Why not join SixXS?

[Biennium]

I'd like to use a Hurricane Electric tunnel at home, especially because my house is only an hour's drive away from Hurricane Electric's headquarters and data centers in Fremont. But my equipment is stuck behind a stupid NAT modem/router, so my only simple choice is a SixXS AYIYA tunnel. The closest one is half a continent away in Chicago, which instantly adds over 100ms of latency to communications with any service in the Bay Area. For example, my other networks, which have 6in4 tunnels with Hurricane Electric.

Why doesn't Hurricane Electric operate a SixXS PoP?

[broquea]

Because they've been operating their own broker since at least 2000, if not earlier. There are a lot of broker options out there, as is the option of cheap/free VPS to terminate the HE tunnel on, and using OpenVPN behind a NAT/CGN setup.

[Biennium]

That's not an explanation. That's a weak excuse. And what part of "simple choice" made you think "cheap/free VPS"? I'd rather stick with just one router and up to one tunnel server, and not having to track down which "cheap/free VPS" is closest to my house and a Hurricane Electric tunnel.

Hurricane Electric has changed their services before. It didn't use to have dynamic updates or a separate password per tunnel. The first draft of the AYIYA protocol was published 10 years ago. It's certainly possible for Hurricane Electric to add AYIYA tunnels to the existing 6in4 service.

I'm not saying Hurricane Electric is under any obligation to do so. They're offering this tunnel broker for free and I'm not paying for it. It just would be nice.

[broquea]

Sorry, but that is an explanation. They operate their own service, why would they donate to a competing service? The broker is a form of branding/brand recognition. HE operates an actual network and SixXS relies on 100% donated hardware & network resources. That includes the PoP donors maintaining the PoP hardware, etc. HE already manages their own hardware as it is, and their own user base, at no cost to those users. Now you want them to support a different service platform and user base on top of what they already provide freely?

Some of us put more effort than others into evaluating their choices, simple or not.

HE adding AYIYA support or TSP support is a commendable suggestion. In fact a better one than asking them to donate more physical/time resources to managing a competing service's PoP.

Incidentally that Chicago PoP is probably your.org, which gets a hookup from HE for IPv6 transit. So in a way, they already donate resources to SixXS :)

[gnarlymarley]

I'd like to use a Hurricane Electric tunnel at home........ But my equipment is stuck behind a stupid NAT modem/router, so my only simple choice is a SixXS AYIYA tunnel.

I have run a Hurricane Electric tunnel behind a NAT for a while a few years back.  As long as your NAT can forward proto41, then it will work fine.  Works with ddclient.  All I did was to make my tunnel IPv4 client be the private address and it worked.

ifconfig gif1 create
ifconfig gif1 tunnel 192.168.0.2 72.52.104.74
ifconfig gif1 inet6 ${localipv6} ${remoteipv6} prefixlen 128
ifconfig gif1 mtu 1480
route -n add -inet6 default ${remoteipv6}