IPv4 is depleting so fast and time comes to get ready for IPv6. IPv6 may come to real life by 2012/2013.

I am making a big claim here and I think I need to back it up with some facts:

• IPv4 address space is estimated to deplete somewhere in 2011. Check this Report.
• U.S government agencies are ready for IPv6 since June 2008.
• Large service providers are IPv6 ready or being ready now. Google your service provider.
• Content providers are preparing for IPv6. Google is one of the leaders in this transition. Just do a simple search to see the efforts toward IPv6.

I suggest the following actions to get your network ready for IPv6:

1. Orient yourself with IPv6. I recommend you start familiarizing yourself with IPv6, addressing, routing protocols, discovery protocols, etc.
2. Start Playing IPv6 in your LAB scenarios, if you are testing a technology that can be tested with IPv6, use IPv6.
3. IPv6 is originally designed to coexist with IPv4, use IPv6 in addition to the existing IPv4 wherever possible in your network. Use it on capable routers, hosts and servers.
4. Buy only devices that support IPv6 in addition to IPv4. If you are buying new devices/applications or replacing old ones, make sure they support IPv6, this is very important to protect your investment.
5. Connect to service providers that have clear plans and time lines for supporting IPv6. Ask your service provider explicitly about their plans for IPv6.
6. If  you work for a service provider or something similar, make sure you recommend IPv6 capable devices to your customers. Specially for broadband users.
7. Attend seminars/webinars, join groups and forums and keep moving with the world in this smooth transition, so far.

Start getting ready now. I wish you an easy and smooth transition.

Yesterday I had a post named “What do you think of Huawei?“; I am interested in their business strategies trying to gain a better understanding of the Telecom market dynamics, but it seems that I am not the only one interested in them.

Please read the following two part research and know about the Chinese ART of WAR.

ACG Research on Huawei, Chinese business culture and the Art of War.

and

ACG Research on Huawei vs. network equipment vendors.

Enjoy !!

Huawei is investing US $2 billion in India over five years, this was the headline that triggered me to write this post. 4-5 years ago Huawie’s name was not repeated much in the field of IP networking in comparison to other big names. Lately Huawei’s name is being used everywhere around us, the Chinese company is really growing and expanding. I think they capitalized well  on the economic recessionary environment in the last two years.

I do not know how good they are in the field of IP communication; I am not familiar with Huawie devices myself so I can not give my feedback about them, but I am always hearing about their Pros and Cons.

I got really interested in their strategy and their approach to the IP market penetration. I think there are some clear factors behind this growth. The first factor I can notice is pricing and the flexible payment terms they provide. The second factor is that they are providing full and complete solutions and they have their own products for almost every part of the network and finally their customer focused R&D.

Huawei has what they call the ABC strategy, A = ARPU, B = Bandwidth and C = Cost. In short they are focusing on increasing ARPU, increasing Bandwidth capacity while decreasing Cost of ownership for their customers.

Their financial performance over the past five years shows decent growth rates and good financial highlights. In 2009, their bottom line increased significantly meaning that they were able to sail efficiently in 2008-2009 global business and financial conditions. 2009 Net profit increased by 132.8% (26.5% excluding exchange gains and losses) compared to 2008, while revenue increased only by 19%. This means that they managed to improve operations and to control expenses more effectively in 2009 in comparison to the previous year.

Huawie is leading in mobile/radio and optical technologies with very good reputation, they also have their growing share in IP products specially broadband services in the last two years.

I don’t know about the quality of their products or services but I know that Huawei has a great pricing competitive advantage over other competitors. I am not aware of other competitive advantages; however, the competitive pricing allowed them to increase their market shares significantly and to penetrate different new telecommunication markets.

Having competition is sometimes good for end users, but not always good, as it depends on the type of the  competition in a certain market.  I don’t think that aggressive pricing competition is always good but I am really interested to see how other big names are approaching this type of competition and what strategies they are using and going to use.

Reference: Huawei Corporate Information.

The local preference attribute is a well-know discretionary attribute. This means local preference must be recognized by all BGP implementations, but will not exist in all BGP update messages; specifically it will not exist in E-BGP update messages.

BGP local preference attribute is one of the most used attributes in BGP real world to influence traffic. Local preference attribute is a four octet field of information that is used to inform internal peers about the autonomous system internal preference for an advertised route. Read the rest of this entry »

I stumbled on an interview with Juniper CEO, Kevin Johnson for Fortune Tech. The interview covers many points about the networking market, they discussed Juniper’s competitive advantages, the GDP recession and its effect on the economics of the networking industry, Juniper’s market share, Juniper’s strategy and vision for the next few years compared to Cisco and many other interesting things at least for guys like me .

Read the full interview: Juniper CEO: Why Cisco’s approach is wrong

Atomic aggregate is a Well-known Discretionary attribute; it must be recognized by all BGP implementations and does not have to exist in all BGP updates.

The purpose of the attribute is to alert BGP speakers along the path that some information have been lost due to the route aggregation process and that the aggregate path might not be the best path to the destination.

When some routes are aggregated by an aggregator, the aggregator does attache its Router-ID to the aggregated route into the AGGREGATOR_ID attribute and it sets the ATOMIC_AGGREGATE attribute or not; based on whether the AS_PATH information of the aggregated routes were preserved or not.

AS_PATH information are preserved if you use the AS_SET segment in the AS_PATH attribute. The AS_SET segment is part of the AS_Path attribute and is used to store an unordered list of AS_PATH information of all aggregated routes to prevent possible routing loops. If the AS_SET is not used in the aggregation process the AS_PATH  information of the aggregated routes are not preserved and the ATOMIC_AGGREGATE attribute then must be set. However, if the AS_SET is used then PATH information is preserved and the ATOMIC_AGGREGATE attribute is cleared because no information was lost by the aggregation process.

The default behavior on Cisco routers is that the AS_SET is not used, hence the atomic aggregate must be set in the aggregated route. You must use the as-set argument of the aggregate-address command in order for the router to attach the Path information to the aggregated route by generating an AS_SET segment in the AS_PATH attribute.

JUNOS does the opposite by default, Juniper is attaching all the AS Path information to the aggregated path; this means that the ATOMIC_AGGREGATE attribute is not set by default.

The AS-SET segment is used to prevent BGP routing loops as I mentioned before and I believe it should always be used, unless you have a very specific case to omit it (I’ve only done this in a CCIE study LAB scenario).

The Atomic Aggregate attribute will also be set even when using AS_SET  if one of the aggregated route is an aggregate itself and has its atomic aggregate attribute already set.

I have a couple of posts about BGP Route Aggregation, review them if required

How-to:Configure BGP Aggregation #1

How-to:Configure BGP Aggregation #2

And please have a look at Understanding BGP Route Aggregation at Cisco.com