News of 2005

SixXS wishes everybody a happy and fruitful 2005.

As per the 1st of February 2005 the old Windows Heartbeat client will stop functioning because the old Configuration Server will stop responding to queries. Users who are currently still using the Windows Heartbeat Client will receive an email notification about this change so that they can replace it beforehand. Users of the UNIX heartbeat client are not affected by this change, but are advised to update to AICCU when possible.

After our previous announcement of stopping the support for the former Windows Heartbeat Client because of the shutdown of the old Configuration Service, we have released a new AICCU. This new version includes the latest fixes solving a few minor issues which occurred in certain specific setups. We have additionally tagged this version with a normal version number, taking it out of the beta process. The only component left in AICCU being beta is AYIYA, development of which will continue in the coming months. The AICCU and Technology/Sub-project Status pages have has also been updated to reflect these changes. In case of issues with AICCU, don't hesitate to contact SixXS

As the 2nd incarnation of the deham01 hardware also failed yesterday, Easynet have replaced it with the 3rd incarnation of the hardware. The PoP should be fully operational again. In case of issues, do not hesitate to contact SixXS per email as mentioned on the contact information page. We thank Easynet for their commitment and fast response in solving these issues so quickly.

Starting today Italian users can request an AYIYA tunnel using the normal tunnel request procedures. This is part of the first mass-scale beta test of AYIYA and will benefit the many users in Italy who are stuck behind NAT's. Further large scale beta tests will follow.

We are proud to present the first PoP in Poland. This new PoP is hosted by Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center. Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center (PSNC) is responsible for the development, management and maintenance of a countrywide Polish National Research and Educational Network PIONIER. This PoP is available to users who are already using PIONIER national network for academic or research purposes. More information can be found on the Poznan PoP page.

Today we are also proud to present the first Swedish PoP. This new PoP is hosted by Availo. Availo is a Swedish ISP specializing in colocation of contentproviders and delivering high-speed leased lines and hosting solutions for companies. More information can be found on the Availo PoP page.

A new version of AICCU has been released. This version contains, again a number of small bugfixes amongst one which gives AYIYA tunnels a link-local address on the AYIYA interface thus enabling Multicast to work over AYIYA tunnels.

As previously announced, per the 1st of February 2005 the former Windows Heartbeat client would stop functioning because the old Configuration Server will stop responding to queries. If you still where using the Windows Heartbeat Client, you now have to upgrade to AICCU as has been announced last month.

After overcoming failed hardware on three servers, OS reboot failures, overlooked routing setting, shredded software RAIDs, highly mysterious kernel routing failures, resource issues due to emergency router upgrades and other intimate encounters with Murphy we are happy to announce the revival of deham01.sixxs.net. We apologize sincerely for this outage but we are confident that in future this will not reoccur to that extent. Happy IPv6ing!

The Stipte PoP, also known as nlams04, reached a staggering amount of 1000 tunnels today, thereby serving about a quarter of all the SixXS tunnels. Not unsurprisingly it is also the PoP doing the most traffic averaging around 10mbit/s throughout the day.

With the advent of a new version of ecmh several PoPs have now gained working MLDv1/MLDv2+SSM multicast capabilities. Note that sending multicast traffic is limited to the ecmh domain because of the MLD proxy trick. This will hopefully resolved in a future update when BGP and PIM are introduced. As mentioned in the FAQ and on the status page this is still a beta feature. Thus it might not work, in those cases, like any other, contact SixXS with the details of the problem and we can see if they can be resolved.

We are proud to present the first PoP in Belgium, providing yet another country with IPv6 connectivity. This new PoP is hosted by Easynet Belgium. More information can be found on the Easynet PoPs page.

Being the last PoP in SixXS using 6bone space, the Kewlio PoP will be renumbering to a RIPE prefix. The PoP will stop using 6bone prefixes on 4 April 2005, users will be notified and will have to renumber into their newly allocated RIPE prefixes before this date.

The Ghost Route Hunter now has RSS 2.0 and ATOM 0.3 Feeds which list the newly allocated prefixes. See the Export Formats page for more information.

On special request we have added the possibility to change the MTU of a tunnel to an arbitrary value in the 1280 - 1480 range. This is most likely of value for users of the various multicast services that are available on the internet where most streaming services use an MTU of 1400. The MTU FAQ entry has been updated to reflect this. A number of users have already made use of this as can be seen in the MTU statistics.

As announced more than 1,5 month ago, we have shutdown any remaining tunnels which were still using the 6bone address space. Kewlio is also taking their 6bone prefix offline. There are now no more PoPs inside SixXS using 6bone.

We are proud to present a second PoP in Belgium, provide by the fourth NREN joining SixXS: BELNET, The Belgian Research and Education Network BELNET supplies Internet access with very high bandwidth to Belgian educational institutions, research centers and government services. This new PoP is hosted by BELNET, The Belgian Research and Education Network and is intended for existing users of BELNET infrastructure. Before use this PoP requires users to sign the BELNET AUP. More information can be found on the BELNET PoPs page.

Next to the existing PoP Status page, we have now also made available an Issues Tracker. Issues that occur can be recorded there with a description and the actions that are being taken. All SixXS users can report problem using that method, thus if there is a problem with a PoP, don't hesitate to report it!

The Forum now also supports ATOM Feeds. RSS support has been improved. Both feeds are now properly returning the last-modified date thus causing less bandwidth to be used if the client is working properly. Additionally a pager has been implemented, paging the forum per 30 subjects.

The wording TLA (Top Level Aggregator) was deprecated in RFC3587. GRH and several other texts on the SixXS site used this wording. We have finally changed this wording into the more accurate DFP, meaning Default Free Prefix. All parts of this site should now be using this term to indicate a prefix which is routed and can't be agregated in the IPv6 routing tables. These prefixes thus match the prefixes that are assigned to LIR's by the RIR's.

IANA, who where heavily understaffed for the last couple of months, have done a sprint this week assigning a large number of port numbers, amongst which, today, AYIYA. The official AYIYA port number is 5072. We will integrate this into the client next week, that together with a number of other updates will result in a new version.

SixXS will stop accepting new signups using 6bone handles per 1st of September 2005. This measure is taken to conclude any interaction with the 6bone activity which will cease to exist per 6th of July 2006 (6-6-2006). As such new signups will only be accepted from AFRINIC, APNIC, ARIN, LACNIC or RIPE. The FAQ is updated to reflect this information already. Existing users can keep using their 6BONE handles, except when they need to update their details they will have to create a handle out of one of the above registries and migrate to the new handle by notifying SixXS.

GRH has been enhanced by a IPv4 and IPv6 capable distributed traceroute. This utility allows one to make traceroute allows one to do traceroutes from the various SixXS PoPs allowing one to checkup routes around the internet. Full integration into GRH, thus being able to see the traceroute next to the GRH path will follow.

In a partnership with OCCAID, the first non-European PoP, located in Chicago in the United States of America has been launched. Also in the planning is a second OCCAID PoP in Atlanta (GA). Full press article can be found on the OCCAID newspage. Details about the PoP can be found on the uschi01 PoP page.

Opening week special: Requests for tunnels, one per handle, coming in before 22 October 2005 00:00 (GMT) will be donated bonus credits making one able to directly request a subnet.

As mentioned in the previous news item, the OCCAID Atlanta (GA) PoP (usatl01) has now also been opened. Details about this PoP can be found on the usatl01 PoP page.

Opening week special: Requests for tunnels, one per handle, coming in before 22 October 2005 00:00 (GMT) will be donated bonus credits making one able to directly request a subnet.

SixXS is now 3 years open for the public!
The important part of this third year is the expansion to the United States with the help from OCCAID. Other important happenings are the starting experimental deployment of Multicast connectivity, stopping of using 6bone resources and advances in development of AICCU. Growth patterns seem still to go up and in this third year we have also reached the 30mbit traffic limit on some occasions.
This all would have never been possible to the ISP's providing the PoPs, thus many thanks to them.
As last year: Happy birthday and enjoy IPv6

OCCAID have released their plans for the 'SixXS USA' project. This project will extend the successful European development for end-user IPv6 connectivity throughout Northern America. Realizing the challenges that broadband ISPs face in deploying IPv6 to end-user customers, the SixXS USA project will allow their customers to find a closer and faster IPv6 connection through OCCAID

Due to a recently triggered bug (Extended Community) in a rather old Quagga we where running for GRH we have finally upgraded it to the 0.98.5 version which is two years younger than the former version.

The third US based PoP has been opened in OCCAID Newark, New Jersey (usewr01). Details about this PoP can be found on the usewrl01 PoP page.

Opening week special: Requests for tunnels, one per handle, coming in before 1st of January 2006 00:00 (GMT) will be donated bonus credits making one able to directly request a subnet.