Looking at this thread, I am the only one interested in this. But if Scott_Arm can have his own NHL thread, I'll have my own IPv6 thread
Reading the aforementioned pdf my take on things are that MS will use IPv6 and IPSec to send traffic between peers (P2P). If IPv6 is not available, then IPv6 + IPSec over IPv4 in the form of Teredo will be used.
To me, as somebody that works with and lobbies/evangelize for IPv6, this is fantastic! On the other hand as gamer, not sure how this will play out.
Some assumptions, with no empirical data to back it up right now, I'll try and get around to do the tests to verify a bit later.
Latency wise ie ping, currently IPv4 > IPv6 > Teredo, by this I mean IPv4 is better.
I removed IPSec as a factor/variable and just assume that IPSec is 1 to 1 replaceable with the MS proprietary encryption solution (used with X360) when it comes to latency.
There is not that big a difference between IPv4 and IPv6 in terms of latency, but there is some, but going forward as more equipment gets upgraded/replaced, IPv6 will probably be equal or better than IPv4 in the future.
Now what makes me weary of this solution is Teredo. Teredo to Teredo connections should be straightforward and basically just an extra operation of unpacking/packing packets in the teredo format.
Problem shows up when you do Teredo to native IPv6 host, because at that time it has to go through relays, which converts between Teredo and "pure" IPv6, these relays needs lots of bandwith, cpu and memory and preferably distributed evenly around the world.
Worst case imaginary scenario, I could be in Oslo, Norway, playing with my neighbor. We use two different ISP's. One supports IPv6 native the other not. Then our traffic needs to go trough a relay that might be in New York or Amsterdam (not likely but still).
So we have introduced a lot of latency for a subset of players, that other players in the same game does not have.
Additional things are IPSec in IPv6 in UDP in IPv4 there is a lot encapsulation and de-encapsulation needed to be done there. Packet sizes and fragmentation will matter, especially since IPv4 and IPv6 got "different views" on fragmentation.
Now, for all I know, MS plans that all gaming traffic should between client and server. The only traffic that is P2P might be messages or voice chat etc, where latency has less impact on the gaming experience.
I have been poking Mark Cerny and Shuei Yoshida on Twitter about PS4 and IPv6, but no answer. Due to that, I expect they will not do IPv6 out of the box. Mainly since they are not answering and that they would also have to find a solution that works in all cases, without having to rely on others like the ISP, but if they need the ISP to do Gaikai, they can probably mandate IPv6 also.
So if your going to buy Xbox One and want the best networking solution for your usage, get onto you ISP and ask for native/dual-stacked IPv6 ASAP, not 6rd or ds-lite or 6to4 or 6in4.
This is a very bold move on the part of MS in my view, Teredo is in use to day, but this will add a bunch of more users and most of the data will be RTC.
As a network guy, I would not sleep well when the X1 launches.