Domain: btexact.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to btexact.com.
Comments · 23
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Slashdot should dual-stack too.
root@slashdot# modprobe ipv6 ; ifconfig eth0 2001:fff:aaaa::1/64
Cmon, Slashdot. Call yourself a site for techies, and you're years behind the latest version of the protocol that runs the Internet? Get a tunnel broker if you can't get native. Just get on IPv6. It's not hard.
Google, if you're reading this (of course you are), you could do the same too. In the UK? Get your 2^64 addresses here.
Cue all the "we like things as they are" people moaning about how large the addresses are, and how they don't want their fridge to have an IP address, and how great NAT is. -
Why don't we start today? Tunnels!
If you just want a broker that is quick to get started with, go to btexact and sign up. For those "permanent" set ups, go to (you will get a tunnel initially, but have to save uptime enough to get a subnet and such).
So, what can it be used for? Well, at the moment I do not really use it to browse the web, but I use it for reverse dns on irc (efnet, freenode and most other ircnets have ipv6 enabled servers). In other words, I can have a range of customized hosts (very handy since many friends have shell accounts here) on irc, like @doomtech.net or cust-523452.nix.net.ru. The first one is my own domain, but the second is from afraid freedns. Afraid has a huge range of public domains, which you can add AAAA and PTR records for.
After thinking up a host, please go to spamcalc, if you don't have the brains yourself to see if your host is dns spam or not. A host like doomtech.net is not dns spam, but something like i.am.god.and.i.live.in.the.cave.with.osama.bin.lad en.info is.
Sixxs and btexact have pretty exact instructions on how to set this up on a range of operating systems. With the aiccu client from sixxs, the tunnel should work behind most NAT setups as well. -
IPv6 providersThere are some. ISPs who also provide tunnels include Hurricane Electric, British Telecom, Dophin Networks, SingNet, Hexago, Easynet, BELNET, Data Telecom, Finnet, HEAnet, ITgate, Scarlet Internet, SURFnet, Concepts, BIT, NFSi, Medinet, Kewlio, OCCAID. (That last group is intentionally a long list - they collaborate to provide a joint IPv6 presence and a joint interface for setting up a tunnel to the nearest broker.)
For those in Japan, I suggest checking out IPv6 Promotion Council, WIDE, Internet Initiative Japan and the BSD folks over at KAME.
In general, you probably also want to check the IPv6 Information Page, which lists many IPv6 websites, FTP sites and even IRC sites not already listed. (Almost all the above sites are also IPv6-reachable.) This totally trashes the idea that there is NOBODY on IPv6, which is good because it is a delusion which prevents people from using IPv6.
I've used numerous IPv6 tunnels and will shortly be getting native IPv6 from my provider at home, so I cry "bullshit" to those who say it can't be done. Setting up an IPv6 tunnel through a broker requires knowing your public IP address and your MAC address, then running a simple script to set up the IPv6-over-IPv4 connection. It's all of a couple of minutes work, maximum. I dare those who say IPv6 isn't being used to actually set up such a tunnel, use IPv6, THEN come back and tell the rest of us why what they just did was so impossible. -
LinksMobility was always intended to be part of the IPv6 standard. Originally, the routing protocol was supposed to take care of it, through the use of transient IP addresses in addition to the main IP address. This is the reason IPv6 numbers currently reserve the last 48 bits for your MAC address, with the rest assigned by upstream routers. It was intended to be very easy for routers to simply shuffle your location around with 100% guarantee of no address clashes.
At present, IPv6 mobility depends on a lot of fiddly detail. However, here are some links on how IPv6 mobility works under Linux and how it is currently intended to work:- Mobile IPv6 for Linux - Includes initial support for "network mobility" (move whole networks around, not just machines)
- A study on transient addressing in Mobile IPv6
- British Telecom presentation on Mobile IPv6 using a home base system
- IETF working group for Mobile IPv6
- Historical Notes: Mobile IPv6 for Linux, in the days of the 2.1 kernels!
Quick summary: The user's machine registers with their home router (the home base). When they move to a different network, they notify their home router, which then sets up a transitory IP address on the remote network. The home router then cascades back up the routers the message that the fixed IP address of the mobile machine should now be routed to the transitory IP address, optimizing the routing. When an entire network moves, it notifies its home router in the same way, the only difference being that because you're migrating the router, you also migrate all of the machines attached to it - but none of the machines need to know this or be set up to handle it. - Mobile IPv6 for Linux - Includes initial support for "network mobility" (move whole networks around, not just machines)
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use this tunnel broker
These guys have a good tunnel broker interface:
https://tb.ipv6.btexact.com/
I used these guys a couple of years ago and they made me very sad:
ipv6tb.he.net/ -
Re:where are the IPv6 native ISPs?
Move to Europe.
The AMSix is a major IPv6 peering point, where many of their clients offer IPv6 to customers.
Nerim is a major provider in France. They offer IPv6 natively to all their home users, just enable it on your router/firewall.
The UK has any number of IPv6 capable ISPs (blech, puke), you just have to keep an eye on their internal support groups for help from those who have managed to make it work. Tunnels are always a way around broken providers, but are not an answer to your question.
There are a number of other transit and peering providers all over Europe who provide IPv6, and the ISPs are all starting to follow along. Demand only started when a handful of providers realised their was a large enough market for extra added services, even though very few customers made it an important item. The problem with IPv6 is that there is no WOW! factor, it just works as well as IPv4, transparently, and currently doesn't bring any new features to the internet that users can see.
Completely off topic...
I had a great time at CeBit this year, talking to the chinese ADSL modem makers. After asking if thier boxes supported IPv6, I then told them I needed 20,000 boxes right away for a small scale test, but only with a product with IPv6 enabled right out of the box, no upgrades allowed. Once I started talking about the 20-40 million unit market over the next year, you could see their eyes light up. But if they offered an upgrade within a few weeks (in other words, they'd have their coders pull some all-nighters), I'd walk off to find another with IPv6 already built in. I have a feeling that next year there will be dozens of small ADSL routers with IPv6 capability. Once we can get cheap ADSL routers with IPv6 as a checklist item, ISPs will start offering it.
In the U.S., the term for your situation is TSOL.
the AC -
Re:Limousines and the free market
I kinda like the LCD maps they had in Ipswich, Suffolk, where the actual current positions of the buses are shown on the route map (and web site). It's shut down now though
:-( wimps! -
Re:So what numbers will we use
They are brave enough to switch to IP, hopefully they're also brave enough to switch to IPv6.
BT Exact offers a free IPv6 tunnel-broker service which I've found useful, so yes, I think they probably will use IPv6 internally.
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Re:New Technologies?
Well there's an intriguing technology timeline that BT in the UK released for example, which for 2004 alone comes up with some pretty imaginative possibilities - it continues through to 2040 btw. Just wondered what at CeBIT comes close to any of these hypothetical inflection points that's all.
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Re:about ipv6No major backbones carry IPv4 tunneled over IPv6. You might be thinking of MPLS which is present in a lot of backbone networks.
It's hard to believe there is 'heavy' use of IPv6 when the dedicated IPv6 exchange in the UK peaks at 4Mbit/s of traffic and the LINX exchange in London has >30Gbit/s of IPv4 traffic
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here & there
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Done before...
BTexact did something similar ages ago (SMS for the blind, actually).
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good reading
Visibone carries free color blind palettes for photoshop, etc...
Also, required reading for anyone wanting to see just how color blind people see.
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Colorblindness references
Visibone has a good page dedicated to the more common forms of colorblindness, including a link to an excellent article that has downloadable color palettes (for Photoshop and Paintshop Pro, but I would assume that the Gimp would also be able to make use of those palletes) that you can apply to screenshots / mockups / etc. to simulate colorblindness. Not quite as seamless as having a "colorblindness" video mode, but still useful for determining a color palette to use.
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Colorblindness references
Visibone has a good page dedicated to the more common forms of colorblindness, including a link to an excellent article that has downloadable color palettes (for Photoshop and Paintshop Pro, but I would assume that the Gimp would also be able to make use of those palletes) that you can apply to screenshots / mockups / etc. to simulate colorblindness. Not quite as seamless as having a "colorblindness" video mode, but still useful for determining a color palette to use.
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Intelligent Wi-Fi
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Technology Timeline
The folks at BTExact seem to be doing a great job. It is more interesting watching the posts on Slashdot after looking through this baby, because you can see their predictions happening. Anyway, the Cliff notes version is that they predict that all 1.5 Million currently known species will be listed online by 2005. This looks like a strong step in the right direction...
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Re:Good site design
this might be interesting on the topic of colour blindness:
http://www.btexact.com/white_papers/downloads/WP10 4.pdf -
Re:Color blindness
BT Exact Technologies recently published a paper on designing for colour blindness. More information and colour palettes are on "Safe web colours for colour-deficient vision".
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Re:Color blindness
BT Exact Technologies recently published a paper on designing for colour blindness. More information and colour palettes are on "Safe web colours for colour-deficient vision".
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Designing for colour blind usersI discovered this while scanning around the BT Exact site listed in the next article on Technology Futures. Being that I am in the 7% of the world population that is partially colour blind myself, I found it of interest: The eye of the beholder - Designing for colour blind users
"Colour-blind computer users see things differently from most people, but this is seldom considered in the design of software or web pages. This article offers a simple technique for simulating the differences, to help designers and developers avoid disadvantaging their users."
Enjoy!
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This is a joke, right?from the paper:
Smart Barbie insists on allowance for clothes and accessories 2003
Shopping Barbie acts as personal shopper for children 2004
Living genetically engineered Furby (TM, Tiger Electronics) 2040
He's joking, isn't he? Please? Tell me he's joking!? -
A few other agent frameworksDistributed Agent systems aren't anything new, they have been a hot topic in the academic world for quite a while now.
The BT Zeus project is an open source agent framework that includes lots of nice stuff (visual development / visualisation / intellegent agents etc.) See www.btexact.com/projects/agents/zeus/ for more info. I feel obliged to mention SoFAR an academic focusing on DIM (Distributed Information Managment) Agents (or at least they where last time I was there).