructors recommend using NAT for CISCO courses, as the material has
been designed for US market, and does not take into account the IPv4
address space usage in African & Indian Ocean region.
However, if we get into the position of very little IPv4 space left in
our region, a solution that would NAT IPv4 connections would be
inevitable for growing markets like cellular networks. 464xlat looks
like a better alternative here to maintain access to content available
only over Ipv4 networks, instead of Carrier Grade NAT.
> Regards,
> S. Moonesamy
Received on Sun Jun 26 2016 - 15:40:17 PST