Colt IPv6 for Business Customers Case Study - Swiss IPv6 Council Jun 2013-v3

© 2010 Colt Technology Services Group Limited. All rights reserved.

IPv6 for Business Customers – Colt’s Case Study Javier Benitez, 11 June 2013

Network and Platform, Strategy & Architecture

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Agenda

1 About Colt

Colt’s IPv6 Strategy – Dual Stack

Colt’s IPv6 Project Case Study

What Next After Dual-Stack?

Summary

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3

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5

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Colt – The Information Delivery Platform

• 44,000km EU high capacity long

distance network, 27,000 transatlantic

• Connecting 22 countries, 39 metro

networks and >150 cities

• 20 data centres and 19,000 connected

buildings

• 500+ NNIs, customers in 77 countries

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Colt’s IP Network Overview

• Business customers only

• Coverage: Focus on EU (13 countries, 44 cities); extensive EU IP peerings and US East Coast presence completed by E-NNIs and MPLS-NNIs

• Data Centres: 20 DCs in 14 cities in 10 EU countries (30,000 +sqm)

• Routing: AS (8220); ISIS (single area, 2-level); MPLS (LDP)

• Size: 350+ PE; 60+ P; 20+ PR; 30K+ CPEs

• Core Links: n*10GE

• Services: Internet Access (and Transit); MPLS IPVPN, VoIP

• Integrated network: same PE/P for Internet & VPN

• Access connectivity: Ethernet (on-net & off-net); DSL (Ethernet ULL & ATM/L2TP wholesale DSL); MPLS-NNI (type A/B); TDM (off-net)

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Colt IPv6 Strategy for Business Customers

• Business customer requirements led to Dual-Stack

– Same IP services/features delivered over native & parallel IPv4/IPv6

• The sooner it can be offered the earlier customers will be able to start their own learning and transition

– Customer education is key!

• Colt’s short to mid term strategy: Dual-Stack

– 6PE & 6VPE (MPLS transport)

– IP services & features seamlessly developed for IPv4/IPv6

– Colt’s IPv4 address pool at current allocation rate: 3+ years

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Colt IPv6 Case Study

• Colt is hopefully a representative use case for IPv6 business-only service provider

– Typically the focus is still on residential SPs (due to IPv4 address exhaustion)

• It can also be of interest to enterprises when planning for their internal projects

• Colt IPv6 Project phases:

– Internal business case

– Infrastructure design & implementation

– Product development

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Colt IPv6 CS (I) : Internal Business Case

• First IPv6 conference attended: 2nd Global IPv6 Summit (Madrid 2002)

– “IPv6 is a reality: It's not an illusion, it's a need”

• Architecture & design teams tried to raise an IPv6 project several times in the period 2002-2008, but:

– There were no customer demand

– IPv4 exhaustion was still not critical

– Therefore: It was not possible to build the business case for IPv6

• 2009 was the inflexion point in Colt:

– IPv4 exhaustion started to have more external visibility

– A new business case was built accounting for all IP product revenue at risk

– Intensive IPv6 internal education campaign (product & management)

– IPv6 infrastructure project was approved to start in 2010

– IPv6 product development approved to start in 2011

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Colt IPv6 CS (II) : Infrastructure Design & Implementation

• IPv6 Infrastructure project started in Q1 2010

• Scope: IPv4/IPv6 Dual-stack across Network & OSS

– Network:

• MPLS transport in the core (IPv4 IS-IS/LDP)

• 6PE (Internet), 6VPE (IPVPN) in the access

• Full network upgrade completed Q3 2012

– OSS:

• Dual-Stack across all major OSS systems (monitoring, performance, provisioning, Syslog, Mail, DNS, Radius, NTP, etc.

• Just completed Q2 2013

• First alpha Internet transit service: V6WC Paris 2011

– Early setup based on limited 6PE deployment

• World IPv6 Day (www.colt.net) 8 June 2011

– Use case on how to quickly bring IPv6 web content online

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V6 World Congress – IPv4/IPv6 Dual Stack

IP/MPLS Core AS 8220

Carrier Ethernet Metro Access

(Paris)

100Mbps

IPv4/IPv6 PE/6PE (Paris)

IPv6 Transit (Paris, Frankfurt,Amsterdam

Zurich)

IPv4/ IPv6 Transit (New York)

IPv6 Network 2001:920:7000::/48

IPv4 Network 195.68.67.0/24

IPv4/IPv6 Dual-stack

CPE

EU/US IPv4/IPv6 Peerings

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World IPv6 Day – Colt Setup Topology

IP/MPLS Core AS 8220

Sar17.LON (KJC)

IPv6 Transit (Paris, Frankfurt,Amsterdam

Zurich)

IPv4/ IPv6 Transit (New York)

FW

EU/US IPv4/IPv6 Peerings

Sar18.LON (PGT)

Colt IT

Network

LB www.colt.net

c7200 NAT64

C7200 NAT64

cASR1K IPv4

cASR1K IPv4

IPv4

IPv6 IPv4

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Colt IPv6 CS (III) : Product Strategy

• No commercial distinction between v4/v6 traffic

• Enable all existing IP products and features for IPv6

• Deliver the required flexibility to support customer’s own transition plans

• Eventual (long-term) withdrawal of all products and features not compatible with IPv6

• Business Customer – IPv6 Reality assessment:

– Interest restricted to early-adopters & large corporations

– The greater mass of smaller customers are being very reactive, not considering IPv6 at the moment

– Questions about Colt’s IPv6 support & roadmap in RFPs have significantly increased

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Colt IPv6 CS (III) : Product Development

• Basic IPv6 product development project

– Basic Internet Access service (“wires-only”, i.e., unmanaged service) started in Q1 2011

– Learning approach

– Beta trial started June 2011 with 19 customers all around Europe

– Service officially launched Q4 2012

• Full IPv6 product development project

– Dual-Stack full feature parity for Internet Access & IPVPN (started Q3 2011)

– 3 phase approach (feature prioritisation)

– Phase 1 about to be launched. Phase 2/3 Q4 2013

– Tactical transition techniques analysed in Phase 3

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What Next After Dual-Stack?

• Dual-Stack is good but …

– it is quite likely that it will not be enough

– and customers will request tactical transition tools

– what are the other techniques that could help and are suited for business customers?

• Colt’s plans beyond Dual-stack :

– IPv4 address preservation techniques (short term)

– NAT64 “in the cloud”

• IPv4 customer content visible in IPv6 Internet (short term)

• IPv6 customer content visible in IPv4 Internet (mid/long term)

• IPv6 customer end user access to IPv4 Internet (long term)

• Transition techniques will be implemented in existing PE devices (using available service cards), local to each IP PoP

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Summary

• Dual-Stack is Colt’s IPv6 strategy for business customers

• Lessons learnt

– Internal business case is always difficult to sell

• Internal education a must

– Training is fundamental

• Well spent money

– OSS is where we have found most of the issues

• The network was much easier

– Customer education should be done in early stages

• Periodic sessions with customers

• No magic solution (unfortunately) for business customers

– Every customer will have to go through its own migration

• Don’t panic, but do start your own project now (if you haven’t already)

© 2010 Colt Technology Services Group Limited. All rights reserved.

Thank you. Questions?

Javier.benitez@colt.net

www.colt.net