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Commercial IPv6 Service In Australia

Carl Brewer writes: "At last someone's doing commercial IPv6 in Australia, [according to this Computerworld Article]. Maybe this'll kick some of the other ISP's into action." Fat pipes, IPv6 ... next they'll announce affordable satellite links to the whole country, lead-into-gold machines, etc.

22 of 78 comments (clear)

  1. A little off, but no biggie by Galvatron · · Score: 4
    The radius of the earth is actually closer to 2,100,000 (2,092,000, with 4 significant digits). Despite using a lower radius, however, you somehow managed to also get a lower number of IPs per square foot.

    (2,092,000^2*4*PI)=6.187*10^13 (again, significant digits are your friend)
    2^128=3.402*10^38
    (3.402*10^38)/(6.187*10^13) = (3.402*10^25)/6.187 = 5.499*10^24
    Your answer was approximately 6*10^22, so off by a factor of 100.

    Still, anyway you slice it, that's a fuckload of IPs. Which is good, because we certainly don't want to run into the "nobody could possibly need more than 512k of ram" problem. This way, utilizing all those IPs would be practically a physical impossibility, at least as long as we're contained within this solar system.

    Of course, this doesn't mean the "thousands of IPs per square foot" people are WRONG. After all, 5.499*10^24 is 5,499,000,000,000,000,000,000 thousand IP addresses per square foot. That's many many many thousands :)

    --
    "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
    1. Re:A little off, but no biggie by YKnot · · Score: 2

      Still, anyway you slice it, that's a fuckload of IPs. Which is good, because we certainly don't want to run into the "nobody could possibly need more than 512k of ram" problem.

      Just wait until someone finds good use for one-time IPs, preferably for very short, frequent tasks... ;)

  2. Re:Politics by Goonie · · Score: 2
    Do you reckon little Johnny has actually *used* the internet?

    Anyway, I think the statement was in the context of the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Forum) meeting, and the goal was to let every community in every APEC country (including most of east Asia, Russia, and the US) have access to the net. Personally, if I was Burmese, Cambodian (or Chinese for that matter) I'd like a government that wasn't so keen on killing its own citizens *before* I worried too much about net access :-/

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    Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
    --Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
  3. Re:But that defeats the whole point by mpe · · Score: 2

    You can tell controller nanite #5/10 to have nanite #324235236523 to do some junk.

    Or rather you tell controller nanite #5/10 what you want doing and it tells natite #324235236523 what to do.

  4. Politics by QuantumG · · Score: 2

    Well, sitting at my PC and listening to the news I just heard our humble leader (and quite scary) John Howard say that the government is trying to ensure that every Australian has access to the Internet within the next five years (or something). Pretty amuzing claim.. sorta like the "no child shall be living in poverty".

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    How we know is more important than what we know.
    1. Re:Politics by QuantumG · · Score: 3

      one, yes, Johnny uses the net.. he has a stupid talk radio show and people are always asking him if he has read something another on the net and most the time he has. two, he was specifically talking about Australia.. he was saying that the divide between the haves and the have nots of infotech must be eliminated if Australia is to move forward. Howard has always been a "we are the smart country" type. It gives him an excuse to fuck over farmers and miners.

      --
      How we know is more important than what we know.
  5. Re:Nanites will obsolesce IPv6 in ten years by JDHackmasterG · · Score: 2

    Hrmph. Anyone ever hear of a private network? IPv6 just like IPv4 provides for private networks that dont exactly need to have a public address. Nanothingies can easily go on the super large private networks provided for by IPv6. If anything needs to be public, have the controller on a public IP address. I can't really think of a situation I might want to telnet to specific nanothingie #233523523 from halfway across the globe. Same thing with toasters btw. If i actually did have my toaster network-enabled, i would probably have it on my PRIVATE network in my house. I could then toast some bread at home from my car by connecting to some external controller that interfaced with my toaster through the private network. My toaster doesn't necessarily need to serve web pages directly now does it? Just a thought...

  6. affordable satellite links by Dacta · · Score: 3

    Actually, satellite links are just about the most affordable form of broardband available outside Sydney, Melbourne & Brisbane. Telstra cable is way too much, and Optus hasn't cabled anywhere else, but you can get sattelite access for around $40-$50 a month.

    Of course, sattelite internet is actually a pretty crap form of 'net access - it is high lag, ties up a phone line, and is only fast one way.

  7. Re:Cant wait for IPv6 by -brazil- · · Score: 2
    I wonder who came up with the "several thousand IP addresses per sq. foot/meter of Earth surface" bullshit (heard it in other places, too). It's much more than that. Or is my math wrong:

    (2^128) / (20000000^2 * 4 * 3.1415) = 67699022545149304365624

    (2^128 = no. of possible addresses in IPv6, 20000000 = appr. radius of Earth in feet, 4*pi*r^2 = surface area of a sphere of radius r)

    --

    The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
    --Henry Kissinger

  8. Re:square footage ... by nosilA · · Score: 2
    I'm also trying to figure out who is and how the hell they're guna manage the assignment of IPv6 blocks. heh.


    ARIN (or your friendly regional registry) are selling these just as they are seilling IPv4 addresses now. The worst part? They are actually charging *more* than they are for IPv4 addresses. Anyway, rest assured, those who stand to profit have already taken care of IPv6 assignment.

    -nosilA

  9. Re:IPv6, and the Tooth Fairy... by Teferi · · Score: 2

    Metalab/iBiblio/Sunsite/whatever-it-is-this-week doesn't seem to have RFC 1918. Could you post a summary or a link?


    "If ignorance is bliss, may I never be happy.

    --
    -- Veni, vidi, dormivi
  10. Re:IPv6, and the Tooth Fairy... by Teferi · · Score: 2

    Nevermind, found it elsewhere...forgot 1918 was the private-address-blocks RFC
    Boy is my face red. :P

    "If ignorance is bliss, may I never be happy.

    --
    -- Veni, vidi, dormivi
  11. Not just for ISP's... by Cef · · Score: 2

    Fat pipes, IPv6 ... next they'll announce affordable satellite links to the whole country, lead-into-gold machines, etc.

    The place I work at actually has a 10 meg Fibre connection through UEComm. One thing that startled us at the time we found out about them (around March) was that they could get us a 2 Meg fibre link at about the same cost as a 128k ISDN would cost (rent wise). ISDN is just way too expensive over here, and ADSL is not usable yet, and in some places won't be simply because of transmission distance from exchange to user. It took 3 months to get the damn thing connected, but we haven't looked back (we got 2 Meg, and then uppped to 10 Meg cos it was simply cheap enough that we could).

    UEComm also have a fairly decent network behind it, and the fibre is reasonable quality (they believe that with current technology they'll happily get 2 Gigabits down each fibre linking the network together, and they've got a LOT of fibres linking places together. They ran 16 pairs into our building, and they're at least capable of 622 Megabit. I don't think the place I work at will have much of a bandwidth problem for a while anyway!)

    Btw: Affordable satellite links? Define affordable. There are a few ISP's running such services here in Australia, with moderate success. Data pretty much comes direct from the US, so Overseas traffic tends to be faster.


    ...Meanwhile back at the ranch, Poncho disguised as a door has had his knob shot off... - TISM

  12. Stop talking, start acting by The-Pheon · · Score: 5

    For those of you who would like to implement ipv6 on your systems, there are howto's available at http://www.ipv6.org/howtos.htmlAlso check out the USAGI Project

  13. Cant wait for IPv6 by DaSyonic · · Score: 2

    With the capacity to provide about a thousand IP addresses to every square foot of surface area on Earth, IPv6 will make things very interesting. Total addresses possible: 340282366920938463463374607431768211456
    The neat part is I calculated that by hand while I was really bored in school and had 4 hours to blow away.

    --

    Linux: Because a PC is a terrible thing to waste.
    James Brents
    1. Re:Cant wait for IPv6 by -brazil- · · Score: 2
      Oh and by the way, get it the real world. Its metres, kilometres,... [ Reply to This | Parent ]

      I know. I'm German, and I find the Americans' persistence in using the old system irritating and amusing. But the guy I was replying to used square feet, and I didn't want to make things difficult for all the poor unit-impaired US guys here...

      --

      The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
      --Henry Kissinger

  14. Lead-Into-Gold Machines by andrewb · · Score: 2
    Fat pipes, IPv6 ... next they'll announced affordable satellite links to the whole country, lead-into-gold machines, etc.
    Would a lead-into-gold machine improve the state of the dollar?

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  15. Australia has had fat pipes for years by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3

    But we never told you. Just like we never told you about our nukes or our kamikaze kangaroo teams. All that fubared censorship legislation you've been reading about? It's a ruse.

    We have big plans up here. Yeah, that's right: up. Australia's ON TOP OF THE WORLD, damn it! Your northocentric imperial maps are upside down, but you didn't realize it. Just like you didn't realize about the nukes. You'll learn all too soon. Mark my words.

    But I've said too much.

  16. IPv6, and the Tooth Fairy... by pb · · Score: 5

    Look, everybody, more numbers! It's a huge '128-bit address space'!

    Suddenly, the internet is faster, my computer is smarter, the world looks brighter, slashdot posts are more intelligent....

    Nah. Everything still sucks.
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  17. OK, this is a dumb question. by karma+kameleon · · Score: 2
    This is a stupid question, but I've wanted to ask it for a while anyway and it is sort of slightly on topic here for a change.

    How does one go about buying a block of IP addresses? And don't say, "Lease them from your ISP", because that's doesn't answer the question. How did my ISP buy them?!?

    I'm really curious, because it is frequently a point of contention around these here parts and I'm wondering if it's possible for me to get my hands on a small block of them. Is there a governing body that deals them out? Have they already all been distributed? Sigh.... so many questions about TCP/IP....

  18. Who gives out IP numbers by marnanel · · Score: 2

    In the Americas, go to ARIN; in Europe go to RIPE; in Asia and the Pacific, go to APNIC. (Some places, such as Mexico and Brazil, have separate arrangements.)

    ARIN "allocate" numbers to ISPs and "assign" numbers to end users; but be warned that it costs Big Money to be assigned numbers directly (at least US$2,500 per year).

    As you might have guessed from the article, APNIC seem to be cluefully ready to give out IPv6 addresses; ARIN are apparently talking about it.

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  19. Re:Too big to remember. by Aki+Laukkanen · · Score: 3

    In IPv6 you don't need to. RFC 2462 defines the mechanism for Stateless Address Autoconfiguration which uses the Neighbor Discovery mechanisms defined in RFC 2461 for automatically configuring the host. Basically all IPv6 routers periodically send Router Advertisement multicast packets to the all-nodes multicast group. The content of these messages is information on how the host should configure itself ('M' flag for managed - i.e. DHCPv6). If SAA is used, the host can create an IP address for itself by prepending its Interface Identifier (E.g. EUI-64) with the prefix contained in the Prefix Information option. Hosts can at anytime send Router Solicitation messages to request RAs. The IP source address in these messages is the IID prepended by the well-known link-local address prefix. That means, each IPv6 has a scope, link-local, site-local or global.