How/why is hurricane electric giving this service away for free?

[bige]

As a hobbyist home user I thought I would never be able to afford a static ip address let alone a class C IPV4 netblock.  But with this tunnel broker server I've got my own real routeable subnet to use and it's 64 bits wide no less.  No more 192.168.* addresses and NAT!  Each machine on the LAN now has a real live IP address.   IP addresses are now plentiful instead of being hoarded!

The routing entry that gives me my block consumes little resources and could easily be given away for free.   However all  the IPV6 bandwidth I generate across on Hurricane Electric's backbone does indeed consume resources. Somebody somewhere has to pay for the bytes moved.  Normally I never think about how the backbone provider my ISP chooses gets paid because they control their own routing and they get billed for it.   But with this tunnel broker service, I'm specifically choosing hurricane electric as a backbone provider specifically routing packets directly to them, yet I am not paying them a dime.   There isn't supposed to be such thing as free lunch.  I am wondering what the catch is.

Is this service just for educational/testing use only?  Are there any bandwidth/speed limitations in place?   If IPV6 takes off and people really start using the tunnel for large amounts of traffic like watching youtube videos, will the tunnel service be discontinued?

[jimb]

SHHHH!!!!!

(also, Youtube is already happening)

  ;)

[cholzhauer]

AFAIK there are no bandwidth limitations in place.

I'm using a tunnel to provide my place of employment with IPv6 connectivity.

[broquea]

Wait, we can CHARGE? :o That's brilliant! Retroactively too?!? ;)

We provide it free because we think IPv6 is that important for people to get connected to. You still have the overhead of your IPv6 packets encapsulated inside your IPv4, so your throughput over the tunnel will obviously be affected by that variation. We do not rate limit the tunnels, and the machines have additional ports we can enable if we ever do saturate their GIGE uplinks with tunnel traffic. There is no additional cost for running them on our already dual-stacked multiple 10G-link backbone that we operate. We do not get IPv6 transit from anyone (paid or otherwise, so no cost there either), and provide IPv6 transit to customers or peer with other networks. In truth, the only real cost is our time. However since we already work tirelessly to promote IPv6 adoption, it is again essentially operating at no cost, since we are already working on it :D

There are no plans to dismantle the tunnel broker or the tunnels. I think the entire world would have to go native IPv6 before that would even be plausible, and adoption with the eyeball networks is still dragging heels (although yes there are the Comcast announcements for the US, and some EU residential providers are already native, but that isn't 100% of all eyeballs/residences).

I've noticed that a constant playlist of YouTube over IPv6, still isn't as much traffic as 1 movie over Netflix IPv6 streaming is. Netflix over IPv6 on at least a residential connection, was doing 1.2-1.3mbit/s over the tunnel.

Also technically all the costs are still on you since you pay for your Internet connectivity that this is all tunneled over. Unless it is free, then nevermind!

[bombcar]

If everyone used their tunnels, everybody would be using IPv6, IPv4 would be deprecated, and then nobody'd have to use their tunnels anymore!

In other words, if they are successful, they don't need to worry about it, because everybody will do it.

Also, now you know their name; if you're looking for colo, you may talk to them.

[kriteknetworks]

I can't speak for HE, but the demand for tunnels themselves isn't likely to die any time in the forseeable future. There can be no assumption once a residential ISP rolls out IPv6 to its customers, that said customers will still enjoy having static IPs, or even a netblock, as typically offered by a tunnel broker. Of course only the tunnel broker can decide if its in their best interests to continue to offer the service at all, or at what cost.

As a Comcast business account holder, I'm very concerned about how they will roll it out, will I have a static IP(s), whether I'll get a netblock, will this cost me more, etc....

[chiel]

If everyone used their tunnels, everybody would be using IPv6, IPv4 would be deprecated, and then nobody'd have to use their tunnels anymore!

???
there tunnels are running over IPv4 ;)

[jimb]

As a Comcast business account holder, I'm very concerned about how they will roll it out, will I have a static IP(s), whether I'll get a netblock, will this cost me more, etc....

I can't imagine as a business customer that you would not get assigned an IPv6 netblock. Likely a /48.  As for cost, well, since IPv6s are so plentiful, a /48 should be as cheap as getting a single IPv4 public ($20/m IIRC), if not cheaper, since they'll have to compete with others who will likely include a /48 as part of the basic service.

[fenrisulf]

There isn't supposed to be such thing as free lunch.  I am wondering what the catch is.

(I'll preface this with IANANA (I Am Not A Network Admin))

If it makes you feel any better, all this tunnel traffic is not just giving HE.net public visibility, it's making HE.net a major peering partner for IPv6 traffic.

One of the hard things about building peering is that it's a chicken-and-egg problem.  To get peering agreements, you need to have a lot of (2-way) traffic.  But you normally get that traffic from customers who signed up because you have good peering...

And since the tunnels are also over IPv4, I bet this also helps HE.net establish IPv4 peering for their old-school operations.