IPv6, Consoles and gaming networks

[JPT]

Since a lot of my time is spent with IPv6 lately, I'd just wanted to throw out the question about if anybody as heard/know anything about IPv6 and current gen consoles.

If we in 3-4 years time end up with IPv6 islands and the consoles does not support IPv6 or PSN/XBA/game servers does not support IPv6. We end up with tunneling IPv4 over IPv6 or NAT44 or even worse NAT444 which would probably mean total havoc on gaming. Not only the issue of shared ip's in the ISP network, but also latency increase in the tunnelig scenarios.

Before anybody comes back with IPv4 will be with us for 10-20 years and this is not an issue, yes thats right and wrong. Because there are ISP's today that will not be able to expand their customer base without going to IPv6 within the next 18 months and what if one of those new customers have a console and it only supports IPv4.

 

[habbe]

Dualstack has been standard in linux for a couple of years at least. So there should be a lot of open source code availible. And theres many different tunneling standards aswell.

I don't think the client side is the big problem when it comes to ipv6 nor the applications.
i think the big problem is when half of the userbase is on ipv6 only and some only on ipv4 and some on both.

 

[JPT]

i think the big problem is when half of the userbase is on ipv6 only and some only on ipv4 and some on both.

As usual I was unclear and it was that what I tried to convey The solution would be for the consoles to be dual-stacked to, but will it happen? And will PSN/XBL be dual-stacked also?

 

[habbe]

Live and Psn will most likekely go dualstack or it might be possible to stay on ipv4 for the servers and use some kind of nat to front internet.

I'm not sure exactly what the servers do except from serving static content but for instance matchmaking will probably use or is already using some kind of proprietary serverbased im protocoll like jabber/aim/msn which will work transparent as long as the server is dualstacked.

The multiplayer data sent from clients are to my knowledge peer2peer in many cases, this would be a big problem if the userbase is splited.

Sorry didn´t answer your questions. got carried away with all the problems.

 

[JPT]

The best would be if they dual-stacked both the servers and the consoles But my question is if anybody has heard anything about it coming etc.

 

[JPT]

This was tweeted by TeamArin

We are looking forward to #GDC at the end of the month. All gaming systems that connect to the Internet need IPv6!

 

[Silent_Buddha]

The WW transition from IPv4 to IPv6 is going to be long, costly, and messy. It has to happen (well technically it doesn't but due to how /8's were distributed early on it's not feasible to try to regain all those ip address blocks, as well as the 16 blocks set aside for IP multicast that never came about and cannot be reused and represent 1/16th of all ip addresses), but it isn't going to be a smooth or easy process.

I'd imagine that next gen consoles, if they are smart will support both IPv4 and IPv6. I'd imagine that the transition is going to take at least another decade to fully retire IPv4. And in the interim we'll have network translation layers (costly both in dollars and processing/latency) over the internet backbone.

People will gradually phase out their IPv4 routers as they die and need to be replaced, etc.

Although it would be a bold move if Sony or MS mandated IPv6 by only including that. I'm not sure how successful that strategy would be however as it would require all users to have a router that supports IPv6. And all ISPs to support IPv6, which I'm pretty sure might not be the case by the time the next consoles launch.

For those that are unaware of the issues surrounding the move IPv6. This is a pretty decent primer (http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20030482-264.html ).

Regards,
SB

 

[JPT]

I thought it was interesting that Arin specifically mentions GDC and consoles, I think that for Nintendo, Sony and MS, there should not be a big issue to add an IPv6 stack to the firmware, so that the consoles can run it natively, except for maybe memory.
That way if the ISP supports IPv6, then IPv6 can be used (no more NAT, yay ), if IPv6 is not supported, then IPv4 is used. If the ISP is doing transition stuff and not native IPv6, then use IPv4.

Question is what will it take for PSN and XBox Live to support IPv6, but since the CDN's and other major sites can do it, I guess they can to.
Would be cool if they joined in for IPv6 day on the 8th of June to.

 

[Cyan]

Sorry for the useless reply but this topic is fascinating. It's all Greek to me.

JPT, judging by the description of IPv6, maybe you will not be able to enjoy them until the next generation of consoles. Or if they want that protocol to work it would need a very important update. If not, then my ideas up there might all be invalid. But yeah...

 

[Colourless]

On the software side, supporting IPv6 isn't particularly hard. Its not much different than games from the Windows 95 era that supported IPX/SPX and TCP/IP connections. Just need to support listening on multiple sockets at the same time, and extra storage for the IPv6 address. Its the testing of the thing thats the problem. Testing IPv4 applications over the general internet is obviously easy. Testing IPv6 applications is a pain in the ass beacuse not enough people have it.

 

[JPT]

I belive that we will see it on this gen of consoles, because APNIC the asian RIR, just got 32M v4 adresses and its expected that they will run our during june if not quicker. So with some slack for the service providers, 2012 will probably mean that a user will only get IPv6 connectivity at his home, somewhere in Asia. How does that person play the latest version of COD then?

Transition/tunneling solution will add serious latency, most likely "breaking" the user experience badly.

But more interesting is if the consoles got the memory to support or not and then PSN and XBL support for it.

I got a pdf from Juniper that mentions consoles, I'll post a slide from it later, but it does not go into any details.

 

[Squilliam]

The WW transition from IPv4 to IPv6 is going to be long, costly, and messy. It has to happen (well technically it doesn't but due to how /8's were distributed early on it's not feasible to try to regain all those ip address blocks, as well as the 16 blocks set aside for IP multicast that never came about and cannot be reused and represent 1/16th of all ip addresses), but it isn't going to be a smooth or easy process.


Regards,
SB

On the bright side it could represent an increase in investment in network infrastructure as old network equipment gets retired faster. More speed and more data to all of us?!

 

[JPT]

Hmmm is it not possible to upload a picture that is not hosted of site?

 

[Silent_Buddha]

On the bright side it could represent an increase in investment in network infrastructure as old network equipment gets retired faster. More speed and more data to all of us?!

One could always hope, but the wires that are already laid down can carry IPv6. It's only at the various nodes where you need systems to handle IPv6 or IPv4 or whatever other system you are utilising. So during the transition we'll see a drop in overall speed and/or increase in overall latency due to the transition from IPv4 to/from IPv6 as you attempt to reach an IPv4 site or IPv6 site from a machine using IPv4 or IPv6.

Regards,
SB

 

[JPT]

 

[JPT]

I asked TeamArin on Twitter, since they posted that they would be at GDC, if they expected IPv6 to come to consoles soon, the answer I got was this :

@jpedrot We definitely think we’ll start to see gaming consoles become IPv6 enabled soon. Look for future vendor announcements.

Their either hoping or know something, but with the Juniper angle in addition it looks like it could be on the roadmap already.

 

[JPT]

A very old bump

Not sure how "right" he is, with the debate about people wanting NAT on IPv6 networks also *chivers* and you still will have to contend with stateful firewalls, but you might always just open an address if you feel lucky

http://games.on.net/article/13925/W...e_Way_You_Game_An_Interview_With_Geoff_Huston

Just to followup a little more on this thread, I do belive that WoW client supports IPv6 now? The stumbling block is that not all of the hosting Datacenters they use for their servers actually supports it.

There was some discussion about getting better network, ie upgraded network, earlier in the thread. As it was answered, the copper/fiber etc will stay the same. But you need to upgrade nodes in many places. I have spoken with several IPv6 project managers for different ILECs and to them IPv6 is a little miracle. It means if they are clever, they will get budgets to upgrade other parts of the network also with just tagging it with, IPv6 ie they get a cart blanche to upgrade stuff.

Which is good for the customer, they should get better services and probably also new bugs.

 

[JPT]

another bump

Xbox One and IPv6 http://www.nanog.org/sites/default/files/wed.general.palmer.xbox_.47.pdf

Network operators that want to provide the best possible user experience for Xbox One Users:
• Provide IPv6 Connectivity

 

[JPT]

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.

 

[Grall]

Due to that, I expect they will not do IPv6 out of the box.

That's a pretty big assumption. It's been known for years that IP4 addresses will run out basically any time now, that sony would not be on the ball with an IP6 solution out the door would be very, very strange. They've had all the time in the world to prepare for it, and the need for it is literally imminent.