Further Update (06/27/2011): If you have a Dlink DIR-825 router, I just published an article on getting a free Tunnel Broker IPv6 tunnel account working. Check it out! If you have a router that is cable of an IPv6 over IPv4 tunnel, or just want to use a single computer, check out Tunnel Broker from Hurricane Electric.
Over the last few days I’ve been attempting to gather information on IPv6 in Canada, and so far the news is grim. Why am I looking in to it? Well, there have been a number of articles posted lately about the impending end of available IPv4 addresses and the sorry state of IPv6 addoption, and I wanted to check in on my local ISPs and see if any of them are preparing for this. The short answer? No.
My region has two primary ISPs – Telus and Shaw Cable. I did a quick Google search to see if either had made any announcements about IPv6 readiness, and I ended up with no relevant results. In fact, a search of “IPv6″ on the domain shaw.ca only returns results on user hosted pages. Searching Google for “IPv6 Telus” only comes up with one close match – this PDF document that’s basically a beginners guide to IPv6.
So, I opened a ticket with my ISP (Shaw), and tweeted at their customer care guys. I also tweeted at Telus’ customer care. Here’s what I got back.
Telus tweeted back pretty quickly:
@laslow We don’t have any news on implementation of IPv6. It would make sense that everyone will switch eventually. -Trevor @TELUSSupport
I replied, and they came back with this:
@laslow We’ll try and help where we can but no real info on this. Hope your day goes well!
Well, that was rather uninformative.
Sean from Shaw Customer Care also replied rather quickly on Twitter:
@laslow hey man, no word on IPv6 yet, hopefully sometime in the near future though.
Shortly after, I received the following reply to the ticket that I opened with Shaw:
Hello [Laslow],
This is [Agent], thank you for your e-mail.
At this time there is no set date that IPv6 will start to be used. As soon as address’s have ran out with IPv4 then everything would be switched over to the IPv6. Kind of like how in B.C. not including the lower mainland we have been using the area code 250 for years. There are no longer numbers available with the 250 area code so they moved to 778 area codes. It will be similar to this when IPv6 is released, sorry we have no further information for you at this time on this.
So in short, Shaw’s plans are to wait until they’ve run out addresses, and then worry about what to do next. I don’t know about you, but I’m definitely feeling more confident that Shaw will be able to connect me to IPv6-only services in the next, you know, ten years or so.
Honestly, though, there are a number of ISPs in the states that already have public IPv6 tests available (Comcast, for example) – why is Canada so far behind?
If anyone reading this works for Telus or Shaw and has more information on their progress towards IPv6, please leave a comment or send me a tweet – It would be nice to know if there are at least plans in place rather than just a sense of “we’ll cross that bridge when we get there”.
Updated (11/29/2010):
I contacted Shaw, Telus, and Rogers via twitter again and received the following responses (still waiting to hear from Shaw):
@laslow At this time we do not have any information/news – Ryan with @TELUSSupport (Direct link to tweet)
@laslow Hi Laslow. I have no info – but can ask around tomorrow. I’ll get back to you if I get an update. (via @RogersElise - Direct link to tweet)
I’ll post any additional information I receive as I get it.
Updated (11/30/2010):
Shaw responded this morning with the following (still no additional information back from Rogers):
@laslow yes, it’s in the pipeline, however, no confirmed release dates yet. (via @Shaw_Sean – Direct link to tweet)
So we have at least one ISP that will willing to publicly state that they have plans to deploy IPv6. Still, solid details would be welcome.
Updated (02/01/2011):
You can check to see if your ISP has IPv6 Prefixes using this site. If they do (I can confirm Shaw and Telus do, haven’t checked others yet), it shows that they have IPv6 connectivity with the rest of the world. If not…well, it might be time to panic. I bugged Shaw again via Twitter about IPv6, and got this response:
@laslow I honestly have no idea, but I’ll make sure you’re the first to know should I hear something.
So, I’ll update again when I hear more.
8:41 pm, November 6, 2010Daryl M /
I completely share your concern that it appears nothing whatsoever is being done to prepare for the eventuality that IPV6 has to be implemented. It’s quite pathetic for a country that claims to be a technology leader to be showing no leadership whatsoever on this issue.
4:30 pm, November 7, 2010bartman /
Here in Ottawa, an ISP by the name of TekSavvy’s been providing native IPv6 over DSL for a few months. By the time I signed up they had already ironed everything out, and I have not seen any problems.
It looks like TekSavvy operates in BC, you should check if they also provide IPv6 there.
-Bart
4:40 pm, November 7, 2010Anonymous /
Shaw, Rogers, Bell, Telus and the like were rather wet blankets at the IPv6 committee. Basically, they want another government handout, rather like when Bell/Stentor was gifted with CANet2 in 1995, so that they could enter the market as Sympatico.
ISACC report: http://isacc.ca/isacc/english/meetings/archived_plenary/?plenary_41
2:53 am, November 13, 2010ver /
the responses you got were better than the average. i am an ipv6-focused professional and this seems to be par with most telcos i approach. none of them want to deploy, they would rather quietly roll out cgn and hope nobody notices.
this is fine with me, because the market will be very honest with procrastinators soon enough. telus still unes a primarily copper infrastructure, and along with bell used cdma until very recently. shaw and rogers still operate primarily copper infrastructure on cable as thin as rg500. this isn’t bad of course, its just old and generally accepted as obsolete, but they wont replace it without a very good reason, and in this case the concept of ‘adding’ ipv6 instead of integrating it into a network has some obvious implementational problems..
5:53 am, November 23, 2010Thomas /
@ver AFAIK shaw has an all fiber core network these days. And last I heard, many neigbourhood access nodes were connected to the backbone via fiber as well, so technically shaw (at least in my city) is FTTN. And in a few areas, there will be FTTH via a 6 month pilot project.
Telus has been putting FTTH in new houses as well, but I doubt they’ve bothered to light it yet.
9:31 pm, January 4, 2011Andree /
Very, very few Canadian networks are in the business of IPv6. The current trend is that the Canadian transit market is being taken over by non Canadian companies who are willing and able to deliver IPv6.
Also see “The State of IPv6 in Canada”: http://bgpmon.net/blog/?p=382
7:40 pm, January 30, 2011Nathan /
I’ve often wondered how much of the Canadian ISP’s reluctance to adopt IPv6 has to do with greed. I know this sounds kind of “conspiracy theory” like, but if you consider that you *NEED* a static IP if you’re going to run a server, and if IP’s are hard to come by, this would drive the price ever-higher. ISP’s could charge whatever they wanted. This would not be the case under IPv6 where the number pool is so massive, you could hand them out for next to nothing.
Just a thought – I have no proof this is the case.
2:57 pm, March 9, 2011Patrick /
Hi
i am starting my company and have been fighting the data center’s and ISP to get ipv6 since the past few years
most ISP says they have no clue when it will happen
i just fired another email at some of them to get an ETA/road map. let’s see how it goes
at this time, i am using a tunnel broker from he.net to get my ipv6 stack however, this is not a clean way to bring the protocol to a server cluster since a Linux host has to be the router for this implementation and if this single machine fails, all my clients would automatically loose connection.
i have been told the ipv6 in my data center should be ready by January 2011 but… still no news about it. i even suggested them that i could be a beta tester for the implementation so they can learn and configure it properly but it is kind of disappointing me at this time
as for static IP, they ask from 10 to 30$ per IP. if you decide to take it or, if you are like me for a home user, i just use a domain name that support dynamic update and i stay connected 24/7 so it does not really matter as i can always connect to my systems.
anyway,
Have a great day everybody
4:29 pm, May 28, 2011Nick /
Thanks for the recon laslow! I want to get my servers ready, but with nothing from Shaw, I can’t do much!
I’ll be checking back!!
12:03 pm, June 9, 2011Andy /
Canada’s always behind the rest of the world when it comes to integrating new technology first, probly wont see ipv6 in residential homes for a few more years ):
12:34 pm, June 12, 2011Randolf Richardson /
Andy, that’s a fucking stupid statement to make — I’m Canadian and I can assure you that you are dead-wrong about Canada. There are many countries, including the USA and Japan (both of whom tend to brag about being on top of new technologies) who also haven’t got full IPv6 support going yet.
I’ve been using IPv6 for a long time now, and although I do notice that most end users don’t have it yet, I find that this is pretty consistent throughout the world. My co-location providers have been providing me with IPv6 support for a long time now, and I’ve been hosting internet sites on it, but the reality is that the vast majority of traffic from all around the world is coming from IPv4 addresses.
In talking with Shaw about IPv6, they indicated that they hope to be making it available sometime this year for their residential customers, initially in a beta test phase scenario.
I think that what has really put pressure on various service providers to start looking at IPv6 seriously is the fact that earlier this year the last IPv4 allocations were assigned, and now there are no more available. Until this happened, I find that most people didn’t think it would effect them (which is typical of most people in general when it comes to global issues). I’m glad that new IPv4 allocations have run out, but I wish that ARIN had cut off new allocations a few years ago to start getting things rolling in the IPv6 arena much earlier.
10:37 am, September 10, 2011Randolf Richardson /
Update: Throughout August 2011 there is IPv6 support from Shaw, and I know of dozens of people who are connected to the internet through Shaw who get assigned both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses together — they seem to be able to access IPv4-only and IPv6-only web sites without any difficulties, and none of them were even aware that they had IPv6 addresses (mainly because they hadn’t even heard of IPv6 let alone IPv4).
So, it looks like to me that Shaw is indeed providing IPv6 support to customers. There are a handful of some other small ISPs who are doing the same, but as far as I’ve noticed Shaw is the only major provider doing this for residential and small business customers.
Oh yeah, and “ha ha ha” to all you Americans who think that Canada is still behind the times — what a bunch of arrogant pricks you are to keep assuming we’re slow and stupid.