Slashdot Mirror
What's Your Timeline for IPv6 Migration?
SgtChaireBourne asks: "IPv4 has, over the last 20 years, seen unexpectedly wide adoption. During this time it's proven to be both flexible and robust, but also several problems, though once small, have grown. IPv6 looks to solve some scalability problems, add needed privacy and authentication mechanisms, address quality of service, and provide better routing and addressing capabilities. What kind of timeline does your site/institution/business have for rolling out IPv6 and how?" Those interested in IPv6 migration may also be interested in this article, from a year ago.
"Nobody else is, so why should we?"
That's basically the position we've taken for some reason where I work. Sure, we've been toying with grabbing a block and deploying it on some of our core routers across North America, but...there's no real need per se to do a serious deployment. Nobody's been asking for IPv6 either.
Maybe if there was a way to have mandatory conversion, things would move along a lot quicker.
In today's business climate, we can't imagine migrating without a financial incentive to do so.
IPv6 is like BetaMax tapes back in the 80's: sure, the format is technically better, but we've already got a ton of IPv4 gear and software. Even if you only use free software, there's still man-hours involved for implementation and planning. I pity the fella who walks into his boss's office and says, "Yeah, I'll be spending the next week on the IPv6 migration, getting all the desktops working, upgrading our router firmware, getting an IPv6 address from our ISP, etc."
IPv4 will work just like VHS tapes did: it'll be fine until the next dramatic quantum-leap comes along, like Tivos and DVD recorders will cut down on VHS recorder sales. IPv6 has some neat features, but nothing that a typical small business can't live without.
In the go-go-90's, you'd have been able to pull it off, but these days, if it ain't broke...
What's your damage, Heather?
I've already switched, but isn't it more important whether all the really huge backbone servers switch? I mean, the majority of them are using IPv4, so are they willing to shut down for a few moments to upgrade (assuming it takes that long)? If they switch, could that entail major loses in their companies income?
IPv6 Should be built alongside and parallel to current Inet. If it is done parallel to the Inet, we could fix alot of what is broken with the Inet.
Addressing is just one of the issues that IPv6 addresses, but the Parallel nature that I am proposing would fix things like Security, Spam, Porn, Enum, Virus, Streaming media, meta port assignments, directory services etc.
There is much more. Trying to build IPv6 ONTOP of the current Inet is just as broken as the current Inet.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Such a huge update would mean the end of anything less then WinXP in the Windows world, you aren't likely to see many companies completely upgrade every machine in an organization to WinXP until there is a business need, other then just being ready.
I'm thinking that it'll really start to get to the point where I will start using it in 2008. This is me speaking about my small hosting business as well as a member of the local Internet Cooperative. I'm sure I'll be playing with IPV6 in the next year or two to get up to speed on it.
At the moment you can't get IPV6 service from any of the large providers. And really only people on ipv6 can take advantage of it, so... Until a significant portion of the end-users have IPV6, I can't see that we'll have any real need to start using it in any real way...
It's, obviously, a chicken-and-egg thing. It was really pushed because of the "sky is falling" shouts about running out of IP space. Todays world seems like there's plenty of IP space, if you're not super wastful with it, and we have other problems to face like router table space and ASNs.
The other problem I don't think we really have ironed out right now is that the routers are really underpowered and optimized for ipv4 routing. I expect that having significant traffic on IPV6 is going to stress many of the bigger routers on the net to the point that they can no longer function. Lots of "big router" admins are already working hard getting the routers to handle current traffic.
Sean
Once IPv6 has a killer app, you will see widespread adoption. Until then, who really cares? There just isn't a real need for it.
Nobody -- not ISPs, not users -- is going to switch to IPv6 until they have a reason to do so. Private networks have obliterated (not just mitigated, in my opinion) the argument that IPv4 does not offer enough IP addresses for everyone. We have all the IP addresses we will ever need using IPv4 and NAT. That was once considered the main reason for IPv6 adoption. Now there isn't much of any reason to switch, other than the coolness factor that only techies will appreciate.
At that point, Marketing is going to turn to Management and ask "Why arn't we using this next generation networking technology?" To which Management is going to go to IS, and ask the same question.
IS is going to report the following.
Management is then going to ask "How long it will take to deploy?", and "How long do you expect to continue working here?". At different companies different emphasis is going to be placed on those two questions.
ISP's and CoLos will have the same set of problems. Large businesses are going to ask why they are not ready for IPv6, and will have to seriously look into how much longer it will take before they start loosing their big customers.
At that point, IPv6 will be discovered as already existing in just about every router and server OS that is out there. The exceptions will be hardware that is due for replacemnt shortly anyway.
People who have been fighting with silly problems with IPv4, will crack open the manuals on IPv6 and realize that almost 90% of the problems they have been fighting with, dhcp, ddns, IPsec, IPNat, are already built into the technology that they already have deployed and mearly need to add a few statements to interfaces on routers in their network.
The early adopters are going to move their CoLos out of the US to countries where the CoLos have already deployed IPv6 in their infrastructure. Some of them will prosper on the added business, some will not get it right and will fail.
Nay-sayers on Slashdot will point at the failures in the early adopters and say "I told you so, the technology ain't ready."
Are there problems with the above senario? Sure. There are problems with some of the deployed IPv6 stacks on some Cisco routers. There are questions about the efficacy of using some of the applications that businesses are using on IPv4 being migrated to IPv6. I understand that there are Novel 3.2 servers out there that are still in use because the company using the server has a functioning solution even if spport costs in the future are going to skyrocket.
Those of you complaining about being out of work, might want to spend some time at the library and brush up on both your IPv4 and IPv6 knowledge. You will then have a potential advantage over those people currently working, fighting with IPv4 problems and ignoring the possibility of using IPv6, because "No one has found a real need for it."
After all, I could be wrong.
-Rusty
You never know...
IPv6 is like BetaMax tapes back in the 80's
As with most attempts to use the BetaMax analogy in the computer world, this one fails: BetaMax was incompatible with VHS, period, end statement. If you had a Beta machine, VHS tapes were useless to you, and vice versa. IPv4 and IPv6 can happily co-exist, though. Totally different situation.
That said, I agree with the underlying premise that migration isn't going to happen until it's easy and cheap, and (moreover) there's some motivation out there. It's possible that this translates to "never"; it's also possible that it translates to "some time in the next 5-10 years". I'm reserving judgement for now, but I'll be amazed if I have to deal with IPv6 in less than five years.
It isn't really the service providers, but software providers. The tier-1 ISP's will not be able to run native IPv6 until their software providers for vital management tools (Concord, Micromuse,HP,InfoVista,Lucent) can provide the support. It would be impossible to manage a network in this time without quality management and reporting tools.
I cannot imagine that UUNET or a similar provider will move to IPv6 before they have the ability to manage it at the same level as they do now. Certainly the Tier-1's can make the decision to go, but not until their software can handle it.
Had IETF chosen to set aside of chunk of address space to permanently and portably allocate to serious deployers ... space that would not ever be taken back ... that could be kept forever as the payment for helping to make IPv6 happen ... then I think a lot of ISPs and businesses would have done this. Instead, what we have are 6bone addresses that will not be routable on the real IPv6, and tunnels that will be taken down soon, making those addresses useless. Sure, there is a routing scalability problem still in IPv6. The only benefit IPv6 has over IPv4 in routing is that there hopefully won't be a case of single companies advertising dozens of unaggregated prefixes ... or at least no more than one per major location. So shame on the IETF for not having solved that problem with a fundamentally new way to do routing in conjunction with the development of an addressing technology that now way overscales the ability to route it.
It's now a chicken and egg problem. ISPs simply will not, not in this economy, and not for years even after it gets better, make an investment in deploying IPv6 unless there is customer demand for it. Customers won't demand it until there is some real need for it, which is not the case, especially with so many businesses now running big LANs via one NAT'd IPv4 address. If some web site goes online with both IPv4 and IPv6, everyone will access it via IPv4 and that won't create any demand for IPv6. If they go online with IPv6 only, no one can reach them for a while, and they will probably not really make it.
But there are some possible ways to make IPv6 happen:
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
DJB wrote:
Local IPv6 addresses don't offer any advantages over 10.* IPv4 addresses.
they do, though. having true end-to-end communication means that peer to peer applications like voice over IP or BitTorrent actually work.
It also means that users on larger networks are actually accountable. if you have a way of uniquely identifying a machine from outside the network, abuse complaints actually mean something. if the secret service comes knocking on a network admin's door complaining about threats being sent from your network to president@whitehouse.gov you can't say "oh, we don't have any way of knowing which user sent that mail, because it didn't go through our mail server and all 5,000 machines on this network connect to the internet through the same IP address." chances are that you aren't logging every connection that goes through your nat gateway, and so your basically stuck holding the ball on that one.
Global IPv6 addresses don't work. Most client computers around the Internet can't talk to a server on a global IPv6 address, and most server computers around the Internet can't talk to a client on a global IPv6 address.
of course they do. every host in my home network has a globally routable ipv6 address (thanks to hurricane electric's tunnelbroker.net) and i can reach hosts at my colo provider that are set up via freenet6. i can also reach hosts at my school that are directly connected to the ipv6 backbone via nysernet.
All the operating systems I use have been claiming ``IPv6 support'' for years. But they still require manual action by the system administrator before they can talk to IPv6 addresses.
no they don't. radvd is like dhcpd on steroids. if your hosts are ipv6 capable, start up radvd on your ipv6 connected router and within seconds every one of them will have their own globally unique, routable ipv6 address.
(All of this boils down to a small protocol design error in IPv6. A small change to IPv6 software would make IPv6 addresses work without any administrator action. I have a web page, http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/ipv6mess.html [cr.yp.to], explaining this in much more detail.)
this page basically says two (false) things.
1) you can't use ipv6 and ipv4 at the same time, so if you switch to ipv6 now you can't reach 99.9% of the internet.
this is blatently false and you know it. ipv6 and ipv4 can co-exist on the same machine very well. on my ipv6 enabled network, every host has an ipv4 address from 10.0.0.0/8 and an ipv6 address from 2001:470:1f00:321::/64. my machines try to look up AAAA records on hosts first, and if one exists they try to connect to that ipv6 IP. if no AAAA record exists, or the host is unreachable via ipv6, the machine falls back to ipv4, looks up a host, and connects.
2) it takes a massive amount of work to convert all applications over to ipv6 and no one has even started on such a task.
this one is even more confusing. i've got ipv6 enabled apache, ipv6 enabled qmail, ipv6 enabled djbdns, ipv6 enabled mozilla/phoenix, ipv6 enabled xchat, ipv6 enabled internet explorer, etc. all of these applications on every modern OS have all been written to use ipv6 first, then fall back on ipv4.