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IPv4 vs IPv6: The Road Ahead
jeffy124 writes "With the world moving towards having every device under the sun being Internet-connected, is the Internet going to be too large? This article off CNN.com examines this potential situation. They look into the problems of switching networks from IPv4 to IPv6, and the inclusion of inter-operability between the two. Benefits of moving to IPv6 are looked at, but so are the critics of it who point out that if we don't have a problem now, why fix it? While low of technical details, the story points out that not many systems out there currently support IPv6. "
How about the enormous chunk of Linux webservers? Last I read, Linux has supported IPv6 for some time now.
Go Lakers!
Might as well just go ahead to IPv8
Come on, Apple, Dell, Cisco, and Linksys have had the capability of IPV6 for years now.
Most of the office-administered winboxen don't even have their own IP...why would my clothes dryer need one? ;)
This to me is somewhat like the continuing problem of new area codes...why not go with a main number and extensions for each individual device?
while the phone infrastructure can't seem to handle this concept right now, Internet devices certainly can....router for the house, and a port for each device (stupid worms...send as many port 80s as you like...they all go to the commode!)
I've heard that chanaging the protocol for the internet to IPv6 is similar to changing the motor of an airplane in mid air. Is it really plausible to do that, or is the Internet destined to become a useless dinosaur? (hopefully another kind of mamal-like network will emerge! )
--Manuel
"I hate quotations, tell me what you think"
Will IPV6 fix DNS?
Will it give back that huge class A domain that MIT still has?
Will my cable modem ISP with IPV6 give me more than 1 IP address so I can turn off NAT and DHCP? probably not.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
I like this one:
"but so are the critics of it who point out that if we don't have a problem now, why fix it"
Now, I understand this to an extent.
But, at the same time people are seeing the limitations of IPv4 and how we are starting to exhaust the space.
Now, just to equate the statment to something else. Y2K.
Nothin was broken and didn't pertain to many people earlier and so they didn't try to fix it earlier and it caused that hoopla of "what will happen".
Yeah - not exactly the same thing. Ok, here is another one then.
High Schools (in the US)
Have you noticed how most counties get all the reports and build a school and they haven't been allowed to forecast. Forbid we forecast and build a slightly larger school because we foresee the need for a larger school in the near future.
So, it works great for a little while with plenty of room and then one day it is overcrowded and so we hinge things like trailers onto them or try to rework schedules and create a nightmare until we can build a new highschool, but that will take a few years. It's cyclical.
From what I understand, Linux and Windows NT have had IPv6 support for quite some time now. The bigger barrier to adoption is that router technology for IPv6 is not quite ready for primetime. When Cisco and Nortel get their act in gear, IPv6 should be up and running in the wild in no time.
Even Slashdot wants to hide some things
... connections, by allowing longer ping times. So much for multiplayer gaming. But it is a more sound idea than every ISP having only one IP address and running NAT.
linux has had ipv6 for a long time. Microsoft has an add-on for windows 2000 here and it comes standard with Windows XP.
having support from linux and win2k/xp means its pretty well supported.
...critics of it who point out that if we don't have a problem now, why fix it...
To anyone who ever said, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," I offer, "Improvement is impossible without change."
"For instance, do people really want a unique address for a refrigerator -- allowing hackers to spy on individual eating habits -- or order you a truckload of milk?"
Oh my God - what if my fridge got DoS attacked? Or Code Red? We would all go hungry for days on end!
Am I a hipster-doofus?
Who would start the change, since nobody is "in charge" of IP out there. If DNS root server A upgraded, would everyone else follow? So far, everybody is watching everyone else, nobody is making the first move.
How about if AOL made a systemwide change, or ATT, Excite, and MCI all together?
As the (one and only) sysadmin for a medium sized business, I'm interested in what an all IP6 network would do for our systems. Does it make things faster, make address management easier, make my network more secure, do I need a new ISP? Could someone reply with a link to an IP6 FAQ of some sort?
Searching google for IP6 brought up a lot of links to herbal cancer cures (!?), but nothing that looked very useful.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
if we don't have a problem now, why fix it?
(ahem)
"640 kB should be enough for everybody"
"I see a worldwide market for 5, maybe 6 computers"
and one that I can only assume:
"yeah, use 2 digits for the year. Bah, the year 2000 is 20 years away, nobody will be using this stuff then anyways"
And besides, if you wait until the problem is upon us, it'll be too late to fix it.
If God gave us curiosity
We're living in a wired world, and Windows NT provides the computing tools that we need to do ebusiness, as well as iPlay. Remember, Microsoft Windows NT: it doesn't get any better than this!
--
I like to watch.
Just looking at the link to the side, I wonder how many people lookup'ed that ip, and also the v6 ip of the microwave :)
A group migration to IPv6 may never be necessary. With NAT now being pervasive, There only needs to be one or very few IP addresses per company.
The original quote (around 1989) was: "My god! At this rate, we'll be out of addresses by [1992]"
That obviously hasn't happened now, has it?
When ALL of an ISP's web clients can function on a single IP address at port 80 using header redirection, I don't thenk we're going to need the additional address space for a long time.
(IP addressing by latitude and longitude, while a cool idea, always seemed to be a solution looking for a problem.)
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Why not run the conversion like the 6bone has? That is, start off with virtual IPv6 between IPv6 supporting sites over IPv4 links, and gradually shift to native IPv6 where possible as more and more of the intermediate "link" sites convert to IPv6? At some point, you switch over core routers one by one so that they're running virtual IPv4 over IPv6 transport, and switch out the last of the IPv4 hardware as it becomes obsolete.
Not that this necessarily provides an incentive for IPv4 users to switch, but IMHO, as a person that's not too knowledgeable about IPv6, I don't see why technically a migration has to be too difficult. Maybe you could make the incentive something like rewarding you with more IPv6 addresses as you move out of IPv4 space - that would definitely move big network operators along, at least.
I'm still not sure how to force a more equal global assignment of the dwindling IPv4 address space. It seems like if the IPv4 afficianados aren't careful, China will just switch to IPv6 immediately, and the rest of the world will get dragged along just so we can continue to communicate with that huge percentage of the human race.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Do we want everything connected to the Internet?
Who has pushed for universal connectivity of most things to the Internet and why do they want it that way?
Is the Net reaching a growth limit because of the IP numbers being used for the benefit of the Net and efficiency in the transfer of information, or so New Yuckers can trade stocks on their cellphones?
Consider the NASDAQ, which has sold its soul to technological change. It expands its trading capacity every year. The sellers of trading tools anticipate this expansion, and the traders overload the system again every year, driving a further expansion.
We can get to longer and longer fingerprints for our digital devices, or we can decide to better allocate IPs. This decision is directly related to our decisions about what we eventually want the Internet to be for.
Do we want the Internet to be a marketplace, a teacher, a trainer? I would rather have limited resources allocated to training, skills enrichment, and exposure to art and culture, than to a thousand million Doom-playing boxes and gabby cellphones.
Think about it. Which places in a given city get services such as DSL first? Is that the best social choice, for both the city and the Internet?
Goat sex free since 2001
I can't wait for the book! It'll be filled with commentary equally lacking in technical details, written by a mildly deluded harvard graduate.
"For instance, do people really want a unique address for a refrigerator -- allowing hackers to spy on individual eating habits -- or order you a truckload of milk?"
Do not fear, Consumer/Citizen #238o47234-9. We have taken care of the threat of the evil hackers. We have applied Purchase::Courts in order to prosecute, convict & incarcerate Evil Hacker Units for crimes we think they'll commit in the future, preventing them from ever happening. We call this "time-shifted law enforcement".
Do not fear, Consumer Units. We will prevent Technology::IPV6 from being used to order too much Commodity::Milk.
Everything has been rendered extraordinarily safe.
quoth the article:
great! if we are gonna effectively have two internets anyway, lets have the IPv6-based Net do away with the current DNS monopoly and let anyone register a TLD. .web, .sex, .JoeSchmoe, whatever. Open DNS is the way to go.
all someone would have to do is, write a plugin for a browser that lets it seamlessly navigate IPv6 networks. But at the same time, also allow the user to choose from a open list of DNS servers at the same time. YOU choose your root ! as it was intended to be.
my apologies to JoeSchmoe for any offense. thpbt :P
Don't blame me - I voted for Howard Dean. http://dean2004.blogspot.com
Or checkout the IPv6 project page
Linux: Because a PC is a terrible thing to waste.
James Brents
someone was being greedy eh? Comeon folks, time to share..
Seriously though, the article does a good job at least trying to cover all the bases even if some of the arguements are weak. We all know that it's a big change and that it's going to take years to make the transistion from 32 bit addressing to 128 bit addressing, but the people saying "why fix it if we dont have a problem?" had better get their heads out of their asses. It's just like standing in the street and saying "why should I buy a car when my horse and wagon works fine?".
I agree that some ideas are way over the top (tell me again why my toaster should be networked??) but with computers getting smaller and cheaper the number of networked devices will continue to grow. We need a new system that can handle assigning addresses to them all. It's going to take time, effort and money to switch everything over so get started and quit complaining.
Government regulation is inherantly out of date. Didn't you read that article on Be the other day? The fellow prosecuting the Microsoft case didn't even have an email address!
Government regulation hasn't helped HDTV either; that's been in place for years in Japan, and a while in the US, and few if anyone bothers with it, because they don't see much of it. I'm a widescreen buff, and I love it, and a lot of my friends who've seen a DVD on a real widescreen are very impressed. Once the pricepoint comes down a little further you'll see a lot more adoption.
On the networking side, I'd like to see IPv6 take off, but not by a government mandate! Saints preserve us.
jaz
Death to Argument by Slogan!! (This post twice-encrypted with ROT-13. Replies not using same will be ignored)
ARIN(the people that assign IPs in North America has more info)
Try searching for IPv6, which is the topic at hand.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Thanks for the useful links.
I also found my problem; You need to search for "ipv6" instead of "ip6". Duh.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
"If we don't switch to ipv6 by late 1997, the net will run out of addresses."
-- many many pundits
good IPv6 homepage
IPv6 HOWTO
IPv6 Standards
IPv6 Tutorial (PDF)
And the 6bone
Linux: Because a PC is a terrible thing to waste.
James Brents
If you want to have access to 20+ devices in your house while you're away, then giving each one an IP is ridiculous. You get a server for the house, and communicate with each of the devices through the server. The server has an IP address, the devices have names (or the standard internal network addresses, 192.168.0.x). You access the devices by name, using the server as a proxy. I'm sure somebody will come up with some XML based protocol for this if they haven't already.
Also, right now the worlds population is about 6 billion, and 4 billion address are possible with IPv4. Based on everybodies estimates on the adoption rate of internet access, we still have a decade before we're screwed. So, take the time to get it right instead of screwing up everything at once.
If noone can prove that it's unsafe to fly, we fly - - Pre-Challenger NASA mindset.
Jet fighters won't help us win the war, let's move those R&D funds elsewhere - Adolf Hitler, 1942
Mp3? What's that? - RIAA, 1996
Go Lakers!
Greetings. We represent Mr. William H. Gates III. Mr. Gates owns the copyright on the phrase "The Road Ahead", as it was the title of his book. You are in violation of the DMCA. Please remain where you are, until we can get federal marshalls to come and arrest you.
Thank you,
Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe, Attorneys at Law.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
So who would be in favor of that? Just the RIAA, MPAA, SPA (Software Publishers' Association), BSA (Business Software Alliance), and every other organization that believes that elimination of peer-to-peer and residential FTP and web servers would reduce piracy. ISPs would love it because servers on residential connections sometimes use an inordinate amount of bandwidth. Law enforcement would be happy because ISPs would have to process the packets, meaning that they had an easy way to monitor which user connected to which IP addresses. And ISPs could more easily perform content filtering if, say, Adobe's lawyers wrote a letter and said "IP address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx has a downloadable program that decrypts our e-books. Please assure that your users cannot access that IP address."
NAT is harmful because it delays the use of IPv6. NAT sort of works most of the time and where it does not work IPv6 is not yet a real alternative.
Claus
From what I understand, Linux and Windows NT have had IPv6 support for quite some time now. The bigger barrier to adoption is that router technology for IPv6 is not quite ready for primetime. When Cisco and Nortel get their act in gear, IPv6 should be up and running in the wild in no time.
-Marvin
I seriously doubt that. Radio signals to Mars would take ~20 minutes either way, which, unless a method of FTL communications develops, means the physical difficulties of real-time interplanetary communications are much more significant than the tech ones. Not to mention solar flares and what you're going to do when Mars is on the other side of the Sun. (you could use a relay, of course, but the times would be even longer) We can, however, technically use IPv4 to communicate with a theoretical moon base or a free floating colony ala 2001.
The hardest part to change will be all of these new embeded devices that use IPv4 at some level. Not to mention all the cable modem and DSL routers and other misc equiptment that does not update easily.
Try explaining to the average AOL user why his new net radio gizmo no longer works. Or why he has to replace his cable modem firewall when it works just fine.
And I am not going to even try and think about what IPv6 will look like once Microsoft gets their hands on it...
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
That is a good article with a lot of points the ctitics miss, It will be an almost seamless intergration for the average user. Most won't know anything has changed. Almost every computer, router and switch will be replaced within the next 10 years anyway and Windows 2000, Xp and beyond provide support for it, with routers and such a small firmware upgrade will only be neccessary. That is routinely done anyway. So what is the problem here?
Also i would like to address the statement
"The US hogged all of the IP addresses"
SO WHAT, we invented the internet. Too bad if we didn't think about who would need addressess in the future. Noone knew if it would even work.
It wasn't designed for what it is doing now.
It was desinged for text messages across modems, not video confrencing and counter strike. IP need to be updated.
It's not the OS it's the user that sucks. If it's user friendly, you get stupider people. - clinko
Who says it's not broke? Large ISP/busineses? These institutions find it easy to get a large address block of IP's, but when I call my ISP to get just a few, they chage me an additional $20 a month (for 5 usable IP's)!!!! Maybe if there were more available, the smaller ISP would be willing to dole them out without charging extra, wich would then force the larger ISP's to do the same. More IP's would make them much less like a commodity and make them easier to get a hold of. I would really like to not have to NAT at home.....
The communications system that glues the Internet together was designed for no more than 4.3 billion computers and devices -- thought to be plenty 20 years ago. Half the connection points have already been assigned, and the life span for the remainder is estimated at five years. At that point, a "No Vacancy" sign may have to go up.
First the Y2K bug, now the IPv4 debacle. You're making technology look bad! How will you ever get widespread acceptance if people think you don't think far enough ahead to have your infrastructure scale?
Seriously, I think this is going to grow into something like the Y2K thing. Sure people won't be stockpiling on water and food like a few people I know did, but the reporting of this limitation could cause the public to think "Well, if I get involved in this thing, it'll just max out and then I'll be stuck with a useless 3G phone, or whatever."
Hell, my company is already taking IP addresses away from our servers and workstations and putting us on NAT because they need those IP address spaces for customers. This is a serious problem for the growth and mainstream acceptance of a wired world.
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
Network Address Translation only provides one-way connectivity. It allows a system behind a NAT to establish connections from external sites and retrieve data.
What it *doesn't* allow is anyone out on the internet to go and connect to the machine behind the NAT, which is kinda essential for anything beyond web-browsing.
The internet is not just port 80. Many people treat it as such, and I hope they have fun. But don't delude yourself that you have a full internet connection, because you don't. You've just got a fancy TV with a few more channels.
NAT is a stop-gap measure at best. IPv6 is essential for allowing the internet to scale the way you want it to.
Think about it: it's not outrageous that MIT and similar institutions have class-A networks - it's outrageous that *you* don't. IPv6 can fix that.
Ask your ISP about their plans to upgrade to IPv6 - and what their IP allocation policy will be. If the ISP doesn't intend to give you lots of IPv6 addresses, start looking somewhere else.
Dynamic IP allocation sucks in the same way that NAT does. Many of the peer to peer projects nowadays, in order to keep functioning, have to build their own namespace and addressing structures just to work around it.
And IPv7 was designed so that a lab tech at Tachibana Labs can rule over both the wired and real worlds.
There are no Schmoes, Joe or otherwise, in the United Kingdom. Nor are there any Sixpacks. There are however 3 Joe Bloggs, 82 John Does, 12 Jane Does, 44 Tony Blairs, 59 George Bushes (including 10 Ws) and 11896 John Smiths (not including children).
Unfortunately I don't have definitive US data, so I cannot tell you if there are any American Schmoes to be offended, though there is at least one listed in the telephone white pages (517 area code). There are 36 Steve Wozniak phone numbers though (how is that such a common name?)
...that Connie Chung disappeared from CBS shortly after she did an interview with Bill Gates. The story goes (See: Barbarians Led by Bill Gates) that she tried pretty hard to lean into him. So hard that he stormed off the set and Connie Chung's career ended. Coincidence? Probably not.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
The solution to all our problems... someone write a virus (eg Mellissa) that changes Windoze systems to support IPv6. That'll take care of over 50% of the computers just from morons opening attachments.
it's not the OS that's the issue.... it's the apps and even more the routers and other hardware that are switching the packets around
Carve up MIT's, IBM's, and Stanford's Class A networks.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
I say this article sucked. /. and knew I could vent.
Clueless hype is all that's out there these hot summer days. It's ridiculous. They did concede that IPv6 is inevitable, but they sure spent some time wringing hands over totally irrelevant crap at the same time. I saw that link on CNN earlier in the evening and didn't read it because I knew it would suck and only went back and read it only because I saw the link here on
For those of us old enough to go ahead and got busy organizing networks here and there back when ICANN was getting started and you could just ask for net numbers --as I and many others did-- the problem is all too clear. The beauracratic, financial and legal powers that became involved over the years totally twisted the original premise. If you want a frickin' number you get one. If you want a thousand, you get a thousand. They're just numbers. Deal with it.
But that's not what it turned into at all. Vast portions of those billions of IPv4 numbers don't go anywhere because network routing is a financial issue closely intertwined with a technical issue that few people outside of open source are familiar with.
It's irrelevant though because IPv6 is inevitable and this has already been covered in so many other ways.
And, to top it off, dynamic domain names makes it all meta anyway. Yeah, I'm not crying about the way things are by any means but more numbers is such a rational idea. And why stop at IPv6, next step is get rid of this restricive domain naming stuff. They've already started using Chinese characters at some domain registrars. So let's just name domains like long file names so we can use popular phrases! Shit, you don't think there will be a gold rush on that shit? There's a limited set of English phrases. You take that from an English major.
From the article:
"Replacing all hardware and software at once is akin to rebuilding an airplane while flying."
Seems to me like changing to v6 is more like refueling than rebuilding. Just changing the software (on most machines, granted some hardware would have to be changed) shouldn't be as difficult as everyone who uses the internet having to go out and buy new hardware.
What about the millions and millions of IPv4 addresses that are 'reserved', like that monsterous block that goes from like 69.0.0.0/8 to 7x.* something? that's several hundred million IPs right there. Who needs this IPv6 junk, I want to be able to remember IP addresses dammit! :)
Wow. I just love this quote from the article:
"It solves problems people don't have and it doesn't solve the hard problems we do have," said Mike O'Dell, an early v6 advocate who now believes the Internet has far greater problems -- like how to more efficiently route data traffic. "
That makes no sense. Y2K was a problem we didn't have yet. It was inevitible, and we fixed it. This is the same thing. If we don't get to this issue soon, the Internet will be crowded, and our problems will be even harder to fix than they are now.
What I don't understand is why noone has come up with an intelligent way to get IPv6 implemented. I'd have every router company have IPv4 and v6 on every router they sell. Have ISO or IEEE come up with a standard for a 'magic packet to switch to IPv6'. Have all PC's have IPv6 ready to go. All routers have to be upgraded in the next five years. Offer discounts for doing it. Then, at a designated date and time, send that magic packet that everyone conforms to, and instantly, the whole freaking internet is running IPv6 instead of v4. Then start working on addresses and getting things back in order, since it's so easy to switch addresses with v6. Sounds good to me.
IP Addresses cost an annual fee to have. Therefore, this is the reason why they charge for IP Addresses. Most dynamic Dialup IPs are priced within their pricing and therefore you don't see an IP Address charge. If you want static IPs, you have to pay for it. period.
*Headline News* censorship shuts down the Internet! More at 6PM!
Yes, Apple did demo Mentat's IPV6 support in Open Transport for MacOS Classic a while ago, but never shipped it.
From what I understand, Darwin includes (or can include) the KAME networking code that it inherits from FreeBSD, but it is not turned on. Maybe for OS X.1 though...
From what I understand, Linux and Windows NT have had IPv6 support for quite some time now.
The problem appears to be more subtle than that. The routers are mostly compliant, I wouldn't worry about it.
The smooth transition is going to require that everyone on the 'Net start to switch over. Even half-wit Windows-95 AOL-point-and-drool users.
Surely, we can release patches to the operating systems. And users can upgrade to new applications programs which aren't crashing when they request a DNS lookup and get something longer than they expect.
But you know they won't.
As evidence, I submit to you the Code Red worm. You'd have to be living under a rock for the past two months to not know about it. Yet, I still get hit by infected machines. Follow the link on my .sig.
I haven't studied or attempted to deploy IPv6, but it will have to be backwards compatible with IPv4.
In the 1950s, Europe upgraded their TV system to color. The new PAL and SECAM color standards weren't compatible with their old 405/441-line black and white standards, leaving consumers with far too many confusing choices. Arguably, European TV never recovered.
By contrast, RCA came up with an ingenious way of making a color signal ride on top of the existing North American black and white system. Old black and white TV sets were eventually replaced with color, but there was no great format change. You bought a color TV or a black and white set, and you weren't at the mercy of finding out whether or not there was still a black and white station in your area. People transitioned more gently and weren't put off by having their two-year-old oak-cabinet investment turned into a paperweight by moving out of a 405 line service area.
IPv6 will have to be deployed in the same way or adoption rates will wane.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
According to the RFC's, even a lowly dialup users will be given more routable addresses than the
entire internet contains at the moment.
For instance, do people really want a unique address for a refrigerator -- allowing hackers to spy on individual eating habits -- or order you a truckload of milk?
Wow, that kinda puts a new spin on the old too much milk problem from my Operating Systems class in school. Brings back bad memories.
(For those of you who don't know/remember this problem, it is an example of resource locking, needed in OS design. I would say all Computer Science/Engineering students take that class, at least the did at my university).
room101 -- how much can you stand before they break you?
(they always break you eventually)
...we should educate ourselves about it.
While I agree that IPv6 will fix some problems with addressing devices on the net, there are bigger problems to deal with first.
Routing network traffic effectively is a far greater concern, especially with the major backbone providers. In the last few years, Internet traffic has grown around 300% per year. It is very difficult to get a cost-effective solution to the routing problem. The industry is already looking at terabit routers in order to keep up with today's demand for bandwidth.
And considering that over 50% of the routable network traffic (300000+ routes in total) are class C networks (24 significant bits), the biggest problem is not necessarily the bandwidth; the key problem is being able to process the routing of that data.
Considering that IPv6 will put a lot more networks up with more significant bits to indicate the routing of that data, routers will have to become a lot more powerful before they can even begin to handle the load of IPv6. If the major backbones decided to implement IPv6 today, the routers on these backbones would slow to a crawl, the net being virtually useless.
So, until router technology matures to meet the potential demands, IPv6 will look good on paper, and nothing more.
Presence of the IPv6 support is no reason to start using it. It's same thing as with DoRK, the next generation p2p system. I have support for that also, but why should I use it? If it would be compatible with Napster, gnutella, etc... I would love to use it.
The point is, at the moment registars (RIPE atleast, only one that I have experience about) are allocating too large IP blocks for customers without any plans about how to reduce the usage of IPv4 addresses. What would happen if they would stop assigning more that 1 to 16 addresses for single company (depending one the size of the company), but they would give you (more) supplementary IPv4 addresses when allocate block of v6 addresses. They could also require that client must have plan about how to deploy and start using v6 capable hw/sw.
If you postpone the start of assigning new v6 addresses until there are no more v4 addresses left, you are making a big mistake. It's almost the same that uyou would start fixing Y2k problems at 2001.
Better later than never, though.
-- Reality checks don't bounce.
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The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
There's also one that's less obvious: CIDR. It works very well but has the already-discussed problem that it's hard to your subnet number(s) if you change ISPs.
First off, my toaster,TV,shower,alarm clock, and bed do not need to have an IP address on the internet. 99.995% of all internet users do not need an actual IP address on the internet. Yes, we are getting close to using up all the Class C network numbers. but if many of the messed up ISP's and co-lo farms actually managed IP's better it would, quite possibly, become a self controlling problem. when I Had my server on the internet I was given 8 IP addresses by my ISP. What the heck for? I asked for one, they said, "here! take 8!" so there's 7 Ip addresses that are now unuseable by others.
Now you might have the reason that you need to run dns,smtp,www,pop3,ftp,etc... on different machines... ok, you still dont need more than 1 Internet IP address. that's what your routing equipment is for, to manage IP addresses. They magically route that request from 127.0.0.1:80 to 10.12.1.2:80 and that 127.0.0.1:21 to 10.12.1.3:21
any shortage is because of slipshod management of the IP space.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The next big problem will be IP address shortage,
we will have to migrate all our internet connect device to IPV6 compliant before the wave hits us. And again after its over and everything went well because of good programmers everybody is going to say it was all an Hoax...
Is the way addresses are constructed - because the route to a particular subnet can be determined by its address (aggregatable addressing) routing tables become much easier to manage - something that can't be said for the current state of IPv4 - as subnets become smaller routing table size increases - it is more likely that routing tables will become unmanagable before the number of ipv4 addresses runs out.
if my fridge suddenly got taken over by (filled with) Code Red!
sulli
RTFJ.
For the longest time all devices will require dual addresses (Ip4 and ip6) DHCP is not capable of that feat. so now we either have a techie-guy(tm) deal with the customer or just silently piss-off everyone at once. I.E. switch over from ip4 to ip6 at midnight on XX/xx/xx. Let all your users know this and send them links to the patches/files/wizards. after the switch those that have incompatable hardware are to be told to jump in a lake. those with incompatalbe software are scolded for not upgrading when they were warned.
the switch will piss-off a huge block of users. and that's the price of progress..
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I want an IPV6 address. I'm going to run my internal home network on IPV6 and run a translator to make my IPV4 addresses translate to internal IPV6 ones. Where do I get a number space? I know the lower 8 bytes are suppose to be a MAC address, but what about the upper 8?
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
ditto
more numbers is such a rational idea
agreed
next step is get rid of this restricive domain naming stuff
Well, I think we have been selecting our own domains on the premise that shorter is better. You can't even get a three letter .com domain anymore because they are all taken. Longer is not necessarily better when your customers have to type this.is.my.cool.domain.name.everyone.will.remember .com
could cost billions of dollars worldwide
So that adds about 2 bucks to the next computer you buy... or the next internet enabled fridge.
These kinds of monetary esimates tend to misconstrue the actual cost per person. Getting a flat tire in the city during rush hour on a buzy road can cost the world "Millions" in man hours.
Krispy Cream is people
I can't remember my IP address as a goddamned dotted quad, and you want me to remember 8 colon-separated 16-bit values in HEX with the leading zeros suppressed! Bite me.
AC's cheerfully ignored
BAN HIM NOW.
"Upgrade your grey matter, 'cause one day it may matter." --Deltron Zero
...is not how IPv6 will deal with the increased addressing range, but how it will handle issues of security, and more importantly, WHO will control that security and will the specifications be OPEN?
The internet as it stands suffers because it is trust-based and there are all too many willing to abuse that trust. Many untrusting-internet ideas have been flown, and most of them involve more identity checking and awareness of the originators of packets. Would this "new" internet (I hate to use such an overused term but it seems appropriate) - would this "new" internet retain any opportunities for anonymity (and thus more secure freedom of speech), or will it be a case of "let's crack down on anonymity online because anyone who doesn't want the totally benign government to know who he is must be a terrorist or a child molestor! Why do you want to be anonymous, do you have something to HIDE?"
A lot can be done towards preventing the latter if the specs for any new internet communications protocols being open or hopefully even GPL'd. Is this likely?
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
And with mobile devices, Nokia's Robert Hinden said, the inability to give each an IP number would be like having cell phones that could only make calls, not receive them.
... if i could get one like that, i might still have one...
Don't ask. Go see.
You are correct that Ip addresses cost an annual fee, but your reasoning that you should have to pay more for more globally unique ip addresses is crap. For the paltry sum of $5000/year any ISP can obtain a /16(with justification). In laymans terms that is 65,536 IP addresses, or about $0.08 per ip per year. Poor genericid is paying $48.00 per ip per year to his ISP. Profit Margins like that make the RIAA look like a saint. Not to mention the fact that IP addresses are not supposed to be thought of as a commodity or asset, and therefor cannot be bought or sold. Don't let your ISP bully you into these outragous payments! Their costs of maintaining those IP's is negligable.
You're not supposed to remember it, that is why we have directories. (Good job too, otherwise phone numbers will get to be a bit of a problem - that's why we can't use NAT, btw, unless you don't actually want any incoming phone calls - hey might not be such a bad thing actually :-)
I wrote a research paper covering the differences between the protocols a few months ago. Although some of the information already might be out of date with ever changing RFCs, some might find it interesting.
i ch doty_ipv6ipv4_with_allegheny.pdf
http://webpub.allegheny.edu/student/d/dotyr/x/r
MIT's IP scheme has allowed them to build a by-the-books network. They use their IP scheme to make it really easy to figure out where a machine is by IP. For added fun, they don't use firewalls. In fact, MIT discourages firewalling. They recommend using real security, and recommend that you use Kerberos for everything... while not supporting Kerberos (in a useful manner) except on their UNIX machines.
For added fun, MIT gave an entire B-class (well, 1/256th of their A-class, not technically a B, but you understand) to each dormitory and each fraternity. MIT groups aren't starving for IPs, which is nice, but the rest of the Internet is.
You seem to be confused:
The point of having a static address is so that one machine can be found by others. You have to have some fixed address in order to describe who it is your connecting to.
Imagine the havoc that would pass if area codes in telephone numbers could change on moments notice. Take away the phone book too, since you think dns is uneeded. (Works fine for calling out- since in that case you dont care what your number is. but who are you going to call, exactly?)
If there is no way for anyone else to determine what a given servers address is, then there no way anyone else can connect to it.
In reality each "entity" be it a megacorp or a measly dialup user, will be given 80 bits worth of routable address. 16 bits of that they can use for subnets. Only the 48 starting bits are really "fixed". The 128 bit addressing scheme is really an attempt to get everyone tons of "static" routable addresses.
And There will of course be a name-to address mapping similiar to what DNS does now. The simple reason is that noone is going to type in a huge monster address when they want to hit a web page.
...I feel compelled to point out something that EVERYone seems to have missed.
Let me say first that I see no reason whatsoever to wire every imaginable device to the 'net outside of government and the bureausplats wanting to be able to monitor anything they can think of on demand.
Think about it: Fridges, washers, dryers, toasters... they were all built to serve specific purposes, and those purposes are not in any way, shape or form assisted by connecting the device in question to some global network. So why connect them unless you want to know when they're on, what they're doing, etc.?
Now, with that said... If the marketdroids and polly-tishuns are going to insist that everything be "connected," there needs to be an "off" switch or similar way to 'pull the plug' as it were for ANY such interconnected device. Furthermore, the basic function of the device in question must NOT be impaired by doing so. Consumers will never buy into such crap otherwise (heck, they may not buy into it now).
I still want to know which bonehead(s) thought it would be a good idea to connect appliances to the 'net in any case...
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
You can run thousands of webservers on a single server, single ip address. You use the names. Similarly, this can be extended to other services. (Do a search on /., it was mentioned earlier).
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
The IPv4 loopback address "127.0.0.1" is represented in IPv6 as "::1".
Well, the real problem is not adress shortage its that NAT breaks end-to-end communication. That means that things like video-conferencing, ip-telephony, peer-to-peer, IPsec, instant messaging, etc, dont work becouse they require that both ends can connect to each-other. Thats why NAT is a bad longterm solution and we will need IPv6 sooner or later. Another nice thing is the autoconfiguration in IPv6. That means you dont need any special DHCP servers on the network. The same time you plug the cable into the wall or turn on your computer it will autoconfigure the interface IP address from the router.
I think the approved way to do this is for the client to try to DHCP to a IPv6 server. If it gets an answer from this, then it will get either just an IPv6 address, or both an IPv6 and an IPv4 address. If it does not get an answer, then it should try to DHCP to an IPv4 server, in which case it would get only an IPv4 address. The DHCP server would listen on only IPv4 (If it was an IPv4 version) or both IPv4 and IPv6 (If it was an IPv6 version). This way you get backwards compatability for both old clients, and old servers.
::nervous laugh::
That's all we really need, a proprietary internet controlled by M$. Then they can charge us whatever they want on a per machine basis to login and while their at it, see everything we do so that information can be sold to the highest bidder. Not to mention spying on inovations by competitors.
Pete
Pete/Petri "damn, my chainsaw is clogged with 1's and 0's again." --clyde
And there is no such thing as a NIC card, or for that matter a PIN number. Sigh. Sorry, its just irritating.
I agree. It's irritating to me, but I feel like a pedantic ass to be irritated. I wish people would just leave the base noun out when they invent acronyms and we could have things like AT machines, NI cards, and GN Unix (ha ha).
One form of NAT behaves this way, but other forms do not. You are thinking of what Linux calls IP MASQ. However, NAT also includes the ability to statically map real IP addresses to private IP addresses inside the firewall. It would be possible, with a good NAT router, to instantly change the IP address in the entire network. DNS propagation, OTOH, would be a nightmare. I'm guessing that's where IPv6 is better.
It's a chicken-or-egg problem. Service providers and developers are waiting for demand from customers. Customers won't see benefits until products and services become available.
I agree that providers are waiting, but developers? It's soo easy to add basic IPv6 support to applications, it's not funny.
Last week I was trying a new MUD-client and it had IPv6 support. I congratulated the author with it and he said "When looking at it it seemed trivial to add so why not?"
Edwin
bash$
The problem is having to use NAT or Masquerading to access the net. I want all my machine to have real world outside IP addresses. To do that we need IPv6.
Okay, so maybe then it was a poltergeist, but in tomorrow's B-movies it will be hackers.
But anyway. Is IPv6 truly somehow the end of the road? Is it formatted so that it can be extended indefinitely? Or are our descendants doomed to upgrade their computers to accept an extra 4 numbers in their IPs every few decades?
And also, the point that someone made about everyone and his agony aunt not having a clue how to upgrade to IPv6... is this a bad thing? Would we miss our precious AOLers? (And remember, future generations will be far more tech-wise than current middle-aged slackers.)
If what many people say about most platforms and routers being compatible with IPv6 (commendations for the people with enough foresight to set that one up), and the problem is emerging into a middle-distance instead of a long-distance problem, I say go for it! Chances are there will be hitches along the way and everyone can always do with more time...
As an aside, are there yet any reports of accidental IP banning? As in, Joe Bloggs signs on to some chat room and gets his IP permanently banned, and a few weeks later Fred Bliggs signs on to the same chat room to find he has been already banned? This happened to anyone?
Security through promiscuity is no better than security through obscurity.
This is almost the way things work now (except DHCP
for IPv6 is a nebulous concept).
Most OSes which implement IPv6 treat IPv4 and IPv6
as if they were completely seperate interfaces. Getting
an address for each is handled individually, the
success (or failure) of getting an address on one does
not affect the other.
Brandon Hume
hume -> BOFH.Halifax.NS.Ca, http://WWW.BOFH.Halifax.NS.Ca/
This is by far the best solution possible without any router or BGP infrastructure upgrade. Works for me.
whether the prosecutor has an email address or not, or just isn't publishing it, why does that make him unable to or less capable of prosecuting MS?
:) and besides never listing anything other than a hotmail address, I have even disconnected my cable modem for 6 month stretches at a time (gotta dial in sometimes to work..luv dialup)....anyway...I am trying to say that not being on the net hasn't hampered my ability to stay abreast of current tech or events, I even got outside, lost 40 lbs, and became tan to boot....so stop holding everyone else to your (low?) standards of living
I have been in the industry ~10yrs (julian calendar
your simple analogy just implies a simple mind behind the thought.....free as in beer, eh?
man, first of all, TV is FREE to watch because of advertising. So stop being such a whiner and just enjoy it. Second, if you want to stop, play, rewind, or just plain view a movie at your leisure, then they have facilities for this (RENT a movie, fool). As far as, well....let's say...taping the evening news...sure...go ahead..but you're not ENTITLED to it! i.e. driving is a privilege, not a RIGHT, sheesh. If you're upset because you won't be able to STEAL programming and use it for your own nefarious (yet strangely personal) reasons later, then tough. Oh yeah....if you're so "entitled to tape and blah blah wtf" your broadcasts now, just try calling your local tv station/corporate affilitate and ask them to REBROADCAST what you missed...cause you had to work late or whatever..see how far it gets you.
fucking kids.
We in our university have set up an IPv6 Testnetwork - initially with a bunch of Win2k servers (yes, they do support IPv6, but only experimentally), but we made the discovery that IPv6 multicasting is not supported and Microsoft also seem to have more important things to do than work on their IPv6 stacks.
We then switched to Linux servers. But development IPv6 stacks in the linux kernel (we had 2.4.9) was also pretty much halted for a long time. And multicast routing? forget it.
There is a kernel patch that adds a lot of IPv6 functionality, but not IPv6 routing.
The major IPv6 project www.kame.org has got functional IPv6 multicasting for some other unix variants - but not Linux.
Hey my dick is bigger than yours because I shaved off all my pubic hairs
Heh. And your girlfriend is a pedophile. ;)
even 60Hz isn't acceptable, so now we have tv-sets that digitally enhance the image and give 100HzTrue. You don't see features like that in NTSC sets, though - the 60Hz vertical rate of NTSC means that set mfrs concentrate on other things - like 53" projection sets where the scan lines are 1/4" apart. Ugh.
IMHO American TV suck, and it suck hard, to many comercials and verry bad picture quality, but mind you that was in 1992Too many commercials, I agree. But that's not a technical issue. As for the picture quality, were you watching TV on NYC's cablesystem? [grin]
A good, clean NTSC signal is very nice. It's nothing compared to a VGA monitor, of course, but neither is PAL. I'm a videophile, I've worked as a broadcast technician, and NTSC's picture quality can be amazingly good.
and when is the us going to switch to hdtv ?When Linux conquers the desktop, IIS users keep their webservers patched, and our home 'net connections are fiber optic with IPv6 addresses.
Maybe sooner. [sigh] It's the same chicken or egg issue which slows the IPv6 adoption.
Here in Canada, we're waiting for the US to take the lead. ER is now simulcast in HDTV, but until I point a big UHF Yagi at Buffalo NY and smuggle a receiver across the border, it does me no good.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
The reason to discontinue [405- and 441-line] standards was not the introduction of color. The PAL and SECAM color standards are compatible with the black and white standard introduced in most countries when TV broadcasts started in the 1940s and 50s. Black and white 625 line television sets bought then can still be used.
But neither black and white nor color, 525 line nor 625 line, 60 Hz nor 50 Hz, will work with digital ATSC signals without a converter box. On January 1, 2006, the FCC will pull all licenses for analog TV broadcast spectrum in favor of encrypted digital television that includes DMCA-protected flags such as "you may not record this program; decoder must insert Macrovision garbage into all analog outputs" and "you may not watch this program on sets larger than X centimeters diagonal measure because any larger sets are assumed to be used in a public performance setting."
Will I retire or break 10K?
The article said that everybody on the planet could plug in millions of devices. This is somewhat untrue. With 128 bit addressing space, 10 BILLION people could plug in 34028236692093846346337460743.177 IPv6 devices each!
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I disagree, from what i have read from cisco and other network vendors, it appears that first the backbone and other major lines will be upgraded followed by local trunks say to a CO and then finally to the home user. All that would have to be done is make sure the user is using a dhcp client that will take either an ipv6 address or a ipv4, once an ipv6 address is leased the machine switches the stack to ipv6, just asks the user to reboot. Windows users are used to that . There is no reason why a router can't have entries in it's table for ipv6 and ipv4 and be able to route both at the same time, they can router both ip and ipx now right. All you would have to do is setup a DHCP that will give out ipv6 addresses and one day turn it on and turn the old one off. You say that no DHCP exists to lease ipv6 addresses, you are right, but you are arrogent to think noone will make one. The burden will be placed on the isp's not the end user. Speaaking from 3 years of tech support experience for Gateway, 99% of users don't know what an ip address is. Leaving any amount of responsibility to the user is a disaster waiting to happen. We had our ISP Gateway.net dropped by our provider UUNet, every single person on Gateway.net had to call in and get a link to dialer upgrade. This took MONTHS and we had people calling in after 8 months wondering why they couldn't get on the net. Paying for it the whole time.
It must be a seamless integration or it will be a disaster
It's not the OS it's the user that sucks. If it's user friendly, you get stupider people. - clinko
Look no further than Compaq, which inherited 16.0.0.0 from Digital Equipment when they bought DEC. Since then, Compaq seem to have sold everything else of value that they got in the acquisition (or just destroyed some bits), so maybe the 16.0.0.0 Class A address is the last remaining asset of that takeover.
There don't seem to be many of the old DEC systems left in the DNS, but DEC used to use 16. addresses internally, because there was no need to use 10. with their own Class A.
Maybe Compaq are interested in selling 16.0.0.0. They seem to be burning the furniture anyway.
You are all missing the point with thinking about refridgerators, etc.
You should be thinking mobile devices such as cellphones and PDAs. Soon all of these will be capable of wireless IP and there will be literally hundreds of millions of these devices.
Even China will soon have more cellphones than the whole US and they have only just started.
Also, IPV6 is mandatory in UMTS (European 3G cellular networks) so it is more or less inevitable that it will happen.
The following list will keep you occupied about IPv6 for some time... oh just for the record ams-ix is doing NATIVE IPv6 since 1998 now... alongside NSPIXP6 and PAIX and some others to be found at v6nap.net.
:)
First two nice repositories where you can find almost anything IPv6 related:
IPv6 News and Links (hs247)
Open Directory Project Computers/Internet/Protocols/IP/IPng/
And some others important ones which can also be found there:
6bone
Belnet
Bieringer's Linux IPv6 FAQ
Euronet Belgium
IPng
KAME
Kitame's Debian IPv6 Packages
Microsoft IPv6
PuTTY IPv6
SiXXS
Sun Solaris IPv6
Surfnet IPv6
Trumpet IPv6
IPv6 for the future (or something advocating like that
http://unfix.org
The smallest dimension of a hypercube such that if the lines joining all pairs of corners are two-colored, a planar complete graph K_4 of one color will be forced. The actual number is believed to be 6, but the best bound proved is so large that if all the material in the universe was turned into pen and ink it would not be enough to write the number down.
Now, if we build an Internet which has Graham's Number possible addresses, we had better hope that Graham's number isn't actually six, or there's going to be some problems...