What's Your Timeline for IPv6 Migration? 386
SgtChaireBourne asks: "IPv4 has, over the last 20 years, seen unexpectedly wide adoption. During this time it's proven to be both flexible and robust, but also several problems, though once small, have grown. IPv6 looks to solve some scalability problems, add needed privacy and authentication mechanisms, address quality of service, and provide better routing and addressing capabilities. What kind of timeline does your site/institution/business have for rolling out IPv6 and how?" Those interested in IPv6 migration may also be interested in this article, from a year ago.
no timeline (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:no timeline (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:no timeline (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft is well ahead there [microsoft.com]. They have been doing IPv6 stuff for years. Of course you still can't do anything with it and there is no DNS support and nobody seems to have a transition plan worth a damn, but you cannot blame Microsoft.
The real blame for IPv6, DNSSEC and IPSEC being nowhere is the IETF. And before ACs come back telling me that IPSEC is widely used for VPNs, yes I know, but a VPN is not what IPSEC is designed for. IPSEC was intended to be INTERNET security.
Rough Consensus and running code may have been fine when the IETF bigwigs were in their 20s and 30s. These days they are in their 50s and 60s and it really shows. The place has been a talking shop for has beens for years.
What is interesting is the number of folk who are NOT involved with IETF anymore. I have not seen Vint Cerf there for years, nor David Clark or Ron Rivest. Tim Berners-Lee has not been there for at least eight years and it is four years since I saw any W3C staff there. The hip venue these days is OASIS, you can get a spec finished in less than 2 years in OASIS - and when it is done it does not look like some shite that came off a teletype.
The folk in charge at the IETF these days are the second stringers, not the visionaries. They simply do not have what it takes to deploy IPv6 and they are scared of making a bad choice so they make no choices at all which is usually the worst choice.
The only major companies still involved in IETF in a big way are CISCO and Microsoft. And Microsoft is only there because they feel they need the cover. There are some Sun engineers still attending, but that seems to be as much as anything to keep their visibility up and their resume looking fresh.
No DNS support? (Score:4, Informative)
BIND can support AAAA records, it is a matter of wider adoption, but there certainly is support. I once wrote a zone file editor that included plenty of support for v6.
Re:no timeline (Score:3, Interesting)
IPsec may have been intended for Internet security, but it suffers from several assumptions that were obsolete years ago - namely that hosts are meaningful as security principals, and IP addresses are good names for hosts. HIP goes a long way to alleviate some of thos
Re:no timeline (Score:3, Informative)
Oh just look at my org... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Oh just look at my org... (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok, rephrase, other than the plain text transmission, what's wrong with telnet?
Along the same line of thinking, if you want to get rid of telnet, do you want to get rid of FTP? That's essentially what FTP is - unencrypted uname/pass auth. So, what's the difference?
We still support telnet at Netmar, because our users have telnet on their computers. Joe Blow, with his windows 98, can understand "start - run - telnet login.netmar.com". He may not understand "download putty, chan
Re:no timeline (Score:5, Funny)
I think we'll do this right after we're done with Dvorak conversion...
the last 20 years? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:the last 20 years? (Score:4, Insightful)
IPv4, a.k.a. "the Internet" has seen an unexpected adoption in terms of world domination. You know, the reason that you're able to make this comment. If you thought that part of the story already was about IPv6, well, read it
IPv4? (Score:5, Funny)
IPv2? (Score:2, Funny)
I'm still using IPv0.62. I mean seriously, who had this stupid idea of periods in IP addresses. IPv6 holds no appeal for me, I'm waiting for IP XP.
My Timeline (Score:3, Funny)
Re:My Timeline (Score:2, Funny)
Re:My Timeline (Score:2, Insightful)
Besides, we almost HAVE to use NAT to prevent p2p apps from completely swamping ou
Re:My Timeline (Score:3, Informative)
Just because IPv6 means computers on a LAN have public IP addresses does not mean there is no control over the data that is sent/received to/from them. What data is transferred and how quickly it is transferred is controlled by using a decent firewall / traffic shaping solution (e.g. a linux box running iptables / shaper).
Stupid admins these days seem to think that NAT is good for security / traffic shaping / whatever else - it's not - it just caus
Re:My Timeline (Score:2, Interesting)
Cisco is still earning about $3B/yr on about $18B in revenue.
The money you buried is now soggy... isn't it time you switched to IPv6 (which Cisco mostly only gives lip service to anyway)?
You can still do NAT like stuff with IPv6, you just don't have to. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to swap a switch or router
Re:My Timeline (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:When I learn more about it... (Score:4, Insightful)
Instead whole blocks are hoarded and even using NAT becomes hard.
What about dynamic IP? So IPv4 or IPv6 as the base, but a free adotion of freely routable/accessable levels below this? I can imagine if I get the 'dream' of a directly accessably washing machine, fridge, curtains, etc etc etc I'll need a whole lot more exernally accessable addresses.
So I think: either a standard port routin for each appliance under IPv6 or a dynamic range under the UPv6 range.
I think IPv6 only delays the problem.
Re:When I learn more about it... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:When I learn more about it... (Score:3, Insightful)
NAT is bad. It screws up the end-to-end transparency [ietf.org] of the Internet. People shouldn't rely on it as it only delays the inevitable: IPv4 adress space exhaustion. With IPv6 you (as the end user) get a ~2^64 usable address space, aka /64 prefix.
Well, too bad IPv6 is not widely supported. I'd like my ISP to deliver *native* IPv6 services. As of now I'm running IPv6 through a tunnel with all the associated problems: long delays between hops, shitty DNS resolution (for reverse records), etc.
Hm, rahter than u
It's a catch-22. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's basically the position we've taken for some reason where I work. Sure, we've been toying with grabbing a block and deploying it on some of our core routers across North America, but...there's no real need per se to do a serious deployment. Nobody's been asking for IPv6 either.
Maybe if there was a way to have mandatory conversion, things would move along a lot quicker.
Re:It's a catch-22. (Score:5, Insightful)
My ISP said that same thing, when I finally got through to somebody who knew what IPv6 was. The powers-that-be don't seem to know how many people are asking because the level-1 tech support guys have it on their "sorry-we-don't-support" list.
If you think I'm nuts, try calling your own support desk and asking for IPv4 support. Most of 'em don't know what that means, either - but it doesn't mean people don't want it, and aren't asking for it. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there's not a lot, but those of us who are seem to get a lot of dumb looks.
Re:It's a catch-22. (Score:2)
I really doubt most normal ISP customers would really have a need for IPv6 addresses anyways. What would be the use if there's nothing on the server ends that are really using it?
Re:It's a catch-22. (Score:4, Insightful)
The backbone only needs 2 machines that talk IPv6 and routes IPv4 over it. Then those 2 machine's can tell their downstreams (or upstreams) you have N-time to swtich and route IPv4 over IPv6.
Eventually, the entire topology will be IPv4 route-capable IPv6 upstreams everywhere. When everyone is able to use IPv6, then the backbone should do the same thing all over again.
Same thing happens with any large change you wish to do fix. You start where it's possible and fan out. Then you phase out any of the old stuff.
Not until it's extremely easy/cheap (Score:5, Insightful)
IPv6 is like BetaMax tapes back in the 80's: sure, the format is technically better, but we've already got a ton of IPv4 gear and software. Even if you only use free software, there's still man-hours involved for implementation and planning. I pity the fella who walks into his boss's office and says, "Yeah, I'll be spending the next week on the IPv6 migration, getting all the desktops working, upgrading our router firmware, getting an IPv6 address from our ISP, etc."
IPv4 will work just like VHS tapes did: it'll be fine until the next dramatic quantum-leap comes along, like Tivos and DVD recorders will cut down on VHS recorder sales. IPv6 has some neat features, but nothing that a typical small business can't live without.
In the go-go-90's, you'd have been able to pull it off, but these days, if it ain't broke...
Re:Not until it's extremely easy/cheap (Score:5, Funny)
If it would only take a week, I see no problem. Hell, I spend a week figuring out the new hole puncher.
BetaMax -- exactly (Score:3, Insightful)
Well put. Thats what I see from all the companies I consult with. Don't hold your breath. The cost/benefit just isn't there, and won't be for the forseeable fututre, i.e., years.
not like betamax... (Score:5, Insightful)
As with most attempts to use the BetaMax analogy in the computer world, this one fails: BetaMax was incompatible with VHS, period, end statement. If you had a Beta machine, VHS tapes were useless to you, and vice versa. IPv4 and IPv6 can happily co-exist, though. Totally different situation.
That said, I agree with the underlying premise that migration isn't going to happen until it's easy and cheap, and (moreover) there's some motivation out there. It's possible that this translates to "never"; it's also possible that it translates to "some time in the next 5-10 years". I'm reserving judgement for now, but I'll be amazed if I have to deal with IPv6 in less than five years.
Re:Not until IANA stop hording ipv4 space (Score:3, Interesting)
Well this company refuses to spend out any money to investigate ipv6. Yes there is an IP shortage. And do you know what causes it? Primarily IANA who are holding about 1/3rd of the total IPV4 address space in reserve.
dont believe me? check this [iana.org].
For the uninitiated.. (Score:5, Informative)
IPv4 Policies [arin.net]
IPv6 Policies [arin.net]
Obvious Question (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Obvious Question (Score:5, Funny)
The Evil Bit feature is scheduled to be implemented in IPv666.
Re:Obvious Question (Score:2, Funny)
Already switched. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Already switched. (Score:5, Informative)
No plans (Score:2, Interesting)
IPv6 (Score:5, Insightful)
Addressing is just one of the issues that IPv6 addresses, but the Parallel nature that I am proposing would fix things like Security, Spam, Porn, Enum, Virus, Streaming media, meta port assignments, directory services etc.
There is much more. Trying to build IPv6 ONTOP of the current Inet is just as broken as the current Inet.
Re:IPv6 (Score:5, Funny)
Baby, if IPv4 porn is wrong, I don't want to be right.
ISPs need to take initiative (Score:5, Interesting)
Mind you, the above statements are highly uninformed, based on what I've read of IPv6 and my own brief experience setting up a tunnel for it with 6bone (which, I understand, is no longer with us).
Re:ISPs need to take initiative (Score:4, Insightful)
I cannot imagine that UUNET or a similar provider will move to IPv6 before they have the ability to manage it at the same level as they do now. Certainly the Tier-1's can make the decision to go, but not until their software can handle it.
ISPs will not take the initiative. (Score:5, Insightful)
Had IETF chosen to set aside of chunk of address space to permanently and portably allocate to serious deployers ... space that would not ever be taken back ... that could be kept forever as the payment for helping to make IPv6 happen ... then I think a lot of ISPs and businesses would have done this. Instead, what we have are 6bone addresses that will not be routable on the real IPv6, and tunnels that will be taken down soon, making those addresses useless. Sure, there is a routing scalability problem still in IPv6. The only benefit IPv6 has over IPv4 in routing is that there hopefully won't be a case of single companies advertising dozens of unaggregated prefixes ... or at least no more than one per major location. So shame on the IETF for not having solved that problem with a fundamentally new way to do routing in conjunction with the development of an addressing technology that now way overscales the ability to route it.
It's now a chicken and egg problem. ISPs simply will not, not in this economy, and not for years even after it gets better, make an investment in deploying IPv6 unless there is customer demand for it. Customers won't demand it until there is some real need for it, which is not the case, especially with so many businesses now running big LANs via one NAT'd IPv4 address. If some web site goes online with both IPv4 and IPv6, everyone will access it via IPv4 and that won't create any demand for IPv6. If they go online with IPv6 only, no one can reach them for a while, and they will probably not really make it.
But there are some possible ways to make IPv6 happen:
ipv6? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:ipv6? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:ipv6? (Score:4, Interesting)
There's tons of older software implementations out there. Take the check-in kiosks for airlines: Continental's runs on NT4, and they're still rolling more of those kiosks out every day. One of those situations where if it works, why mess with it, especially when it would just cost more money to convert the existing check-in kiosks in Armpit, Iowa simply to be IPv6 compliant.
Re:ipv6? (Score:2)
Re:ipv6? (Score:5, Informative)
Except that the IPv6 stack from Microsoft for Win2k can't query IPv6-only DNS servers. It understands AAAA records, but you still need your DNS server accessible over IPv4 in order to actually query them...
Re:ipv6? (Score:2, Informative)
We are not even considering it yet. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:We are not even considering it yet. (Score:3, Insightful)
As the water heats up around you, you'll find yourself getting more and more uncomfortable...
Multicasting... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Multicasting... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Multicasting... (Score:2)
Re:Multicasting... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Multicasting economics. (Score:3, Insightful)
Naw. They get their money from the people the multicast bit is going TO. Replicating it means more people upgrade and pay for bigger inbound hoses.
Think about it: Got broadband? Didn't you pa
Re:Multicasting [... will never happen] (Score:4, Informative)
There are evident, unsolved, pragmatic problems with native IP multicast. For instance, there is no proven, support inter-domain multicast routing system, and thus no way for multicast groups to sync up between different ISPs.
There are application-layer problems with multicast. For instance, nobody has come up with a reliability scheme with a service model other than "streaming video" or "big fucking file transfer" (as opposed to, say, web page download).
But even if you believe that problems like these are close to being solved, there is a fundamental, intensely painful scaleability problem with global native IP multicast: rather than asking the Internet backbone to route entities that represent hosts (a hard enough problem), native multicast demands that the backbone route entities that effectively represent pieces of content. As in, web pages.
Most of the benefits of multicast will come from overlay systems, both centralized (like the one Akamai built) and decentralized (like peer-to-peer file sharing networks). There's no evidence that the problems Deering-model multicast aims to solve can't be solved more easily at a higher layer.
It's just another example of the end to end principle [reed.com] in action.
Re:Multicasting... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Multicasting... (Score:3, Interesting)
The main problem is the amount of per-group state routers need to keep. Currently, a router needs to know about all multicast groups that are being sent through
My timeline (Score:3, Interesting)
Realistically speaking, I'd say 5 - 10 years, right after I get my flying car.
I'm thinking 5 years... (Score:5, Insightful)
At the moment you can't get IPV6 service from any of the large providers. And really only people on ipv6 can take advantage of it, so... Until a significant portion of the end-users have IPV6, I can't see that we'll have any real need to start using it in any real way...
It's, obviously, a chicken-and-egg thing. It was really pushed because of the "sky is falling" shouts about running out of IP space. Todays world seems like there's plenty of IP space, if you're not super wastful with it, and we have other problems to face like router table space and ASNs.
The other problem I don't think we really have ironed out right now is that the routers are really underpowered and optimized for ipv4 routing. I expect that having significant traffic on IPV6 is going to stress many of the bigger routers on the net to the point that they can no longer function. Lots of "big router" admins are already working hard getting the routers to handle current traffic.
Sean
6to4 is the answer to that. (Score:2)
Anyone who has a single static IPv4 address can use 6to4 to get a /48 up and running right now.
Here... (Score:2)
I imagine a lot of people are in the same situation, waiting on IT departments without enough time to make the changes.
Oh, at home... well, the equipment is simple off the shelf stuff, I doubt any of it supports IPv6, and my ISP would proba
Usage of IPv6 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Usage of IPv6 (Score:2)
Never! (Score:3, Funny)
Too far off (Score:2, Interesting)
We'll see but it could easily be another 20 years before the world adopts (wholely) IPv6.
Grrr... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Grrr... (Score:4, Funny)
What IP shortage ? (Score:2, Insightful)
With NAT I just don't see the need. At home I'd rather not have a bunch of registered IP's for everything at my house anyways, make the stuff work behind my firewall, anonymously
As a user from behind a NAT firewall... (Score:2)
This, in addition to the fact that I would have to tunnel to get ipv6, the fact that there is nothing I NEED that is available only over ipv6... But I'd still do it just for the experien
IPv6 has no killer app (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody -- not ISPs, not users -- is going to switch to IPv6 until they have a reason to do so. Private networks have obliterated (not just mitigated, in my opinion) the argument that IPv4 does not offer enough IP addresses for everyone. We have all the IP addresses we will ever need using IPv4 and NAT. That was once considered the main reason for IPv6 adoption. Now there isn't much of any reason to switch, other than the coolness factor that only techies will appreciate.
Re:IPv6 has no killer app (Score:5, Interesting)
IMO the killer app for IPv6 is going to be Mobile Phones. I've heard that the next generation phones are going to be IPv6 based using IPv6 Mobility. If this happens, there will be a good reason for people to use IPv6.
For something like mobile phones, IPv6 is really needed - there just arent enough IPs with IPv4 to assign every mobile a unique IP (and mobility typically needs multiple IPs anyway)
Duh! (Score:4, Insightful)
-- this is not a
IPv6 testing tools (Score:2, Informative)
We [ixiacom.com] provide IPv6 ready testing tools [ixiacom.com] for L2 through L7 testing that are seeing great interest and buyers in the market.
[/shameless plug]
Judging from the response we're seeing, IPv6 is quickly being implemented by the network equipment manufacutrers (NEMs) - though the rollout at ISPs and businesses is probably not as fast as one would hope due to the general market conditions and lack of rollout pressure due to IPv4 addresses still being available.
IPv8 (Score:2)
Thing is, why update to IPv6? What's the main reason for a casual net user who is generally pleased/apathetic (conform consume obey) with the internet as it is to want to switch?
And whatever happend to IPv5?
Working for a company that greatly supports IPv6 (Score:5, Interesting)
Business cases have been made, feasibility plans created, consultations and meetings have been held, and it all points to: IPv4 works just fine, thank you. Our network-related problems have absolutely nothing to do with IPv4, so nobody is going to put his job on the line for the fancyness of a new technology that nobody really needs. OK, maybe somebody needs it, but heck, I really didn't see any such company around.
So, you see, if even the cook doesn't want to eat his own soup, you probably can stick to the tried-and-tested Big Mac (so I like Big Macs. Got a problem with that?) too.
Not holding my breath (Score:2, Insightful)
Using IPv6 today (Score:5, Informative)
What's in it for me? (Score:2)
What's in it for me? I got IP addresses already. Maybe if some day I need more I might have to get IPv6 ones. But only if I can get portable ones. Of course that brings up the critical issue that during the development of IPv6, while that scaled up the address space massively, they didn't do so with the routing issue.
What IPv4 Scaleability issues? (Score:5, Interesting)
99+% of the net today can look at the reset of the world as a "default route". That means for most of the world, the
A very small number of companies fit in the dual homed category. While they may need better routing, most of the time its not for efficiency of the routes but redundancy. Note that is is virtually impossible for a small business to be dual homed and have things work when one of the links goes down.
The remaining is the core routers. A core router shouldn't be using routing tables they way they are done now. For most routes in a core routers, its just a switch. Stuff to 1.2.3/24 goes to interface 2 and that's it. There tend to be a few dynamic routes for some of the stuff that's close but everything else is far away and very static (relative to the routers ability to change all of it). Since no one is switching far away traffic in smaller groups than a
Ipv6 isn't going to fix any of this. It doubles the amount of bits that are needed for the hardware routing and then double that for the local address. That doesn't seem like a good idea to me.
I would like to play with IPv6 on a public network but Racksapce (where I keep a server) won't give me an IPv6 address.
Not on 6bone at the moment (Score:2)
You will see IPv6 in wide deployment in the US... (Score:5, Insightful)
At that point, Marketing is going to turn to Management and ask "Why arn't we using this next generation networking technology?" To which Management is going to go to IS, and ask the same question.
IS is going to report the following.
Management is then going to ask "How long it will take to deploy?", and "How long do you expect to continue working here?". At different companies different emphasis is going to be placed on those two questions.
ISP's and CoLos will have the same set of problems. Large businesses are going to ask why they are not ready for IPv6, and will have to seriously look into how much longer it will take before they start loosing their big customers.
At that point, IPv6 will be discovered as already existing in just about every router and server OS that is out there. The exceptions will be hardware that is due for replacemnt shortly anyway.
People who have been fighting with silly problems with IPv4, will crack open the manuals on IPv6 and realize that almost 90% of the problems they have been fighting with, dhcp, ddns, IPsec, IPNat, are already built into the technology that they already have deployed and mearly need to add a few statements to interfaces on routers in their network.
The early adopters are going to move their CoLos out of the US to countries where the CoLos have already deployed IPv6 in their infrastructure. Some of them will prosper on the added business, some will not get it right and will fail.
Nay-sayers on Slashdot will point at the failures in the early adopters and say "I told you so, the technology ain't ready."
Are there problems with the above senario? Sure. There are problems with some of the deployed IPv6 stacks on some Cisco routers. There are questions about the efficacy of using some of the applications that businesses are using on IPv4 being migrated to IPv6. I understand that there are Novel 3.2 servers out there that are still in use because the company using the server has a functioning solution even if spport costs in the future are going to skyrocket.
Those of you complaining about being out of work, might want to spend some time at the library and brush up on both your IPv4 and IPv6 knowledge. You will then have a potential advantage over those people currently working, fighting with IPv4 problems and ignoring the possibility of using IPv6, because "No one has found a real need for it."
After all, I could be wrong.
-Rusty
This should be a poll (Score:3, Funny)
IPv6, AlterNIC, and AOL (Score:2)
The issue is software (Score:5, Informative)
The major operating systems out there are now deployable with IPv6 support. The major infrastructure vendors (Cisco and the like) are ready. The big limitation as I see it right now is software. More network-aware software needs to be address family agnostic.
The path forward for software developers is fairly straightforward:
Making software address-family agile should not impact your IPv4 users at all. Why not do it the right way now so you don't have to re-do it later?
It is coming.
Helping out open source projects (Score:5, Informative)
You have to just jump in! I too am already using IPv6 comfortably alongside my routed IPv4 network. I actually forced myself to start using it just 'cause, and it's wonderful. The autoconfiguration features are worth it alone. And I have a mixed network of Linux, AIX, HP-UX, Windows 2000, and Cisco. My bind/DNS is configured for IPv6, my sendmail is configured for IPv6, and so on. But the underlying IPv4 network is still there right along side. There's really no reason to not go ahead and start experimenting with IPv6, to get comfortable with it before you depend on it.
Actually my excuse to start playing with it was I was developing an application which could make use of multicasting. And let me tell you, IPv6 multicasting is a dream come true when compared with IPv4! And the sockets-API is much more sane and complete, after all the IETF learned from the shortcomings of the IPv4 API. See these wonderful resources and just jump in!
So now that I'm enjoying it, I've been seeking out open source applications that use IPv4 and providing assistance to the developers to get them compatible with IPv6. A lot of the smaller projects in particular could use help, as some of them are unnecessarily tied to the IPv4 stack and probably don't even know it nor know anything about IPv6. I also suggest that anybody with some expertise to lend a hand as well. The open source/free software community can not find itself falling being here.
None whatsoever. (Score:2)
On the upside, at least IPV6 was well-planned and is getting a ton of testing!
Mostly there, but need an ISP! (Score:5, Informative)
So for now I'm stuck working through a tunnel broker with terrible latency. Basically, I'm still doing everything with IPv4 that's not on the LAN.
Why not use NAT+MASQ? (Score:2)
We need to educate network administrators that most (not all) networks that use real IP's could just as easily be converted to a NAT+MASQ system which, if properly configured, will work just as well for most applications. If this where to happen we would dramatically reduce the IPv4 allocation.
I'm all for IPv6, I just don't think it's necessary right now. Not for at least another 15-20 years.
Why not just go to IPv*? (Score:4, Interesting)
It is probably not regarded as a pressing issue to increase the range of addresses above 128bits, but then 32bits (and 640K RAM cough) seemed a lot at the time. As has been stated in previous comments, this addresses will eventually be consumed by even the most trivial of objects like light switches or microwave oven bells.
A similar point could be made for dates, where fixes for the year 2000 suddenly allowed dates up to 9999, but what about when we hit the year 10000? Sounds silly, yes, and no doubt we will have moved on to much bigger and better things by then... but what if, for example, we suddenly (within years) moved to a new style calendar system where we started counting from 18209 years ago? Yeah, the point for dates is probably stupid, but why not just let the date/address be any length it needs to be?
Just start with the lowest bit and then work towards the most significant bit that will uniquely identify an object? Perhaps this is unworkable, but it seems to make more sense than just relying on no one filling out the address space (again... will we never learn?) It also seems to follow logically from how the domain name system works where there is a hierarchy involved from some top level towards the actual machine address. I imagine I am missing some vital concept of addresses needing to be a fixed number of bits or something though, I haven't delved into it enough to understand exactly the issues involved.
When AOL do IPv6 (Score:3, Insightful)
and I dont think it's that far off - AOL probably have more need than most and might pull it off more easily.
They already need heaps of IP addresses for all their dialup users.
Most aol users wouldn't give a monkey if they installed AOL v19 and suddenly it used ipv6... they just wouldn't notice.
The remaining computer literate aol users (if they exist) would probably be quite pleased.
Just my thoughts.
What does a sysadmin gain from IPv6? (Score:4, Interesting)
Local IPv6 addresses don't offer any advantages over 10.* IPv4 addresses.
Global IPv6 addresses don't work. Most client computers around the Internet can't talk to a server on a global IPv6 address, and most server computers around the Internet can't talk to a client on a global IPv6 address. Sure, a few people could connect to my IPv6 addresses; so what? Why should I go to extra effort to make those addresses work?
All the operating systems I use have been claiming ``IPv6 support'' for years. But they still require manual action by the system administrator before they can talk to IPv6 addresses. What do I gain by spending time setting up IPv6?
(All of this boils down to a small protocol design error in IPv6. A small change to IPv6 software would make IPv6 addresses work without any administrator action. I have a web page, http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/ipv6mess.html [cr.yp.to], explaining this in much more detail.)
Re:What does a sysadmin gain from IPv6? (Score:5, Insightful)
Local IPv6 addresses don't offer any advantages over 10.* IPv4 addresses.
they do, though. having true end-to-end communication means that peer to peer applications like voice over IP or BitTorrent actually work.
It also means that users on larger networks are actually accountable. if you have a way of uniquely identifying a machine from outside the network, abuse complaints actually mean something. if the secret service comes knocking on a network admin's door complaining about threats being sent from your network to president@whitehouse.gov you can't say "oh, we don't have any way of knowing which user sent that mail, because it didn't go through our mail server and all 5,000 machines on this network connect to the internet through the same IP address." chances are that you aren't logging every connection that goes through your nat gateway, and so your basically stuck holding the ball on that one.
Global IPv6 addresses don't work. Most client computers around the Internet can't talk to a server on a global IPv6 address, and most server computers around the Internet can't talk to a client on a global IPv6 address.
of course they do. every host in my home network has a globally routable ipv6 address (thanks to hurricane electric's tunnelbroker.net) and i can reach hosts at my colo provider that are set up via freenet6. i can also reach hosts at my school that are directly connected to the ipv6 backbone via nysernet.
All the operating systems I use have been claiming ``IPv6 support'' for years. But they still require manual action by the system administrator before they can talk to IPv6 addresses.
no they don't. radvd is like dhcpd on steroids. if your hosts are ipv6 capable, start up radvd on your ipv6 connected router and within seconds every one of them will have their own globally unique, routable ipv6 address.
(All of this boils down to a small protocol design error in IPv6. A small change to IPv6 software would make IPv6 addresses work without any administrator action. I have a web page, http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/ipv6mess.html [cr.yp.to], explaining this in much more detail.)
this page basically says two (false) things.
1) you can't use ipv6 and ipv4 at the same time, so if you switch to ipv6 now you can't reach 99.9% of the internet.
this is blatently false and you know it. ipv6 and ipv4 can co-exist on the same machine very well. on my ipv6 enabled network, every host has an ipv4 address from 10.0.0.0/8 and an ipv6 address from 2001:470:1f00:321::/64. my machines try to look up AAAA records on hosts first, and if one exists they try to connect to that ipv6 IP. if no AAAA record exists, or the host is unreachable via ipv6, the machine falls back to ipv4, looks up a host, and connects.
2) it takes a massive amount of work to convert all applications over to ipv6 and no one has even started on such a task.
this one is even more confusing. i've got ipv6 enabled apache, ipv6 enabled qmail, ipv6 enabled djbdns, ipv6 enabled mozilla/phoenix, ipv6 enabled xchat, ipv6 enabled internet explorer, etc. all of these applications on every modern OS have all been written to use ipv6 first, then fall back on ipv4.
Mostly there, with caveats (Score:4, Informative)
Having been at several RIPE [ripe.net] meetings and national Net Operator Group meetings, the biggest problem is getting peering and transit connections negotiated. IPv6 requires many things which were optional in IPv4, like multicast support end-to-end. Many of the clued ISPs and carriers in Europe now have IPv6 internally, and offer it to their clients. Larger ISPs are naturally lagging behind, because the techies have no voice in the business operations of big telcos, and the suits haven't heard enough to start asking their customers if they want it.
There was a chicken and egg problem, where ISPs weren't asking their customers about wanting IPv6, and customers not implementing it because it wasn't offered by IPSs. This has changed quite a bit in the last year, for two reasons. Big telcos rolling out 2.5G/3G mobile phone systems are using IPv6 internally, and smaller ISPs are looking for an edge in these lean times. My upstream ISP made a few announcements on internal mailing lists about offering IPv6 over IPv4 tunnels for testing purposes, and was overwhelmed by the response. They now have a few dedicated cisco routers, and allow a full IPv6 login without needing tunnels. The last I heard, almost 20% of their customers have taken up IPv6, mostly the businesses with clued techies and home experimenters. Other ISPs are now looking to roll out IPv6 soon, but the biggest problem is hammering out the peering/transit issues, not in the offer to customers.
The other delay is waiting for the IPv6 working groups at RIPE to get the registry database objects well defined and implemented, and a few other technical services like route servers and DNSSEC implemented. But the work is ongoing and will take a while until the backend issues get ironed out.
My bet is that, at least in Europe, there will be some mainstream buzz about IPv6 starting in 12 to 18 months. The early adopters like myself already run IPv6 alongside IPv4, most systems have it built in ready to go, and ISPs are getting up to speed.
the AC
Leaving for Barcelona friday
The Plan (Score:3, Funny)
2) enslave humanity and use them as "energy cells"
3) wire each unit with IPv6
Re:IPv6 (Score:2, Offtopic)
Oh... wait.....
Re:IPv6 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh great (Score:2)
12:70::01
-Rusty