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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.'"
who's actually using IPv6? I know some use it privately within their org, but are there any publicly using it?
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.
come comment on the madness at http://slashdot.org/~phreak03/journal/
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.
$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.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
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.
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.
Sigh... remember when a good idea used to be worth $40 million?
-a
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
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
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..
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.
/etc/sysconfig/network and restart networking
/48 to each subnet in the building.
e.g RH Linux, set NETWORKING_IPV6=yes in
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
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.
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.
Better quit using TCP, then ...
:) -- and if their games are bandwidth hogs, maybe widespread QOS will force game-designers to write more efficient protocols.
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
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...
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...
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.