Grant Reports#

Harlen Stenn (Network Time Foundation), James Harr (Internet2), Matt Griswold (20C)

• Why: Three community-grant reports, and the middle one is a genuinely reusable operator tool: a cheap, pre-configured device that stands up IPv6-only/IPv6-mostly test environments — the exact environments that are otherwise a multi-week lab project.
• What: (1) Internet2's IPv6 Test Pod: a sub-$150 device, funded by a $16,000 grant (follow-on to $7,000 in 2023), that creates dual-stack, NAT64/DNS64, IPv6-mostly (DHCPv4 Option 108), and IPv6-only wired/wifi networks over an IPv6 tunnel, pre-configured and distributed free to participants (45 units delivered, 20 more in April). Testing to date includes the Windows 11 CLAT private preview, NetworkManager 1.58 CLAT support, and HPN-SSH Happy Eyeballs behavior. (2) NTF's grant adds native Markdown output to GNU AutoGen to unify NTP documentation formats. (3) 20C's "From Raw to Ready" delivers a web UI (reg.fullctl.io) over regCtl, which normalizes RDAP responses across RIRs into consistent object views.
• How: The pod encapsulates the hard-to-assemble mix — NAT64 (poorly supported on low-end platforms), DNS64, PREF64, and Option 108 signaling — so a developer, IT support team, or network engineer can test client behavior in a v6-only environment without building the bed themselves. The rationale laid out is worth internalizing: dual-stack hides problems (Happy Eyeballs), doubles address pools and firewall policies, and makes troubleshooting ambiguous.
• Where applicable: The pod is available by application (ipv6-pod.info) to anyone in the ARIN community — this is the transferable piece. The AutoGen and regCtl work is niche but the RDAP normalizer is handy for anyone scripting against registry data across RIRs.