[Planetlab-users] PlanetLab 4.2 release will support IPv6

[Marc E. Fiuczynski]

Hello,

Short story: as stated on the "PlanetLab 4.2 Upgrade Schedule" page  
(http://www.planet-lab.org/node/247), we will be supporting IPv6 in  
the next release.

More details:

What does this mean?

It means that each sliver will be auto configured with a global IPv6  
address.  This only happens if the site hosting the node has a link- 
local router sending router advertisements for global scope IPv6  
address.  We have not decided on whether we will also expose a link  
local IPv6 address (please comment if you think this would be useful).

What about DNS?

Indeed, the IPv6 address is auto configured for each sliver on each  
node and we have no plans on doing dyn DNS on your behalf.  Clearly,  
a good solution would be to run a dyndns on the local node and ask  
the hosting site to forward queries. However, we think it is likely  
infeasible to ask several hundred technical contacts to change their  
local DNS configuration --- case in point: we can hardly get sites  
most sites to upgrade their bootcds to a new release, which only  
involves downloading an image and 'dd'ing it to an appropriate USB key.

Another solution is to use a dyndns service hosted at Princeton  
(e.g., under the planet-lab.org domain). Considering that we  
typically host on the order of 300+ slivers per machine and  
registering those for all machines is on the order of a hundred  
thousands DNS records.  This is doable, but its something we have not  
yet had the time to set up and I personally would like to avoid  
expending energy on a solution that due to its centralized nature is  
suboptimal.

The cop out solution is to simply leave it up to each slice user to  
do dyndns themselves.  For example, with one of the various free DNS  
hosting providers that support AAAA records.

The ideal solution, IMHO, is that some slice user will create a  
scalable IPv6 based DNS solution hosted across PlanetLab considering  
that you will be able to bind to port 53 using your own IPv6  
address.  I kind of like this last one. Moreover, such a service  
could act as a scalable DNS solution in general.  Something like  
Cornell's CoDoNs comes to mind, but maybe there are others who want  
to tackle this, as well.

When will this happen?

The 4.2 release has the capability to give each slice its own IPv6  
address.  However, we do expect that various folks will be doing  
topology mapping, reachability, etc., on IPv6.  To protect PlanetLab  
from abuse complaints we need to finish up some PlanetFlow support  
that will permit us to easily track down abuse complaints to the  
appropriate slice.  In the mean time, if you are interested in  
getting a preview of the IPv6 support AND promise not to go nuts on  
sending out massive probes, traceroutes, etc., then we can arrange to  
activate IPv6 for your particular slice.  So send me (not the list) a  
brief proposal outlining what you'd like to do with IPv6 and that you  
are interested in having IPv6 enabled for your slice.

Cheers,
Marc
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