IPv6 CPE Survey - Updated (July 2010)

The latest version of the IPv6 CPE survey and matrix can always be found here: IPv6 CPE Surveys.

In early June 2010 we published the first version of the IPv6 CPE Survey results. In the meantime we have received new information from some of the vendors that were listed in the original article. We were also able to add one vendor who had previously not participated in the survey. For this particular vendor, we would be interested to hear any customer experiences so that we can verify the information. We've detailed some of the most important changes since the last update below, and the up-to-date matrix.

D-Link

We added another vendor to our list: D-Link. They supplied us with loads of information, however we are lacking real customer experience. So most is set to 'claimed by vendor', which doesn't mean that it is not there or broken, we simply haven't been able to verify it's working. So if you have one the following boxes, please tell us what you think:

DIR-601 Rev.A1, DIR-615 Rev.C1/C2/E1/E2/E3/E4, DIR-652 Rev.A1, DIR-655 Rev.B1, and DIR-825 Rev.B1

These are the current supported versions; sources in D-Link indicate more are being worked on.

As far as the product is concerned, it's mostly a 'home gateway' being limited to PPPoE at the moment. Another thing to note is that although RFC 5006 has been implemented, due to lack of support in clients (Windows 7 is named explicitly), it has been pulled from the release. The feature is available upon request.

The same goes for management - as the boxes are aimed at retail, only a webGUI is offered, but TR69 and SNMP are available for specific tenders.

Cisco

We added a number of features in the matrix below which where left out in the previous version and which Cisco have now confirmed are supported.

AVM

AVM has released several new builds since the last update. Most of the known issues seem to have been resolved now, especially on the firewall. Functionality is still limited as it only allows for UDP and TCP to be configured. Some minor bugs are still there related to broken connections when reconfiguring and the occasional translation error.

The most stunning new feature is that AVM now has an auto detect mode for IPv6 in which the box tries to establish a native IPv6 connection using various methods (SLAAC, DHCP). And if it all fails the machine will drop back to using 6to4. The only drawback to this scenario is that there is the possibility that a native client could end up with 6to4 if there is a temporary failure in the network.

RFC 5006 requirements have been fixed. If you have a client that supports it, it should now be able to configure itself to use the built-in resolver on the CPE.

The status of the tunnel client issues is not known at the moment. This should have improved. However, due to the holiday season we haven't been able to test and confirm these fixes. Your mileage may vary and if you happen to know more, please do write in and tell.

Many thanks to all of you out there who contributed to this article by sending in reports and pointers to more information, your help is really appreciated.

IPv6 Survey Matrix

The matrix below lists the features and various models of CPE on which we have information. The status fields can have five different values:

Unknown ( - ):

Neither the vendor nor the community can confirm the feature is present.  

No:

Vendor or testing confirms the feature is not supported.

Claimed by vendor:

The vendor has confirmed the feature is present. However, we haven’t heard any reports from the community confirming whether it actually works and we haven’t been able to test it ourselves. 

Broken:

Feedback from the community or test results indicate the feature is there but not working. 

Buggy:

Feedback from the community or test results indicate the feature is showing irregular behavior or is not working as expected.

Confirmed:

Based on community feedback and testing we can confirm the feature is there and working as expected.

Acknowledgements

This article and the work behind has been done by Marco Hogewoning, Co-chair of the RIPE IPv6 WG. Please leave comments below or send them to labs@ripe.net