IPv6 Application Competition - win $10,000

sneekz writes "The IPv6 Promotion Council of Japan has announced a competition for developers of IPv6-enabled applications. Various prizes up to $10,000 for ideas and actual implementations, and you keep the rights to your work. From their site: 'The contest will award developers of applications and software which helps to create new possibilities in the Internet world.'"

Comments

FIRST I LIKE MEN

[Anonymous Coward]

FP!

First Post?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gotcha!!

Re:First Post?

[Anonymous Coward]

YOU FAILED IT BITCH! Oh DAMN.

Read The Story Guys

[Slashdotess]

This story should be renamed "the only-working open source business model."

Re:Read The Story Guys

[Anonymous Coward]

You're lucky you chose to post this in 2003 or down the troll-shoot you would go!

Re:Read The Story Guys

[GhostseTroll]

A professor at the University of Mississippi is giving a
lecture on the supernatural. To get a feel for his
audience, he asks: "How many people here believe in
ghostses?" About 90 students raise their hands.

"Well, that's a good start. Out of those of you who
believe in ghostses, do any of you think you've ever seen
a ghostse?" About 40 students raise their hands.

"That's really good. Has anyone here ever talked to a
ghostse?" 15 students raise their hands.

"That's great. Has anyone here ever touched a ghostse?" 3
students raise their hands.

"That's fantastic. But let me ask you one question
further... Have any of you ever made love to a ghostse?"
One student way in the back raises his hand.

The professor is astonished and says, "Son, in all the
years I've been giving this lecture, no one has ever
claimed to have slept with a ghostse. You've got to come
up here and tell us about your experience."

The redneck student replies with a nod and a grin, and
begins to make his way up to the podium. The professor
says, "Well, tell us what it's like to have sex with a
ghostse."

The student replies, "Ghostse?!? From ah-way back there ah
thought yuh said "goatse."

Re:Read The Story Guys

[Anonymous Coward]

ALL topics of discussion were trivial and uninteresting! And this was because they were invariably hand-chosen by autocratic, petty people with difficult-to-pronounce names! Dissenters who pointed out the weaknesses in the system were slapped down and rarely heard from again!
After a while, we WELCOMED THE REDUNDANCY!!! OH, THE HUMANITY!!!
Fortunately the system was eventually destroyed! Now Moscowdot is a paradise! Come as a touristroll, and bring your fat western walletkarma! There are no ex-KGB gangstertacos holding gunbitchslaps to my head forcing me to write this!
Also, tere ar no secret messages urking within this ost!

but...

[Anonymous Coward]

who's actually using IPv6? I know some use it privately within their org, but are there any publicly using it?

Re:but...

[BJH]

The Japanese. Many Japanese ISPs will give you your own IPv6 subnet right now, for not very much money.

Re:but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you get one in the United States?

Re:but...

[BJH]

No (not from the Japanese ISPs, anyway).

Re:but...

[Anonymous Coward]

$ nslookup -q=AAAA www.v6pc.jp

Non-authoritative answer:
www.v6pc.jp IPv6 address = 2001:218:1f02::11

i even get a "You are using IPv6" banner on the top of the page

Re:but...

[redcliffe]

Yep. I'm using it.

Re:but...

[grid geek]

Some of the UK academic network has started an experimental IPv6 network for researchers to play with.

Re:but...

[Anonymous Coward]

dig www.v6pc.jp AAAA

nslookup is deprecated

How about one that creates the slightest interest

[Anonymous Coward]

In big corp/gov users to move to IPv6

holocaust

[Anonymous Coward]

suck me granny

e=mc^2

Well i didnt know that 10k was

[Anonymous Coward]

incentive enough i thought it was 200k

My idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

An IPv6 application competition, with a $5,000 prize! That should help promote IPv6, no?

Re:My idea...

[calumr]

Can I enter your competition?

It would be an IPv6 application competition with a $2500 prize.

More of everything

[plierhead]

My suggestions...

.. would be just MORE of everything. Like:

- increased timewasting at the office due to faster, clearer, saucier porn downloads

- even greater levels of theft and destruction of the capitalist system as we know it by illegal music sharing

- yet more time spent deleting bucketloads of crap from our inboxes as spam increases to unprecedented levels

Yeah, its pretty revolutionary stuff all right.

27th post!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

LOLZ i posted good today yeah bitches!

Obligatory joke

[Anonymous Coward]

Grogan enabled router with lucky supersmart happy packets.

In Soviet Russia, IPV6 CONTROLS You! tsarkon

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, IPV6 CONTROLS You!

Re:In Soviet Russia, IPV6 CONTROLS You! tsarkon

[Anonymous Coward]

you sir, are so faggot!

Re:In Soviet Russia, IPV6 CONTROLS You! tsarkon

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, JEW BURN YOU!

Toddler Vomit
Toddler Vomit
Toddler Vomit
Toddler Vomit
Toddler Vomit

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I can say only that he is more concerned with the social acceptability of an idea than with its truth or falsity. For proof of this fact, I must point out that he is capable of a large array of negative feelings. But the problems with his cajoleries don't end there. And that, in my view, is our real problem.

I like to pick me bum like 'twas me nose.

[GhostseTroll]

A blonde walks into a penis...

Anybody wanna...

[Anonymous Coward]

post this at openchallenge.org and split the $$$ with the developer???

Re:Anybody wanna...

[Anonymous Coward]

For a second there I thought you were offering to split $$$$$exyGal. Assuming s/he's into it.

For Idea Contest...

[robbyjo]

Aren't there enough papers already on IPv6? Especially on purpose #1 (i.e. increasing the internet experience).

For #2 (i.e. promoting widespread), it's highly debatable, IMHO...

IPv6 info

[phreak03]

from ipv6.org IPv6 is short for "Internet Protocol Version 6". IPv6 is the "next generation" protocol designed by the IETF to replace the current version Internet Protocol, IP Version 4 ("IPv4"). Most of today's internet uses IPv4, which is now nearly twenty years old. IPv4 has been remarkably resilient in spite of its age, but it is beginning to have problems. Most importantly, there is a growing shortage of IPv4 addresses, which are needed by all new machines added to the Internet. IPv6 fixes a number of problems in IPv4, such as the limited number of available IPv4 addresses. It also adds many improvements to IPv4 in areas such as routing and network autoconfiguration. IPv6 is expected to gradually replace IPv4, with the two coexisting for a number of years during a transition period. It prevents spoofed UDP backets (no more easy, D.O.S attacks, and spoofted packets) It makes the amount of posible adresses so large that worms that use simple seek algotrithems (such as slammer) would take like 20 years to infect enough systems to do any damage and would allow for all the future embedded apps, to get their own ip's.

Re:IPv6 info

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Lord,
Please guide this troll to +5 Informative.

Amen

Re:IPv6 info

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice karma whorin'. I particularly like the unattributed copy-and-paste straight from the horse's mouth.

You should really try turning your powers to trollin'. Slashdot needs more users with your skillz.

Re:IPv6 info

[phreak03]

A bunch of schools run a internet2, system with a dedicated bandwidth allotment to ipv6, they use this for shareing of resoureses, testing out some cool streaming vid tech, and other stuff that needs dedicated bandwith that all the warez l33chers would shut down if they were allowed on that pipe. yah, yah i admit i was karma whoreing, but if you noticed the first 4 words of my post, i DID mention the source (sheesh, first is was not read teh story's now people don't even read the posts) and the last 1/3 of it was origional (or from my memory of other posts on the slammer worm. most people don't have a clue what IPv6 is for, or why we need it, so before all the stupid jokes came out i figured i'd try to get a early karma whore out, on why it rulz

Re:IPv6 info

[Anonymous Coward]

Unattributed?

"from ipv6.org"

Alright, it's not a footnoted citation, but what did you expect?

Re:IPv6 info

[brain159]

this is the style of "unattributed" where he starts off by saying "from ipv6.org..."?

Re:IPv6 info

[Anonymous Coward]

rotf - ok, my mistake, it was ATTRIBUTED karma whoring. That's so much better.

Re:IPv6 info

[Anonymous Coward]

That's ok. You've learned a valuable lesson - never try and express an original thought when you can just steal one instead. Now go and apply this truth in real life!

Re:IPv6 info

[Anonymous Coward]

Thy wish has been granted, oh pious anonymous one.

You owe me one.

The Lord.

Re:IPv6 info

[The Real Programmer]

For better or worse, IPv6 is still fool's gold. IPv4 with NAT has managed to delay it for many a year so far.

Re:IPv6 info

[packeteer]

It makes me wonder what IPv4 will be like in its last days. Will it simply be a haven for warez, spam, and porn untill the weight of all the leechers causes it to collapse all together or will it somehow live for years and years with a slowly dying population like old school BBS'es.

Re:IPv6 info

[Anonymous Coward]

no more easy, D.O.S attacks, and spoofted packets if you mean purely because of the large pool of numbers, i'll belive it when i see it. adresses will be bought by isp's in blocks as always, lists will be made, script kiddies will meet burly boyfriends looking for a warm orifice nightly.

Re:IPv6 info

[tarvin]

How does IPv6 change UDP to prevent spoofed segments?

Re:IPv6 info

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't believe in the existence of God, you insensitive clod. It was a figure of speech.

Re:IPv6 info

[bot]

Thanks for the definition of IPv6. Still waiting for your definition of "info".

The definition of is is is.

my idea

[Gizzmonic]

An version of IP v6 stack that works in all those ancient Cisco routers, and replaces DNS! What do you think?

All packets are created equal

[dnoyeb]

I will not support a protocol where all packets are not created equal. I wish to be treated with respect, not my game of quake slowed to a crawl because its deemed unessential. I fail to see the need.

although a bit more address space would do nicely...

Re:All packets are created equal

[alpha17]

Who deems the packets importance? the application or isp?

if it was application than wouldnt Games always make its packets highest priority?

I'm too lazy to read up on ipv6..

Re:All packets are created equal

[drinkypoo]

IPv4 already has a TOS field which specifies whether one wants to optimize for latency, bandwidth, both, or neither, and one can filter packets based on this with sufficiently advanced rules processing. (Linux has this, of course. I've never done it with anything else but I assume most advanced packet filters have TOS matching.)

Re:All packets are created equal

[gawk]

Better quit using TCP, then ...
unless you (and your ISP) are manually setting all of your TOS bits to 0, that is.

Protocols are mechanism, not policy. The reason why you haven't complained as yet of your IPv4 traffic being "slowed to a crawl" is that TCP's QOS features (minimal though they are) are typically only used when needed and ignored otherwise.

I would rather have the possibility open to shape traffic, should I want to, than to pre-emptively close the door because others might use it in ways I disapprove of. There are plenty of legitimate uses for QOS besides pissing off gamers (though I consider that an important activity in its own right :) -- and if their games are bandwidth hogs, maybe widespread QOS will force game-designers to write more efficient protocols.

Re:All packets are created equal

[gawk]

Whoops ... s/TCP/IPv4/g; TOS bits are in the IP header, not the TCP header. *bonk*

Time for my fifth time through Stevens in as many years... :)

Re:All packets are created equal

[Zaffle]

What you are refering to is the QOS field, which exists in IPv4 (what we currently use) and IPv6. However it isn't commonly used in IPv4.
The end points (eg your Quake client and the server) usually set the QOS field, and what is theorically suppose to happen is the routers along the way go.. ah, he wants low latency, so I'll send these packets down this link.
However, what usually happens is most routers ignore the QOS bits.

As for the slow downs, etc. That may be your upstream (ISP), who may twiddle the bits, but they can only do that based on a number of factors, to/from port, IP address, bandwidth usuage, etc.

There is nothing (much) you can do to avoid your ISP slowing down certain connections, except by making it hard to identify what is "legitimate" and what is "illegitmate" traffic. Eg giFT uses random port numbers of both sides, so its very difficult for the ISP to say, lets throttle giFT traffic. Freenet does much the same thing.

IPv6 will not answer the bandwidth and traffic shapping problems, all it will answer is the limited number of IP addresses problem. (And if you think about it, probably cause more bandwidth problems because you'll be able to have *LOTS* of different devices all plugged into your upstream bandwidth, all sapping it).

My recommendation is if you live under a draconian ISP is one of the following:
1) Move ISPs. If All ISPs are like this, move country.
2) Go postal, grab yourself a semiautomatic assult rifle, storm into your local ISPs NOC (network operations centre), and demand a 100mbit connection for your laptop, "right this instant!".
3) Find an open proxy, use that to bypass port based traffic shapping. If your ISP is shapping every port but port 80 (web), go find an open proxy that is running on port 80 and use that for other connections. The best bet would be find some willing (or otherwise) machine somewhere outside of draconia, and put a SOCKS proxy on port 80 on the machine.

4) Implement IP over carrier pigeon. Pigeons are not known for looking at each IP packet and flying differently because of its contents, though if the packet size is too large, it could slow the transport mechinisim down. I'm not sure if this RFC supports IPv6, but sinces its a transport mechinisim, I should think it would matter.

Re:All packets are created equal

[domninus.DDR]

I think he means edu's filtering/throttling http packets fastest, gaming/p2p packets slower/blocked.

Re:All packets are created equal

[JuddN]

Yeah, and he should be using DSCP anyway, not TOS - its out of date. Sheesh!

Re:All packets are created equal

[drinkypoo]

That's harder to do but possible to do with IPv4. netfilter has pattern match support. You can up-prioritize anything that looks like an HTTP request, for example (by moving it to a higher priority queue.)

IPv6 is only a good thing; How it is administered is a separate issue. This is the concept I was trying to hint at :)

Re:All packets are created equal

[sulli]

IP over Avian Carriers now supports Quality of Service. Just FYI.

Re:All packets are created equal

[Anonymous Coward]

Sad... about a billionth as funny as the original RFC.

Re:All packets are created equal

[Anonymous Coward]

true - the original was better.

I have this idea...

[Hugonz]

You know...I have this idea for IPV6...you set up a server, then write a client...people register whatever songs they have in MP3...then...oh, nevermind.

Re:I have this idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends on the judge, but note rule #5
"Please submit entries after ensuring that the submission does not invade any copyrights or related rights of others. When copyrighted or related rights materials, such as art, motion picture, photography or music are used, please ensure approval from the rights holders before applying. If an invasion of rights or compensation for loss is insisted by a third party, the applicant must take full responsibility and handle the issue. The contest host will not be held responsible for such issues" -- From the Rules for Application page.

You might get away with the submission, but it is agains the rules. Keep in mind who is sponsoring this thing (a bunch of corporations) and the care against violating copyrights is probably "better safe than sorry".

Woohoo!

[Duncan3]

$10,000 for recompiling with -lipv6 and changing some u32's to u128's in the structs... oh yea.

For high level languages like Python, I imagine all the work has been done for me already.

exchange rates...

[Lord_Slepnir]

Award for Planning: 5 works, 50,000 yen each

So that's like what, 50 bucks total?

Re:exchange rates...

[Anonymous Coward]

$US400 each, you feckless moron.

Re:exchange rates...

[Nexx]

closer to $400.

Why /. doesn't allow me to reply a quick one-liner is beyond me. *sigh* :P

Re:exchange rates...

[Trollificus]

"So that's like what, 50 bucks total?"

After you Americans are finished paying taxes on it, probably. ;)

My contest

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll offer twice that much to the first IPv6/IPv4 based application for automating troll posts to slashdot! That libtroll post was lying! I was so bummed!

slashdot is so forward-thinking and hip, now, happening, that I just know it'll be a major IPv6 player! And we'll all need better trolling tools to keep up! Because, dammit, trolling is HARD WORK. It's like, geez, I don't know, rowing some damn wooden boat on rough seas towing a 300lb test line with some gullible luser attached to the other end! Well, no, that would be harder.

But only a little!

Figures are off

[Niadh]

Grand Prize is 1,000,000 yen... thats 8,306.775 USD not $10,000.

Award for Promotion 5 works 150,000 yen each (1,246.03 USD)
Award for Planning 5 works 50,000 yen each (415.332 USD)

Grand Prix 1 work 1,000,000 yen (8,306.775 USD)
Award for Excellence a few works Total 1,000,000 yen
Award for Fine Works a few works Total 500,000 yen (4,153.15 USD)

So they are paying people to port applications to IPv6 now? hmp.. I would have thought that the ISP's and telicos would have ported to it automaticly when Internet IP's started to dry up.

Re:Figures are off

[zedge]

I just checked 2003.02.10 04:22:21 GMT and 1,000,000.00 Japan Yen = 8,305.604 USD so the prize seems to be decreasing as we discuss it.

Re:Figures are off

[Anonymous Coward]

I think its already starting to happen. A few weeks ago I was going to do some online gaming with a friend of mine, but it wouldn't work because, as we discovered, his ISP had given him a 10.x.x.x IP. And I was behind my NAT router, so neither one of us could conect to each other. So forgive me when I say that its about time IPv6 came about.

Re:Figures are off

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have thought that the ISP's and telicos would have ported to it automaticly when Internet IP's started to dry up.

IP addresses aren't drying up. Thanks to CIDR we're making far more efficient use of the 32 bit space of IP4 and the notion that we're running out is simply false.

Yes, even the typical clueless Slashdot reader ought to be able google CIDR and learn something.

Re:Figures are off

[fonebone]

IP addresses aren't drying up. Thanks to CIDR we're making far more efficient use of the 32 bit space of IP4 and the notion that we're running out is simply false.

still, they're not infinitely available like they will be with IPv6, so development is hindered within IPv4. This, in a sense, implies that we'd quickly run out of IP addresses if we used them for everything we want to.

1st IPv6 based worm

[Anonymous Coward]

And OMG, it would just keep on finding hosts forever.. and ever and ever... and ever. .and ever.. it would never work

IPv6

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll use it as soon as it works on platforms other than the VAX.

Re:IPv6

[LogicFlow]

Like Net/Open/FreeBSD, Linux kernel and by extention most distros that throw in IPv6 apps, Windows, and all the hardware they support? Hell, probably MacOS too.

I'll shoot myself the day a troll bothers to log in.

Re:IPv6

[Anonymous Coward]

We do it all the time. But then we tick "Post Anonymously".

So for now, you live. But it's nice I can hold a gun to your head at so little cost.

Re:IPv6

[Abcd1234]

Just as a side note, the "really neat" security improvements you list are simply the IPSec stuff found in a standard IPv6 stack. These same features are available in any IPv4 stack with IPSec tacked on. The difference is that, in v6, IPSec is manadatory, and in v4, it's optional.

The point of my post is that listing IPSec as an advantage to using v6 is misleading. List true advantages and people in the know will actually listen. Otherwise, you just sound like another clueless advocate.

Sponsors

[BJH]

Take a look at the sponsor list:

NTT Communications Corporation
A subcompany of the NTT group; the country's largest ISP.

Fujitsu Limited
One of Japan's largest manufacturers of PCs and servers.

Impress Corporation /. users should know this one - it runs the Akiba PC Watch site.

Internet Research Institute, Inc.
A company founded to take advantage of academic research. Funded by Yahoo Japan/Softbank (Softbank's one of Japan's largest Internet-related companies, and actually runs Yahoo Japan).

KDDI CORPORATION
Japan's #2 phone company after NTT.

Matsushita Electric Works, Ltd.
Japan's largest manufacturer of electronic goods.

Nokia-Japan Co., Ltd.
Need I say more?

Mitsubishi Research Institute, Inc.
The Mitsubishi group's research organization.

The reason Japan's so hot for IPv6 is that it got rather shortchanged in the IPv4 handout - the ratio of IPv4 addresses to users is much worse than in the US.

Re:Sponsors

[Anonymous Coward]

the ratio of IPv4 addresses to users is much worse than in the US.

What is the ratio in the US? What is the ratio in Japan? The suspense is killing me.

Re:Sponsors

[BJH]

Well, based on the ARIN stats and APNIC stats that are made available to the public...

IP addresses (US): 1,847,483,219
IP addresses (Japan): 41,943,663
IP addresses (Canada): 61,747,968

The number of users is debatable, but make it, say, around 30% of the population of each country.

Users (US): 250 million x 0.2 = 50,000,000
Users (Japan): 120 million x 0.2 = 24,000,000
Users (Canada): 30 million x 0.2 = 6,000,000

Which means the ratio of IP addresses to population is:

US: 36.95 IPs/person
Japan: 2.573 IPs/person
Canada: 10.29 IPs/person

So, as you can see, Japan's getting a little desparate... hell, even Canada has five times more IPv4 addresses per user.

Re:Sponsors

[BJH]

Urgh... of course, that should have said 20% of the population.

Re:Sponsors

[puto]

NTT shortchanged? Not really, they bought Verio for the marketshare in the US and the some 60 odd other countries that have Verio offices.

Each office that Verio had was done through a buy out. So Verio has an immense amount of IPv4 adresses. Hence NTT has them.

NTT is just being smart, thats all.

Puto

Re:Sponsors

[Anonymous Coward]

Which means the ratio of IP addresses to population is:

US: 36.95 IPs/person
Japan: 2.573 IPs/person
Canada: 10.29 IPs/person

So, as you can see, Japan's getting a little desparate... hell, even Canada has five times more IPv4 addresses per user.

Clearly, we should BLAME CANADA! BLAME CANADA!

Re:Sponsors

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realise that NTT can't just shift those blocks of IP addresses between countries, don't you?

Re:Sponsors

[hta]

The reason Japan's so hot for IPv6 is that it got rather shortchanged in the IPv4 handout - the ratio of IPv4 addresses to users is much worse than in the US.

The reasons why new IPv4 addresses are harder to come by in Japan than in the US are mainly internal JP politics - the policies of ARIN and APNIC are almost the same, and there's still new IP addresses to be had, if you're able to navigate the paperwork. (For a few years more).

Re: Sponsors

[Black Parrot]

> hell, even Canada has five times more IPv4 addresses per user.

Great God! And we've been planning on invading Iraq instead!

What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

IPv6 was stillborn 5+ years ago

PRIVATE PILE!

[Anonymous Coward]

THIS IS MY RIFLE. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My rifle is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I master my life.

My rifle, without me is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless. I must fire my rifle true. I must shoot straighter than my enemy who is trying to kill me. I must shoot him before he shoots me. I will....

My rifle and myself know that what counts in this war is not the rounds we fire, the noise of our burst, nor the smoke we make. We know that it is the hits that count.

We will hit...

My rifle is human, even as I, because it is my life. Thus I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weakness, its strength, its parts, its accessories, its sights, and its barrel. I will ever guard it against the ravages of weather and damage. I will keep my rifle clean and ready, even as I am clean and ready. We will become part of each other. We will...

Before God I swear this creed. My rifle and myself are the defenders of my country. We are the masters of our enemy. We are the saviors of my life.

So be it, until there is no enemy, but Peace!

THE CREED OF THE U.S.M.C.

Re:PRIVATE PILE!

[Anonymous Coward]

The USMC - never has such a large collection of knuckledragging rednecks been collected together before. Truly, an organization that will go down in history (probably as "the group with the lowest average IQ").

Wait a second...

[ScriptGuru]

I'm on IPv4, they want IPv6, what happened to IPv5!?!

Re:Wait a second...

[Anonymous Coward]

It was an internal spec only, I believe, and never released as a standard.

Re:Wait a second...

[Anonymous Coward]

Odd IPvx numbers won't sustain symmetrical transmit/receive, so naturally, they are skipped.

Re:Wait a second...

[BJH]

Er... no.
I quote:

"IPv5 exists and it's specified in RFC 1819. It's a connection-oriented alternative to IPv4 but before discussions went too far the IPv6 standards were implemented, and other protocols provided the proposed functionality of IPv5. Some experimental implementations of IPv5 are in limited use but mostly outside the United States. You won't see many references to "IPv5" but you may encounter it by it's experimental name, "ST2" or "ST2+". This stands for "STreaming" protocol. Here's what RFC 1819 says about it:

The Internet Stream Protocol, Version 2 (ST2) is an experimental connection-oriented internetworking protocol that operates at the same layer as connectionless IP. It has been developed to support the efficient delivery of data streams to single or multiple destinations in applications that require guaranteed quality of service. ST2 is part of the IP protocol family and serves as an adjunct to, not a replacement for, IP. The main application areas of the protocol are the real-time transport of multimedia data, e.g., digital audio and video packet streams, and distributed simulation/gaming, across internets.

ST2 can be used to reserve bandwidth for real-time streams across network routes. This reservation, together with appropriate network access and packet scheduling mechanisms in all nodes running the protocol, guarantees a well-defined Quality of Service (QoS) to ST2 applications. It ensures that real-time packets are delivered within their deadlines, that is, at the time where they need to be presented. This facilitates a smooth delivery of data that is essential for time-critical applications, but can typically not be provided by best-effort IP communication."

Re:Wait a second...

[mikey13]

I'm on IPv4, they want IPv6, what happened to IPv5!?!

*cough*NETSCAPE*cough*

hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

hmmm

nostalgia

[God! Awful 2]

Sigh... remember when a good idea used to be worth $40 million?

-a

Re:nostalgia

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember when $40 mil used to be worth $40 mil?

-b

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet!

[Anonymous Coward]

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Suspendisse posuere pretium libero. Vestibulum lacinia quam non quam. Maecenas egestas, libero sed nonummy auctor, est justo facilisis mauris, ac scelerisque enim justo sed magna. Vestibulum at odio. Fusce vel mauris. Nullam vestibulum aliquet ante. Donec nonummy, nisl et tempus vehicula, tellus lorem dignissim risus, sed iaculis urna tortor et est. Sed congue euismod lorem. Phasellus lorem. Integer semper tempor tortor. Nullam a tellus.

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Nunc consectetuer purus et leo. Fusce arcu arcu, lobortis a, pulvinar quis, imperdiet in, elit. In accumsan wisi vel purus. Curabitur placerat libero ut velit. Pellentesque quis est eu nibh aliquet blandit. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Proin velit odio, tincidunt non, tristique sed, sagittis quis, enim. Praesent consectetuer viverra est. Proin eget ipsum. Phasellus nulla. Donec odio velit, fermentum ac, pellentesque vel, fringilla non, lorem. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Suspendisse sagittis massa id eros. Praesent molestie sapien nec urna. Aenean pretium cursus justo. Vivamus sed lorem eu enim elementum adipiscing. Etiam pellentesque, mauris et accumsan posuere, tellus lacus ultrices sem, eget adipiscing urna elit a nulla. Fusce sit amet dui.

Sed est lectus, cursus eget, elementum sit amet, tincidunt at, wisi. Sed convallis posuere lacus. Nam ac mi a mauris ultrices interdum. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Fusce iaculis elementum nisl. Vestibulum arcu dolor, dapibus id, lobortis vel, hendrerit vel, est. Phasellus vel tortor. Fusce congue tortor et odio. Aliquam erat volutpat. Sed eros. Phasellus at dolor. Morbi fringilla aliquet orci. Praesent mattis. Proin fringilla aliquet justo. Praesent felis leo, convallis pharetra, consectetuer vitae, tempus a, metus.

Praesent massa velit, convallis ac, fermentum id, accumsan non, tortor. Fusce vel elit. In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Donec pulvinar porta nunc. Phasellus interdum commodo nulla. Nulla eu leo. Pellentesque ut wisi. Nulla vestibulum. In dapibus lacus. Nam lorem. Nunc augue est, feugiat ac, porttitor eu, cursus semper, quam. Fusce commodo rutrum lorem. Nulla facilisi. Vivamus adipiscing gravida justo. Vivamus justo. Donec at leo. In id diam id felis accumsan tempor. Donec venenatis nisl. Nam posuere congue ipsum. Donec quam risus, cursus et, dapibus id, aliquet eget, diam.

Mauris odio magna, blandit vitae, lacinia eget, auctor vitae, ligula. Nunc pede diam, ultricies ut, fermentum sed, sodales id, felis. Cras orci justo, vestibulum sit amet, facilisis non, molestie vel, nunc. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Cras blandit faucibus nulla. In arcu. Aenean varius. Donec semper mi at diam. Nullam dignissim. Nunc volutpat. Nunc lorem. Duis vitae lectus. Phasellus eu erat. Donec risus. Nam commodo interdum lorem. In ac dolor. Nullam eu libero. Nulla sem.

Sed sed lectus. Quisque laoreet suscipit justo. Aliquam eu mauris. Fusce rhoncus, purus at mollis ornare, orci dolor aliquet magna, id tincidunt felis neque sed nulla. Quisque viverra diam et mauris. Quisque gravida, sem a semper placerat, dui nunc rutrum quam, non condimentum mauris quam in arcu. Proin suscipit magna sit amet lectus. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Nunc turpis. Pellentesque vestibulum. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Fusce orci. Etiam in dui at eros convallis laoreet. Maecenas hendrerit mattis ante. Duis eros urna, egestas in, aliquam a, commodo eu, lacus.

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Donec ac augue. Ut nisl. Nunc lorem. Duis viverra, sapien vel blandit congue, sem dui vestibulum mauris, non venenatis tellus lorem et diam. Duis consectetuer pellentesque mauris. Nullam venenatis dictum mi. Proin tristique. In molestie, diam a hendrerit interdum, mi erat egestas est, ac nonummy massa turpis ut nunc. Nunc porta mi nec leo. Praesent id justo. Donec aliquam tellus ultrices purus. Donec laoreet velit eu dolor.

Praesent in erat in metus nonummy aliquam. Donec justo. Sed quis metus. Aenean tempus neque a lacus. Nulla pharetra eros sit amet dolor. Nam aliquam wisi sit amet lorem. Morbi sollicitudin dui ac sapien. Curabitur mauris orci, scelerisque sit amet, luctus ac, dapibus eget, wisi. Fusce non massa facilisis mi sagittis sodales. Nam ac dolor. Mauris elementum sem ac lacus. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Quisque sapien. Etiam eleifend. Nullam quis urna eget mi pellentesque congue. Praesent lobortis convallis purus.

Re:Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet!

[Anonymous Coward]

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Sumer is icumen in,
Lhude sing, cuccu;
Groweth sed
and bloweth med,
And springth the wde nu;
Sing, cuccu!
Awe bleteth after lomb,
Lhouth after calue cu;
Bulluc sterteth,
Bucke uerteth,
Murie sing, cuccu!
Cuccu, cuccu,
Wel singes thu, cuccu;
Ne swic thu naver nu.
Pes: Sing, cuccu, nu; sing, cuccu;
Hoc repetit unus quociens opus est, faciens pausacionem
in finem.
Sing, cuccu; sing, cuccu, nu!
Hoc dicit alius, pausans in medio et non in fine,
sed immediate repetens principium.

Re:Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet!

[Anonymous Coward]

spucatum tauri

Re:Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet!

[Anonymous Coward]

semper ubi sub ubi

My entry

[Anonymous Coward]

An application that keeps tabs on all information of everyone according to their unique IPv6 number, and then ranking them on an anti-american scale.

-John Ashcroft

Re:My entry

[Anonymous Coward]

Under the Patriot Act II, I could be hauled off in the middle of the night for saying something like that. This ain't your grandfather's America.
This is something else.

Heil the Homeland!

Re:My entry

[Anonymous Coward]

One wonders are Smart Bombs IPv6 Capable ?

Great Idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

1) IPV6 Application Implementation
2) ???
3) Profit!!

History of IPv6..

[Anonymous Coward]

All about IPv6 and more

money savings

[adamruck]

do they get the rights to anything submitted in the contest?

It seems like a good idea to me. Having a contest and offering a small lump sum is probably cheaper then hiring a whole bunch of developers to think up some applications. Not only will it get people to dream up ipv6 apps, but get more people to understand what its all about.

I must say that this seems to be a great idea on the ipv6 promotional councils part

Re:money savings

[cervo]

To answer your question on do they get the rights do anything submitted here is rule #7 from the rules page "The applicant will maintain all applicable intellectual, technology and design copyrights for the entries submitted to the contest, but the right for disclosure and distribution of entries submitted will belong to both the applicant and the contest host.".

It appears you get all the copyrights but they are allowed to disclose and distribute your product whatever that means. It could mean they can sell it or give it to whoever they want. The terms sound a bit iffy to me. Any lawyers out there want to offer up an interpretation?

Re:money savings

[jericho4.0]

I admit to sometimes posting without reading the article, but come on,man, you didn't even make it to the second sentence of the post.

Back on topic, I think offering contests to promote tech and keeping the rights is a great idea for buisness. Google does that with their contests.

Is it only me or...

[Anonymous Coward]

or do you see the /. links changing colors today as well ???

Or something in slashcode changing....

Or IPv6 Tunnel Broker

[fv]

> Many Japanese ISPs will give you your own IPv6 subnet right now, for not very much money.

And even if your ISP won't assign you an IPv6 subnet, you can always utilize a free Tunnel Broker to obtain a huge IPv6 address space of your very own (tunneled to your IPv4 IP). I used this recently when adding basic IPv6 support to the Nmap Security Scanner. My announcement also provides a concrete example of IPv6 being used to subvert firewall rulesets.

A ton of useful IPv6 information is available from Kame.Net -- once your setup is working, the turtle on the top of that page starts to dance :). I also found the Linux IPv6 HOWTO to be incredibly helpful.

-Fyodor
Concerned about your network security? Try the Free Nmap Security Scanner

Re:Or IPv6 Tunnel Broker

[Wesley Felter]

Those manual tunnel brokers are obsolete; 6to4 is simpler and more efficient.

Re:Or IPv6 Tunnel Broker

[Anonymous Coward]

go fuck yourself fyodor.

Re:Or IPv6 Tunnel Broker

[WoofLu]

Unfortunately, there are not enough 6to4 endpoints around the internet ...

If there would be more endpoints listening on the 6to4 prefix, it would be Good...

Re:Or IPv6 Tunnel Broker

[nsayer]

Unfortunately, there are not enough 6to4 endpoints around the internet ...

huh?

6to4 users can interact perfectly well with non-6to4 IPv6 addresses. They just need to set a default route to a 6to4 relay router. And RFC 3068 makes that universally trivial.

Re:Or IPv6 Tunnel Broker

[rplacd]

His point is that there aren't enough 6to4 relays out there.

Re:Or IPv6 Tunnel Broker

[WoofLu]

my point is that there are not many of those relay routers, which causes lag in the network ...

Re:Or IPv6 Tunnel Broker

[nsayer]

That's true, but as more 6to4 users come online, I suspect more of them will appear. And thanks to RFC 3068, 6to4 users don't actually have to do anything in response.

Oh, and if anyone reading this is in a position to do so, setting up a 6to4 relay router and advertising the RFC 3068 route is probably one of the best ways to help the cause of IPv6 migration.

RIAA may hate me for saying this....

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine a world with IPv6 enabled devices.
Now when someone receives a subpoena from RIAA with the IP address, they can always reply back that there was a mistake because that IP address belongs to the microwave or the toilet bowl cleaner scheduler device..

what this contest proves

[Anonymous Coward]

A consortium of some 300 individuals and corporations interested in the promotion of IPv6 have to offer significant amounts of money just to generate interest in this new protocol. A decent Internet protocol should not be forced on the public cum pecunia; it should be developed openly and freely under the currently-existing RFC standards. If there were any real, useful applications of IPv6 to the whole world, then an open, free-entry consortium would be overseeing the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 now.

However, there is no desperate shortage of IP addresses under the current scheme. While there are less IPs than theoretically possible (256^4 = 4,294,967,296), thanks to overhead and mismanagement (MIT getting its own Class A subnet makes perfect sense...NOT), nevertheless there is no current need for this initiative.

The fact is, this contest is simply a ploy by these companies to get your intellectual capital at a fraction of its potential worth. Do the world a favor and make your ideas and code snippets public and free (or GPL'd). Death to corporate tyranny!

Re:what this contest proves

[Tailhook]

The folks at the receiving end of customer demands solved the IP shortage issue years ago. They simply subnet the last octet. I personally think the IETF could better serve us all by revising some of the early "over" allocations of netblocks to institutions like MIT, but that runs counter to the IPv6 agenda.

The desire for point-to-point connectivity is nothing more than that; a desire. The real-world Internet doesn't really care all that much if it can't touch millions or billions of anonymous hosts behind NAT. The fact that it can't means, for example, that Slammer was only able to infect the routable hosts. Imagine the effects of something like Slammer if every single MS SQL server was actually routable from the public network. Yes, I know, NAT is not security. Until the IETF invents a way to force network operators to care enough about security to be worthy of allowing all their hosts to be routable, I'll remain pretty appreciative of the benefits of NAT in the real world.

Claims that IPv4 is inherently doomed due to the demands placed on routers I find difficult to believe. The size of the graph that is the Internet will not get smaller with IPv6. If IPv6 provides a more efficient means for "routers" to comprehend that graph, why can't that solution also apply to IPv4? Routers get faster right along side all other computing devices. Routers are also becoming a figment of the IETFs imagination. The old fashioned IP Internet is quickly being supplanted by ATM et al, and most of the "routing" is being done via virtual circuits between IP endpoints. IP "routing" is being relegated to the edges of the core.

The commercial world solved the IPv4 problem. IETF just doesn't care to notice.

Re:what this contest proves

[Anonymous Coward]

heh you said "cum"

hmmmm

Re:what this contest proves

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, but there is a desperate shortage and people are using hacks like NAT to patch it up. Why doesn't my mobile phone have a real IP address? Why does a 1 MBit residential ADSL service come with just /one/ IPv4 address. Do they think the average home with DSL has only one computer?

Current allocation strategies are punitive, and the aggregation problems already have caused some small organisations to "fall off the network" due to routing table overflow.

We have to transition to IPv6, and it makes sense to do it in calm orderly fashion, rather than waking up to a Slashdot story like "European IP addresses exhausted. RIPE says users must switch to IPv6 on Tuesday". Of course this means people like you are going to imagine a conspiracy right up until they notice that now 10 billion hosts are on the Internet...

As to an "open, free-entry consortium" there are any number of organisations that more or less match that description. Governments and larger ISPs have given a lot of money to these projects so that the transition goes smoothly. Far sighted people (e.g. those who can do a quick head count and see that 6 billion potential users on a network with 4 billion addresses won't work) have been trying to kick start this for ages, and the longer we wait the more painful it will be.

Re:what this contest proves

[Bookwyrm]

The above reply should definitely be modded up.

Re:what this contest proves

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, Mr. "Death to corporate tyranny!"... You went just a tad overboard with the anti-corporate paranoia there. If you'd bothered to read the rules, you would have noticed:

"7.

The applicant will maintain all applicable intellectual, technology and design copyrights for the entries submitted to the contest, but the right for disclosure and distribution of entries submitted will belong to both the applicant and the contest host."

And there's an excellent post well in advance of yours that points out the severe lack of globally routable static IP addresses in Japan (which applies to every other non-US TLD as well). The issue is not how the US mis-allocated it's class A networks or anything like that, but how non-US TLDs are shortchanged in the number of sites they can host.

Re:what this contest proves

[Wesley Felter]

If IPv6 provides a more efficient means for "routers" to comprehend that graph, why can't that solution also apply to IPv4?

It could, but it would force everyone to be renumbered, which they will not accept.

Re:what this contest proves

[Tailhook]

Uh, but there is a desperate shortage and people are using hacks like NAT to patch it up.

Funny how the term "hack" is a pejorative with regard to NAT.

Why doesn't my mobile phone have a real IP address?

Why should it?

Why does a 1 MBit residential ADSL service come with just /one/ IPv4 address.

Because the ISP is being frugal with their netblock. They know, as well as you do, that 1 address is enough. Do you think that IPv6 will suddenly provide the means to operate a vast subnet with that ADSL service? That's naive. Most DSL contracts for home users already prevent this sort of thing.

Do they think the average home with DSL has only one computer?

Nope. They know damn well there's likely to be >1 host behind those endpoints. I bet they're also well aware of the fact the most of those hosts are vulnerable to no end of remote attacks that most of their customers are blissfully unaware of this because they're safely behind NAT.

Current allocation strategies are punitive, and the aggregation problems already have caused some small organizations to "fall off the network" due to routing table overflow.

There are routers available that are capable of keeping up. You get what you pay for in ISPs just like everything else. If an ISP allows this to happen to it's customers, what makes you think they're interested in the investment necessary for IPv6?

Of course this means people like you are going to imagine a conspiracy right up until they notice that now 10 billion hosts are on the Internet...

I agree. This is no corporate conspiracy. This is a conspiracy of the elite. The commercial world solved the IPv4 problem. The academic world doesn't care to hear about it.

As to an "open, free-entry consortium" there are any number of organizations that more or less match that description. Governments and larger ISPs have given a lot of money to these projects so that the transition goes smoothly. Far sighted people (e.g. those who can do a quick head count and see that 6 billion potential users on a network with 4 billion addresses won't work) have been trying to kick start this for ages, and the longer we wait the more painful it will be.

If there were a real problem IPv6 wouldn't need all this nursing.

Re: what this contest proves

[Black Parrot]

> A consortium of some 300 individuals and corporations interested in the promotion of IPv6 have to offer significant amounts of money just to generate interest in this new protocol.

Yeah... an average of about $30 each.

Re:what this contest proves

[Tailhook]

It could, but it would force everyone to be renumbered, which they will not accept.

As opposed to IPv6, which everyone is clearly so excited about accepting? Which of these three options is more likely to be considered acceptable outside the ivory towers of IETF;

a.) mitigating the size of routing tables by renumbering existing subnets

b.) implementing an entirely new protocol

c.) buying bigger, faster routers

If you know anything of the commercial world, you have absolutely no doubt about the correct answer.

Re:what this contest proves

[Minna Kirai]

IPv6 is an attempt to return to the principles that gave the internet it's growth and democracy in the beginning:

Dumb network, smart edges.

When IPv4 was designed, there was no plan for exponential user growth outside of military/R&D/education. If there had been, addresses would've been 48+ bits from 1980 onward.

The failing with pre-existing networks which IP was meant to surmount is that the interior of the network was too intelligent. That sounds like a good thing, but it means that the network as a whole is less flexible- the inner nodes (routers) cannot be easily upgraded to support new applications and features. Under IP, all interesting computers are into hosts on the edge of the network. Each can be upgraded by an end-user, without supplication to the network templars- be they Bell Atlantic frame relay technicians, or Novell NOS admins. Those smart edges are served by a dumb cloud- the rest of the network just passes data from one place to another, without translating or modifying it in anyway. In the past, network application growth was slowed because users couldn't easily tell what was going on inside the cloud. IP made the cloud's job boring, so that you were no longer interested in seeing what went on there.

That change triggered the explosive growth of computer networks until they combined into the shared entity we all know and love.

NAT betrays this heritage

NAT boxes move intelligence back into the cloud- instead of IP packets being routed to the desired host and no other, there are now entities hidden in the cloud which waylay your packets. They seize them, pull them apart, inspect their innards- then, maybe, they'll deign to alter the packet and send it along further.

The damage isn't just a theoretical one- real end-users are being held back by NAT and other violations of the IP promise. New applications which would be easier to deploy with real per-host addressing are difficult or impossible to install reliably. This is things like high-speed game servers, file/web servers, P2P clients, cheap VOIP, videoconferencing, VPN, and prehaps things that haven't been invented yet.

The internet should be about giving power to the users on its edges. IPv6 would encourage that, but NAT hinders it. There are forces who don't want to empower users- major content providers and big ISPs. (Which may be the same thing). Fearful of losing control of mass audience's entertainment patterns, they want to keep mass creativity centralized. AOL doesn't want users to download ClickNRun IRC-like servers to create TeenTalkDaytonville chatrooms, they want to sell them as a value added service. Time Warner doesn't want 100s of cheap FTP servers passing out free copies of 56 year old TV shows (which by rights are public domain), they want you to wait for the DVD or PPV options.

The desire exists. A chicken in every pot, and permanent IP address in every study! The powers that be are fearful, though. The existing entertainment/datacomm oligopoly was harmed enough by the Internet. End-users sharing data amoung themselves could ruin them- but the exhaustion of IP addresses provided an excuse to keep end-users cordoned off from the real internet. They could download, but not serve files- as long as the people remain "consumers", the corporations can keep them under control.

NAT boxes bring the internet a tiny bit back towards the shape of traditional TV and telephone networks, which is just how big business likes it.

Re:what this contest proves

[tialaramex]

This is your "solution"? 3rd rate service and spiralling costs for a system that will, without any doubt cease functioning in less than a decade. A decade when the real fix will be even more expensive.

I want to use peer services with my phone. My solution is IPv6. Your solution "Don't do that".

I want to use peer services with my laptop in the kitchen, from a pad in the TV room, and with my games PC upstairs. My solution is IPv6. Your solution? "Don't do that".

Five billion more people want to use the Internet. My solution is IPv6. Your solution is to either deny them service or provide a 2nd class "host" service behind NAT.

You're not American by any chance are you? This "the customer can go fuck himself" type of solution reminds me of dealing with US banks, and certainly Americans are very smug about the fact that >50% of routable addresses are permanently assigned to their low population continent.

Sadly, people with this attitude will be saved at the last minute by the efforts of others, like those dopes who refuse to move from their home because "God is with me, and the floods won't come this high" and then have to be rescued by helicopter. Once in a while we should leave a few of you behind.

Re:what this contest proves

[evilviper]

The commercial world solved the IPv4 problem. IETF just doesn't care to notice.

I see... Then the car companies also *solved* the gasoline/oil problems. Intel and AMD *solved* the power consumption and heat issues.

A band-aid is not a solution...

Re:what this contest proves

[flux]

Well how about the transition phase? You think the networks which will be renumbered would start having two subnets? With IPv6 one can still continue using IPv4-address-space. (Of course, that is not impossible. But is it that much easier than just transitioning to IPv6?)

Also IPv6 is not all about more ip-addresses, it also brings benefits to multicast routing (per spec all routers know how to route multicast), which in my opinion is the future ;).

Re:what this contest proves

[Alioth]

There's a good article why NAT (and private address space) is bad here and I agree with him. IPv6 would solve this problem. What if you have two companies, who only have one public IP address who want to connect their two networks, and they both decided on 172.16.0.0/16 for their internal network? They get to renumber all their hosts if they want to internetwork.

He also has an essay about why ATM is bad for computer networks here.

Re:what this contest proves

[nutshell42]

A decent Internet protocol should not be forced on the public cum pecunia;

"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats." -- Howard Aiken

Re:what this contest proves

[Bookwyrm]

Funny how the term "hack" is a pejorative with regard to NAT.

Isn't it, though? The real 'hack' is replacing IPv4 with IPv6 to 'fix' a problem which is really in the directory services/DNS level. People think that some how static IP addresses will magically make things better, but that's only because they are changing the network protocol to fix a problem in the application layer (i.e. name look-ups).

A better solution would be to fix the directory services at that layer so that IP addresses were not used inside applications. That would also make a transition between IPv4 and IPv6 easier if the applications got their out from being too deep into the network directly. (I.e. get rid of fixed port numbers for specific services, use the equivalent of SRV records or such to let the network layer figure out which port and IP address to send the packets to -- by allowing ports to be looked up as well as IP addresses, that would allow mulitple servers behind NAT behind static port mappings.)

NAT has no effect on transport. You put data in, you get data out. The only reason that NAT seems like a 'hack' is because of bad coding design that has integrated far too much transport-level network information into the applications. If applications and name-look up were written properly, not only would switching applications to IPv6 be trivial because of less internal code dependence on IPv4 rather than a generic network/transport API, but NAT wouldn't be a problem, either.

The static IPv6 address auto-assignment is going to be fun to watch. Suppose the network admin doesn't do DHCP, and just lets all hosts auto-configure. Now, there are a couple things that happen -- the hosts choose random host network values -- makes no sense because the whole point of this is to have a static IPv6 address, right? So, host ABC always chooses the same host part of his IPv6 address (perhaps from his MAC address, which now gives his computer the equivalent of the Intel CPU serial ID number), or some other fixed value. What stops someone else from trying to swipe that same value on the network? Your computer reboots, and when it comes on, there is another host claiming to have that MAC/host address on the network already -- so much for that static IPv6 address. No smart network administrator is going stick their hands into that one -- either things will be dynamically autoconfiguring, and static IPc6 addresses may or may not happen depending on your luck and your neighbors, or the admin is going to assign the addresses specifically rather than letting the network autoconfig.

Plagarize a submission

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I'd like to submit lain - just watched it last night and they clearly said that it was development of the sixth gen protocol that made the creation of lain possible.

For those who have no idea wth I am talking about, go an google, "serial experiment lain" then watch it. Some acid might make it clearer on your first viewing too.

Re:Plagarize a submission

[nikpieX]

"they clearly said that it was development of the sixth gen protocol that made the creation of lain possible."

Watch it again. It's the 7th generation of the protocol, not 6th. That's what makes it even more believable!

Re:Plagarize a submission

[Anonymous Coward]

The 7th is under development with different corps jockeying for position.

Re:Plagarize a submission

[Suidae]

It was cool until they threw in all that roswell crap and the little alien dude.

No!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is absolute rubbish, and a waste of money. I have nothing else to remark on the matter.

J. Koizumi.

How about...

[DanThe1Man]

a way to actually put IP addresses on toasters.

How to get up and running

[tialaramex]

If the upstream router from you (whether that's a $20k rack box from Cisco or some Pentium Linux box) has IPv6 connectivity then all you need to do on your hosts is turn on IPv6 and the rest happens automatically.

e.g RH Linux, set NETWORKING_IPV6=yes in /etc/sysconfig/network and restart networking

If you don't have upstream IPv6 then (1) Tell your provider that you think they should look into it sooner rather than later (2) round up the OS specific documentation for a technology called "6to4" tunnels.

A 6to4 tunnel can be created from any fully operational IPv4 host, even if it's a dialup link on some mom&pop ISP. Like the rest of IPv6 this is autoconfigured, you set a few options according to the documentation from your OS vendor and then it Just Works (TM).

If you have a typical small office/ geek house NAT setup with a single router & a lot of hosts spread around a building, the 6to4 tunnel will let you give all those hosts unique IPv6 addresses too, by assigning a /48 to each subnet in the building.

To check that it's working visit e.g. http://www.kame.net/ for visual confirmation. You may have to restart your browser if IPv6 wasn't installed when it was first started.

Re:How to get up and running

[tialaramex]

"by assigning a /48 to each subnet in the building"

Doh! That really would be excessive. I meant to say that you'd assign a /64 to each subnet. Still sounds like a lot, but it's really not when you consider how IPv6 autoconfig works.

Re:How to get up and running

[Tailhook]

So, if we go and get /64s, aren't we wasting vast amounts of the address space?

How about.....

[Anonymous Coward]

.....I invent a website using IPv6 that won't get slashdotted?

mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

hccweb1.bai.ne.jp/yukimoto/v6pc/en/index.html

Proposal

[BinBoy]

I propose an IPv6 protocol app that allows you to browse other sites on the internet. Each site will store one or more files in a standard markup language. The app will download these files and render the text and images in a desktop window. The markup language should include links to other sites and files, creating a sort of "web." It could be useful for scientists who want to exchange research data.

Re: Proposal

[Black Parrot]

> I propose an IPv6 protocol app that allows you to browse other sites on the internet. Each site will store one or more files in a standard markup language. The app will download these files and render the text and images in a desktop window. The markup language should include links to other sites and files, creating a sort of "web." It could be useful for scientists who want to exchange research data.

I'll bet you could patent doing all that with IPv6 right now.

Re:Proposal

[nr]

Hmm, good idea but there already exist two applications that supports IPv6 native. They are called "Apache" and "Mozilla".

Re:Proposal

[DiSKiLLeR]

It was meant to be a joke :P

D.

Re:Proposal

[majestynine]

Would you know sarcasm if it came up and smashed you in the face with a claw hammer?

Paging Linksys...

[TheSHAD0W]

We should push Linksys (and other cable/DSL router manufacturers) to write firmware capable of creating an IPv6 intranet, as opposed to the typical class C. Better still, I'm sure they could add support for something like TunnelBroker (as mentioned above) and map one's intranet into genuine IPv6 space. Yes, you could do the same thing with a 486 running BSD or Linux, but I think using a nice, small, energy-efficient box would be more elegant.

Re:Paging Linksys...

[nsayer]

They could do it a lot easier than that... All they really have to do is implement 6to4, use the RFC 3068 default route, and implement NAT-PT and a DNS proxy layer. If you have a box that does that, then IPv6-only clients would be able to experience the IPv4 internet seamlessly, but still gain all the advantages of being native IPv6.

NAT is an abomination that must die.

How about...

[jeeryg_flashaccess]

...all porn stars get IPv6 addresses? Now THAT'S revolutionary!

Hmm, creative way to win...

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps a creative way to win would be to develop the first IPv6 worm?

Welcome to the party pals...

Re:Hmm, creative way to win...

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if they accepted it, you would be leading government employees in suits with powerful sidearms to your doorstep by entering.

Re:Hmm, creative way to win...

[istartedi]

Why is that so hard? Can't you just run a dictionary attack using the DNS? By dictionary attack, I mean, search for those "valuable 4 and 5 letter domain names" and move on from there.

Re:Hmm, creative way to win...

[Anonymous Coward]

In theory I guess, but most of the larger sites that actually do anything worth poking have other host names off their domain. Your domain (vrml3d) might be easy to automatically generate, but this page is at: http://developers.slashdot.org and probably wouldn't. It's awkward and long.

Other problems:

(1) End-user computers (ie: the vast majority of active internet nodes) do not have a DNS entry. Or if they do, it would be something like: 102_233_dsl.broadband.cali.internetprovider.net - you're not going to guess unless you wrote code specifically to target a given ISP.

(2) Volume of DNS queries. How many DNS queries do you think you'd need to make before someone became suspicious at the overwhelmingly huge number of requests that you were making?

Plus, doing random DNS queries over a long enough time would make it easy to trace back an attack to it's source. Every subdomain you queried would probably show up in a log file somewhere (or they *should*, but it depends on the competency of the admin. Hello shotgun-wielding FBI agents in black Chevy Suburbans and charges of "Homeland Terrorism". Which probably isn't worth it.

Re:Hmm, creative way to win...

[istartedi]

Well, problem 1 is easy enough. If the ISP has a consistant numbering system like you describe, and the address space is small then you are back to IPv4 style attacks through that ISP.

Problem 2 is solved by the solution to problem 1, because once you have "0wn3d" enough boxes you don't care where the query came from. The hard part is hiding your initial plant of the worm, but that's always been the hard part.

The bottom line? I doubt that simply upping the address space is going to eliminate worms.

Attackers will use any vulnerability they can find. For example, use an Outlook virus to harvest IP's contained in files on a user machine, then launch the worm from there.

Just be patient...

[TopShelf]

If you look here, you'll see that the yen's gained about 10% over the last year. Unless our economy picks up soon, the prize will grow further!

Otoh...

[autopr0n]

If you figure the market is 80% of the population, which is probably a lot closer, especially for Japan, then you end up with less then 1 IP per user.

Obviously, a huge problem.

Re:Otoh...

[BJH]

Not necessarily 80% - remember, a huge proportion of Internet users in Japan actually use mobile phones, which have IPs dynamically allocated from a pool held by the phone company. The proportion of users with static global addresses is very small.

Hrm...

[Myuu]

/me starts thinking that the net will move to ip v6 about the same time the US moves to metric.

Re:Hrm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Atleast each flying pig can have it's own address.

No

[autopr0n]

We would each need to have a /96 in order for the situation to be the same as with ipv4.

Re:No

[Tailhook]

Indeed.

That wasn't my question. My question was are we not wasting vast address space with /64?

Now you may have implied that I suggest some similarity with IPv4. I do. The IETF and it's believers are always quite proud in pointing out that 128 bits is a vast space. No doubt. However, even vast spaces can be wasted through mismanagement.

If we're already doling out /64s, I suspect we're well on our way to pissing away that vast space. I know that the upper 64 bits of the space is segmented into various parts. How many careless over-allocations of the those segments can IPv6 tolerate? Every mistake made in the 24 bit NLA lops off a huge slice of the space...

I have every faith in the power if ignorance and greed to screw up what appears to be a limitless supply of addresses. The fact that we're already pissing away /64s is only reinforcing this faith. I note that IPv6 defines no segments after the first 64 bits. It may be that IPv6 was designed to work like this. Fine. My point, ultimately, is the belief that 128 bits is so big that it verges on inexhaustible is naive. This is history repeating itself; the 32 bits of IPv4 looked equally inexhaustible to it's creators. The consequence of this belief led to granting huge chunks of this space to institutions that today would be lucky to get a /24 in IPv4.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

you mean /32.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

However, even vast spaces can be wasted through mismanagement.

That's where IPv8 comes in, you see. Let's see them exhaust 256 bits of address space. And if they do, there's always IPv10 with it's 512 bits.

patent pending, patent pending, patent pending.

Re:No

[amorsen]

To ensure that we do not hit the address space problems again, most of the IPv6 space has been set aside as reserved. I will quote RFC 3117:

We are highly confident in the validity of this analysis, based on experience with IPv4 and several other address spaces, and on extremely ambitious scaling goals for the Internet amounting to an 80 bit address space *per person*. Even so, being acutely aware of the history of under-estimating demand, the IETF has reserved more than 85% of the address space (i.e., the bulk of the space not under the 001 Global Unicast Address prefix). Therefore, if the analysis does one day turn out to be wrong, our successors will still have the option of imposing much more restrictive allocation policies on the remaining 85%.

seems like everybody sometimes...

[VoidEngineer]

who's actually using IPv6? I know some use it privately within their org, but are there any publicly using it?

ah, lots of people, actually... it's all over the routers and servers, nowdays... but the local network admin and network engineers are probably doing their best to make the migration as invisible as possible.

A good starting point to learn more about IPv6 would be www.internet2.edu. If you check out the corporate partners, you'll notice that ATT&T, Cisco, IBM, Intel, Lucent, Microsoft, Nortel, Qwest, SBC, and Sun are all in on the "Internet2" act, which includes the IPv6 protocol And the list of affiliated universities stretches nearly 200 members long...

Anyhow, Sun Solaris 9, Microsoft Windows2000, Microsoft WindowsXP, and Cisco IOS all have support for IPv6, as I understand... They're publicaly using it and supporting it.

If you want to know more about IPv6, check out this link and just search for the term "IPv6"... you should get about 93 articles regarding the Request For Comments (RFC) procedure used to define the protocol... As you will notice, IPv6 is a 128bit protocol, and was designed to be able to be broken up into 4 32bit packets, which allows it to interoperate with older IPv4 networks...

Moral of the story is that there are millions of people already using IPv6 on their client machines, who already don't know and don't care about the specific protocol implementations...

The article refers to an award for application developers to develop IPv6 enabled applications... If you calculate the ratio between IPv6 address and the total surface area of the earth, you will notice that there are approximately 2,000 IP addresses per square meter, with the IPv6 protocol... enough to give an address to every nut, bolt, and widget in every plane, train, and automobile on earth, with billions and billions left over... The awards will be going to people who figure out not just how to use IPv6, but how to code new applications and new uses for that kind of domain space...

Re:seems like everybody sometimes...

[WoofLu]

> If you want to know more about IPv6, check out this link
>[rfc-editor.org] and just search for the term "IPv6"... you
> should get about 93 articles regarding the Request For
> Comments (RFC) procedure used to define the protocol...
> As you will notice, IPv6 is a 128bit protocol, and was
> designed to be able to be broken up into 4 32bit packets,
> which allows it to interoperate with older IPv4 networks...

uhm? sorry? There is no "interoperation" between ipv6 and ipv4 networks ...

Re:seems like everybody sometimes...

[Jugalator]

No, I don't know what that part about IPv6 being a 128-bit protocol being broken down into 32-bit packets came from??

Anyway, I think the most common ways to implement IPv6 and IPv4 "interoperability" are:

- Use a dual IP layer to support both IPv4 and IPv6. This requires both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses however, and address selection rules. DSTM (Dual Stack Transition Mechanism) might help solve problems with too few IPv4 addresses for the mapping.

- Tunnel the IPv6 traffic over the IPv4 infrastructure. Encapsulate IPv6 packets within IPv4. This method is used on the 6bone.

- Translate the headers with transition tools. Simply translate the IPv4 header into an IPv6 header. This method can only translate information shared by both protocols. This method can be used to make IPv4 hosts on a LAN able to interoperate with an outside IPv6 network, where the translator function much the same as a NAT.

Re:seems like everybody sometimes...

[Anonymous Coward]

This sentence really intrigued me.

"If you calculate the ratio between IPv6 address and the total surface area of the earth, you will notice that there are approximately 2,000 IP addresses per square meter..."

However I can't seem to recreate it. Here is my math.

IPv6 is 128 bits: 2^128 = 3.4028e38
Surface area of Earth: 5.1007e14 m^2 (verified on 3 different sites)

3.4028e38/5.1007e14 = 6.6713e23 IP/m^2

That is a whole lot more than 2000, so one of us made a mistake. :)

Re:seems like everybody sometimes...

[Merlisk]

Did you see on http://www.internet2.edu/ that Internet2 was originally built by Al Gore? :)

Re:seems like everybody sometimes...

[Xerithane]

That is a whole lot more than 2000, so one of us made a mistake. :)

Just a quick guess, but use 30% of 5.1007e14 and it will probably be closer to 2,000. The stat probably only takes into account land mass.

That is an interesting idea though, geographically assigned IP addressing. Although DNS services will have to become much more configurable with IPv6 before it gets really widespread adoption. I'd like to see a named that utilizes a quick stripped down SQL database.

Re:seems like everybody sometimes...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm... that would make the number even larger / m^2

Re:seems like everybody sometimes...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, no it doesn't. I was originally calculating with land mass, which is you state is smaller. However, the order of magnitude remains the same because 2^128 is so damn large. :) (i.e. the answer is still XXXe23)

Re:seems like everybody sometimes...

[germanbirdman]

IPv6 may have a 128 bit address. BUT(!) you can't really calculate it like that.

For example, I have a whole /48 net for my home and anyone that wants one can have one for free at many tunnel brokers.

A /48 net includes the ability to have 64K subnets which all can contain 2^64 hosts. Note that as a DEFAULT(!) (and only as a default) the Mac address of the interface is used as the host portion of the address. BUT, for my PCs I have an additional :1 for my main router, :2, :3, :4 ... for my clients.

I even have DNS for my IPv6 net. The whole thing is tunneled through my linux router, which is actually on a dynamic IPv4 link (what I mean is I get a new Ipv4 address every 24 hours or at every new dialin), and the cool thing is, that from outside I can access all my clients using the (static) IPv6 addresses. And I just use the normal DNS name, DNS is hosted at zoneedit.com, which allow 5 free zones, and they also let you use AAAA records.

Re:seems like everybody sometimes...

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you answer why you can't calculate it like that. You give a lot of cool details, but you don't specify why you can't calculate it as shown above.

Re:seems like everybody sometimes...

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if every sq. meter had it's own /48 like you say, there would still be several billion billion /48 subnets left. I think the calculation above is correct.

Re:seems like everybody sometimes...

[AbRASiON]

Look I don't know much about tcp / ipv4 or 6 but I do have to ask this,...

Will there be some kind of latency / higher traffic usage due to larger headers or some such with ipv6 traffic due to the extra "detail" it provides (apologies on lack of terminology)

I guess (from what I've read) that multicasting will offset this as that seems to be a real good bandwidth saver.

Please feel free to make any corrections to my post - I'd like to be educated on this, not ridiculed :)

Re:seems like everybody sometimes...

[VoidEngineer]

AbRASiON,

Great question and well asked...

Will there be some kind of latency / higher traffic usage due to larger headers or some such with ipv6 traffic due to the extra "detail" it provides (apologies on lack of terminology)

The answer depends on how you measure latency and traffic usage... so, in some sense, the answer is both yes and no. The packets are larger, by protocol definition, so there will definately be higher overhead. This is offset, however, due to the fact that IPv6 is a protocol which has been designed and formulated with specific technologies in mind... specifically, high bandwidth connections. As fiber optics, fast ethernet, and gigabit-copper become more common, total bandwidth will increase, and the relative increase in latency/traffic is offset by higher bandwith availability. Call it information inflation, if you will...

In some sense, IPv6 was designed with fiber optic backbones and routers in mind... so, yes.. there will be slightly more traffic usage and latency, but the next generation of network cards and routers are expected to be optimized for 128 bit mathematics... (specifically, in order to deal with 128 bit address routing tables) so, the latency and traffic usage will be offset by the reduced processor overhead needed to calculate the 'details' which are incorporated into the header (such as quality of service and such...). That is, the network engineers know that fiber is becoming more common, and this protocol was designed with forward-thinking concepts: high network bandwidth, very large numbers of nodes, dynamic network topologies, security and cryptology, etc. etc.

In the long run, IPv6 won't cause excessive latency or traffic usage on future networks... It may be a resource-hog on circa-1990s network equipment, however...

Anyhow... I'm rambling... there are people more knowledgable than I in this matter, and I'm sure they'll post their 2 cents worth as well. Best of luck in learning more...

IPv6

[Anonymous Coward]

Last year i did a research paper on IPv6 for my data communications class. People, those who think IPv6 is dumb, unecessary, or already dead, pull your head from where the sun ain't shining and take a look at what it has to offer, you might consider giving some RFC's a read, that is unless your a pussy, and if thats the case, why do you read /. ?

IPv6 RFCs

It offers some really neat, and much need security imporovements, like secure hashing, encryption at the IP level(data link layer) and seriously, there is no longer a need for DHCP. It is a network administrators dream come true, now if only people would start using it...

Sorry for being an anonymous coward, i haven't posted in so long, i forget my userid...

Didn't someone once say...

[cabra771]

noone will ever need more than IPv4

The polite, wired Canadians

[Anonymous Coward]

hell, even Canada has five times more IPv4 addresses per user.

LOL, my little USAian-centric friend. It would be perfectly logical for Canada to have more IPs per person than the USA also. From this Ipsos-Reid study... more Canadians have internet access from home than USAians, and it's always been that way. On the broadband front, the incidence of broadband in Canada dwarfs that of the U.S., where only an estimated 21% with a home Internet connection are using broadband, versus 48% in Canada.

Of course, you don't see Canadians getting their woolen underwear in a knot because they're getting ripped off on the IP address front, do you? They "should" have 3 to 4 times more addresses than they do. But Canadians are very polite folk... ;-)

Re:The polite, wired Canadians

[Anonymous Coward]

How did you manage to think that I'm USAian??
Perhaps you Canadians should work on your basic reading skills...

Re:The polite, wired Canadians

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, my little idiot hoser friend. This isn't active IP addresses you nit wit. That is the number of subnets assigned overall to the us. Doesn't mean jack about how many people are using what type of technology. It means we (ARPANET) f%cking invented TCP/IP and we have more assigned subnets than anyone else. Go figure.

Re:The polite, wired Canadians

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not Canadian. I'm Swedish. Read my post. Then read the study. I refer -to- Canadians, not -as- one. Anyways, that little mixup aside...

The study I cited refers to actual use. Read it. Does it not make sense that the number of subnets assigned is proportional to usage? If you accept that assumption, then you'll accept my claim that Canada is underrepresented. Their ratio of assigned subnets to population is lower than that of the USA. Yet their ratio of usage to population is higher. Simple math.

If you don't accept my assumption, then by what criteria should subnets be assigned? Oh right, by the number of asses with guns per square mile. Sorry. You win. That must feel super.

Re:The polite, wired Canadians

[kevin lyda]

now that's not fair. livestock are not allowed to own guns in america. now if you meant *assholes" per square mile then ok...

Re:The polite, wired Canadians

[Anonymous Coward]

Statistically speaking, Americans are fat uneducated sloths while Canadians are educated, fit, and far more literate on average.

Sorry to say,
-The Angry American.

Worldcom/UUNet isn't....

[ChrisKnight]

When I had dual T1s installed to my office in June I was told by my UUNet tech rep that they were not offering IPV6 address space because they were not supporting it.

That pretty much kills any possibility that I'll be putting it to real-world use anytime soon.

-Chris

No need for panic

[nsayer]

I don't believe there's any need for concern with the way IPv6 addresses are being dished out.

Look at it this way:

IPv4 addresses were indeed first allocated badly. It can be said that it's unfair that apple.com and .jp both wound up with a class A (unfair to Japan, in this comparison). These legacy allocations are most of the reason we're in a mess with IPv4. In fact, it's the complexity of the non-default routing table at the heart of the Internet that is driving the transition more than the lack of address space.

Now. Let's pretend that we could snap our fingers and give every "site" on the Internet a *single* IPv4 address. That means that apple.com gets a single IPv4 address and every cable modem user gets a single IPv4 address. All of the class As and class Cs get freed up. All of a sudden there are a lot more addresses available.

That's the case with IPv6, except that the public hierarchy is SIXTEEN TIMES larger than that. Sites in IPv6 are supposed to get a single /48 prefix. A /48 is going to be sufficient for the largest of organizations. They can have 65,536 subnets, each with a potential 2^64 nodes. IPv4, in theory, was supposed to be subnettable. The problem is that if you want to cut a class C into 8 pieces, each of those pieces is only going to be able to have 32 hosts. It's this tight binding between the number of subnets and the number of possible hosts in the subnet that has resulted in the proliferation of switches and flat networks. That's not really how it is supposed to be.

IPv6 is designed to last us 50 years or so. Personally, I think it will last a lot longer than that.

There's something missing here

[XO]

I don't think it's that IPv6 gives anyone necessarily any new ability to create some awesome application that they couldn't already do with IPv4. The problem with this whole thing is, to create really radical new applications, we need the BANDWIDTH behind Internet2. And by just creating an IPv6 app, you don't get magic access to that bandwidth.

So, seriously, anyone have any wonderful ideas?

Re:There's something missing here

[nr]

I agree with that bandwidth is a cornerstone in succesfully deploying IPv6. I'm hacking on an IPv6 video-streaming plugin for the Gstreamer media framework on my spare time, it will be used to stream/broadcast realtime one-to-many video like Movies/Television/Music/Radio using IPv6 multicast in a codec independent fasion thanks to the flexible Gstreamer architecture. I'm alot into homecinema and satelite/cable stuff and it would be nice to be able to stream TV channels and movies (MPEG2/MPEG4) in good quality over the net.

I enjoy doing low-level network programming, like designing protocols, ponder upon network routing issues, etc. I got bored about doing IPv4 stuff for some years ago, so I moved into the IPv6 area in 98-99, after a while I got bored of doing IPv6 unicast stuff becouse that area are much covered today, not much design and research to be done there. IPv6 multicast is fairly new and un-expoited and are evolving quick, so its a fun area to be involved in, I'm part of a global IPv6 multicast research network called M6bone, most things revolve about research of new protocols like MLD and SSM and effecient multicast routing.

In a future world I would be able to stream video from my server at home to my Cellphone/PDA anytime via Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6) connectivity. Most new phones today have a IPv4 stack and color-screen but no IPv6 support in the phones yet. With Linux on the Ipaq I can get fully Mobile IPv6 in my pocket thru WiFi networks or wireless GSM/GPRS today if I wish.

I would like to see IPv6 being deployed in broadband networks to the homes, I think that would fuel IPv6 into mainstream usage in conjunction with P2P filesharing and true high-quality video streaming.

Enough ranting from my side. :-)

Re:There's something missing here

[XO]

Now, at this point, I still know zilch about IPv6 (haven't had time to dig into any of the i'm sure wonderful articles mentioned in this thread yet) but ... I'm sure I could after some doc reading and hacking get IPv6 operating on my LAN, but why would I bother?

I don't think my router (Linux 2.2) has IPv6 support, either. ..

Sure, I've got 100mbit across three of the four desktop computers and the laptops.. but.. why?

Re:There's something missing here

[Anonymous Coward]

The hope is that more ISP's will install multicast routers and big caches (like the Akamai network, but cheaper and standardised) so that bandwidth is used more efficiently. Of course more bandwidth will be used, but that is a good thing as the additional cost of bandwidth is very low. Unfortunately, I can't see this happening until society loosens its death grip on so-called intellectual property rights. At that point we may even be forced into glasnost by the failure of encryption algorithms against quantum computers.

Re:There's something missing here

[Anonymous Coward]

The real problem with the current multicast protocols is that routing data usually must be broadcast to the routers. Of course this scales even worse with reliable multicast protocols. The other ugly problem is that the IETF is not a standards body. Just look at all the 'messaging' and 'presence' protocols they have in working groups. I just don't think major ISP's are going to facilitate decent multicast chat service, nevermind large file distribution. Which means we are stuck with the massively inefficient and poorly named peer-to-peer systems. Maybe, though, I'm just pessimistic because my ISP had free(!) PIM-SM routing from their upstream provider and totally didn't care to set it up.

beautiful

[DrMrLordX]

you, sir, are a genious. Brilliant! +5 Insightful!

We need a mcast-enabled E-Donkey...

[Anonymous Coward]

With a P2P prog. that supports IPv6 multicasting
the ISPs would even see lower inter-network traffic!

Re:How about one that creates the slightest intere

[rplacd]

NTT has offeredIPv6 connectivity (both tunnels and native) in Europe and the States for about two years now. I don't know how long they've been operating in Japan (NTT is a Japanese firm). See this site for lots of information.

compare

[Anonymous Coward]

340282366920938463463374607431768211456 - ips with ipv6

4294967296 - ips with ipv4

Presentations required in PowerPoint format

[Skapare]

Read the standards for judgement page. They require PowerPoint format presentations. OK, does this mean I finally have to install an office package on my Linux workstation, such as Star Office or Open Office?

Re:Presentations required in PowerPoint format

[herc_mk2]

You could also submit them in Adobe Acrobat format (PDF), according to the Rules for Application. Although PDF is not really an "open" format, GhostScript will allow you to generate PDF files.

Well...

[TheSHAD0W]

They ought to do both. That way, if someone's ISP were firewalling him, he'd still be able to have a genuine IPv6 address.

but i thought...

[krammit]

...japanese competitions didn't reward knowledge. I thought they only punished ignorance... tv has lied to me again.

What about embedded systems

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, maybe in the near future all computers and its software will be able to handle ipv6. But wasn't one of the main features that there were so many addresses available that virtually each device could have it's own ip adress. I don't see many of those devices yet.

IPv6 in Europe

[vinlud]

Loads of info at http://www.6net.org/

Cheers!

What problem?

[TheLink]

Why should they renumber?

If you have two companies who want to talk to each other you can do this:

Company A internal network (private address)
|
Firewall A--Company A service B net
|
internet/other connection(e.g. vpn)
|
Firewall B--Company B service A net
|
Company B internal network (private address)

Company A can only talk to hosts in Company B's service network for Company A. And vice versa.

The _service_ networks could have private or public IPs, as long as they don't clash.

When two companies agree to talk, they just agree on using service network addresses that don't clash. No need to renumber everything behind.

In order to hook up their networks, Management needs help from people who know what they are doing? Good!

If the firewalls fail, they can't talk. Good!

If they haven't agreed to talk, then they can't talk. Good!

The internal networks don't have full access to each other? That's the idea dude!

Call me a BoFH, but where's the problem you and he are talking about?

Private addresses can help create situations where things are more likely to fail closed rather than fail open.

The reason for private networks is for privacy. You don't go around exposing your private nets to just anybody. Relationships between companies change. If companies merge, the pain of renumbering is minor when you look at the big picture.

Re:What problem?

[Minna Kirai]

In order to hook up their networks, Management needs help from people who know what they are doing? Good!

In my personal experience, it's more like

In order to hook up their networks, Engineers need permission from people who don't know what they are doing?
Bad!

Use DNS.

[TheLink]

In your case why don't you use DNS? There's more address space than IPv6, plus there's a lot more backward compatibility which IPv6 doesn't have.

Whilst in your house why not:

mylaptop.here
gamespc.here
tialaramex.here
ai rconditioner.here

Which resolve to private addresses.

If a host in Mongolia can reach my fridge, it better be because I INTENTIONALLY allowed it.
e.g.
fridge.mydomain.org-> public address.

Not because some stupid toy a kid left somehow routed to the global internet.

I agree we're running out of IPv4 space. But let's not use the wrong tool for the task, then say there's a problem, then propose using a tool that supposedly solves all sorts of problems, but barely works for the common case.

IPv6 has no backward compatibility. That's why it hasn't caught on. Maybe it's the only way to go, but if there is no backward compatible method, then it's going to take a lot of pain before people will switch.

Oops, math correction

[nsayer]

except that the public hierarchy is SIXTEEN TIMES larger than that

It's actually 16 bits larger, or 65,536 times larger.

But I can't let it go at that, because that's also a bit wrong.

The top 3 bits of IPv6 addresses are a format prefix. It cuts the address space into 8 pieces. The top and bottom ones are used for things like multicast, link local and IPv4 mapped addresses. One of them is the place where allocations are happening today - the Agregatable Global Unicast space. So if we lop off the top 3 bits from the 16, we get that the current allocation space is 12 bits, or 4096 times larger than the IPv4 space.

And we've got another 5 of those waiting in the wings if we need them.

Diffserve/IntServe

[germanbirdman]

I actually wrote a thesis about using IntServe/Diffserve for a video conferencing application across the internet.
It is a while ago now and I have had other things on my mind, but basically what I found out is that on the internet there is no real need for QOS as bandwidth is increasing all the time, satellite links are reolaces by fiber (less latency and delay, and a lot more bandwidth), fiber is being replaced by "thicker" fibers, etc.
Just to give you an idea of the amount of bandwidth available - only 2.9% of all fiber optic cables layed alongside powerlines, rail roads etc are actually lit. And those that are lit, thos in use for the internet only have a maximum use basically of 50%.
Also, in order to give certain datastreams priorities over others, you need to track these, which adds processing delays and with networks where bandwidth is not a problem - why do this?

Also, something often overlooked:
In order to actually give packets priority over others and shape the traffic depending on priotities, you need to queue at least 200 packets it was discovered by some researchers, otherwise the queuing algorithms just do not have enough data to actually put into different queues. Think of it this way, if the queues are empty, then of course the data is sent to the top priority queue and you gain nothing.

Basically, there are two concepts: Diffserve and Intserve.

Intserve goes against the nature of the internet (in my opinion), as it uses RSVP to set up a quasi-static route through the internet, does the reservations, and then the flows have to be monitored. Keeping track of individual flows on the backbone routers? No way! And if the route changes, all the reservations have to be done again. Intserve (IPv6 has a Flow Label to facilitate this) has no place on the internet backbone in my opinion.
Intserve is very useful though in an organisation, where you have control of the network, and to give certain flows priorities getting out of that bottleneck router to the internet and then let best effort scheduling do it's work.

DiffServe on the other hand is viable in my opinion as this is hop per hop based. Diffserve works by marking packets and assigning it a traffic class.
This is very useful when you have flatrate customers, and customers that have are willing to pay for bandwidth. Of course the routers could and may already mark traffic of those customers paying for bandwidth with a higher priority.

Something which I really like about Diffserve is the ability to give packets a drop priority ("Hello you little nice router, If you really need to drop a packet, please drop this one").
This could be very useful in the case of video over the internet where the network itself regulates the quality of the video. What I proposed in my thesis, was to have an algorithm that send the most important coefficients in a packet with a low drop priority, the next batch with a medium priority and the rest with a high one, and in addition to that also have the software on the other end report back some statistics so sending is also reduced.
What this is allows is to have video not stop, but just instantly become of less quality if there are congestions.
Speaking of congestions, they only exist till the packets they reach the backbone.
And of course getting down from them again.

What has my post got to do with IPv6? Well, IPv6 has a Flow Label and Traffic Class in the IP header which are for IntServe/DiffServe.
Ipv6 facilitates IntServe/Diffserve, but does not really add anything new in this respect. It just makes it easier to process, because it is always at the same place whereas this info in an IPv4 packet could be at varying locations due to the variable length of an IPv4 header.

Obligatory Simpsons quote

[tireg]

Homer: "Welcom to the Internet my friend how can I help you?"
Comic Book Guy:"I'm interested in upgrading my 28.8 kilobyte intenet connection to a 1.5 megabit fiber optic T-1 line. Will you be able to provide an IP router that's compatible with my Token ring internet LAN configuration?"
Homer:"Can I have some Money now?"

Will my hardware router require an update?

[AbRASiON]

Will it be upgradable at all?

I hate to post such low level questions as the average readership here is quite clued up but if someone doesn't mind answering a few questions for me, I'm sure others might benefit from it also?

What will ipv6 mean for my hardware switch (mototech 100mbit 8 port, "dumb" switch, not flashable) or my hardware router (billion adsl, firmware upgradable)

Will these things require an update by any chance? what other implications does ipv6 have for computing as we know it (or rather networking as we know it) at the moment?

thanks......

Yer *way* off...

[autopr0n]

Actualy, if you divide into /48, you've still got a whopping 80 bits left. Take off the 6 you mentioned (top 3 for format, multicast bit, link local, unicast), and we still have 74. So, we have room for 2^74 sites, or 2^42 times as large as the internet would be now, if each site had one IP, and we discounted things like the multicast address, etc. 2^42 is 4398046511104, not 4096 :)

You misunderstood

[nsayer]

We're both in violent agreement, but you misunderstood the argument slightly. I was drawing an equivalence between IPv4 addresses and IPv6 /48 site allocations. The equivalence is arguable if you compare the extra large per-site allocations in IPv6 to the use of NAT with IPv4 to achieve similar ends.

Why doesn't slashdot.org have IPv6 yet? + Solution

[fuzzel]

Hmmm:
8<-------------
jeroen@purgatory:~$ host -t aaaa slashdot.org
slashdot.org AAAA record currently not present
-------------->8

But:
8<-------------
jeroen@purgatory:~$ host -t aaaa slashdot.org.sixxs.org
slashdot.org.sixxs.org CNAME ipv6gate.sixxs.org
ipv6gate.sixxs.org AAAA 3FFE:4007:1:1:210:DCFF:FE20:7C7C
------------->8

http://slashdot.org.sixxs.org

Et tada.... Slashdot and every other IPv4 only site over IPv6 ;)
Read more about it on http://ipv6gate.sixxs.net