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Dept. of Defense IPv6 Interoperabilty Test Begins
securitas writes "The Department of Defense has launched Phase I of its delayed IPv6 interoperability test (mirror) in a six-month project dubbed Moonv6. It is the largest North American IPv6 test ever and its goal is to evaluate IPv6 for 'network-centric military operations.'
Phase II was originally scheduled to begin in January 2004 but may be delayed due to the late start of the current test.
'IPv4 addresses are 32 bits long, enough for around 4 billion unique addresses.' In contrast, the IPv6 address length is '128 bits, or 340 billion billion billion billion unique addresses.'
Experts hope this will solve a predicted IP address shortage as more devices are created to use the Internet."
340 billion billion billion billion unique addresses.
That sounds like a number that I'd make up as a kid. "OH YEAH? Well when I grow up I'm going to have 340 billion billion billion billion hundred million thousand dollars!"
-- Dr. Eldarion --
'IPv4 addresses are 32 bits long, enough for around 4 billion unique addresses.' In contrast, the IPv6 address length is '128 bits, or 340 billion billion billion billion unique addresses.'
Once again proving that size does matter.
I hope the DOD isn't building a network larger than this, why the heck would they waste the money on millions of machines that would be needed to be larger than the 6bone was. I can see claims that it is the largest single entity deployment of IPv6 - now that would be a useful claim
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
"Experts hope this will solve a predicted IP address shortage as more devices are created to use the Internet. Otherwise, DOD officials will fast track their Laser Population Control (LPC) program."
Whatever happened to IPv5? What was special about it?
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
I am still not giving up my NAT!
Be it the cause, or just fall-out, I don't see NAT's disapearing. In fact, I see quite the opposite. Now that protocols or firewalls are getting smarter with NAT, I can see a lot less need for public address space.
And before someone mentions their cell phones, exactly who plans on hosting services from their phones anyways?
Implementing Phone based IPv4 private IP's is just as difficult as implementing IPv6 public IP's. Each phone will have a MAC, and you will have a DHCP-like mechanism to establish an ip/route/subnet, etc..
The only difference is that you can't host services on your phone that are internet addressable. Darn.
Bye!
In contrast, the IPv6 address length is '128 bits, or 340 billion billion billion billion unique addresses.' Experts hope this will solve a predicted IP address shortage as more devices are created to use the Internet."
They HOPE that 340 billion billion billion billion unique addresses will solve the shortage...
That's like "hoping" that a 100megaton nuclear weapon will dislodge the stubborn tree stump near the driveway. I think it'll work.
- Sir, what is your IP adress?
- It's eight five six charlie zero fox alpha three niner zero six file nine charlie fox fox nine charlie zero six three two zero one one zero zero one alpha one two four eight five six charlie...
- I am sorry, can you start over?
- IT's eight five six charlie zero fox alpha three niner zero six file nine charlie fox fox nine charlie zero six three two zero one one zero zero one alpha one two four eight five six charlie zero fox alpha three niner zero six file nine charlie fox fox nine charlie zero six three two zero one one zero zero one alpha one two four.
- Sorry, I didn't get the part after "zero zero one"?
- ONE ONE THREE CHARLIE FOX SIX THREE
- Three?
- @#$^%$#$%!!!
grisha.org
There are a lot of good reasons for everyone to upgrade. There is a good article over at CommsWorld about this. Basically the main reason for upgrading is innovation. Once everyone can attach a public IP address to all of their devices, there will be a lot of cool stuff that will come out.
(Note: the article was originally linked to from CircleID)
I run 4 nameservers. I don't look foward to typing
well, you get the idea...All's true that is mistrusted
IPv6 should eliminate NATs. The people who enjoy the false security (prevention of inbound connections) that NAT provides will keep using them.
However, I see no reason for most people to use them. With this many IP addresses, there's no reason why every connection can't be given 255 (or more) IPs. For example, I connect with my cable modem. Where's the hurt in giving me 255 IPs to use? If this is the standard, filtering shouldn't be any problem. And say I've got 10 computers on a LAN. Rather than use a NAT, I can simply assign every machine their own IP.
Every machine can now create incoming and outgoing connections on all ports, as they (and TCP/IP) were designed to do in the first place. This will be a wonderful thing for many home users who simply won't pay for more IPs, and for businesses who will no longer have to pay as much for many IPs.
IP address space is currently scarce. Limited supply with increase in demand = increase in price. IPv6 will dramatically increase the supply, decreasing the price, and making (most) everybody happy.
Here is a web site and project that tracks how IPv4 addresses are allocated and misused, i.e. hijacked: http://www.completewhois.com/statistics/index.htm
The way I read it, a huge percentage of IPv4 addresses are not even being used...
Um, NAT blows. People that use NAT are using a broken routing spec. NAT is NOT an acceptable solution.
With built in things like IPSec + Auto Config it will help the DOD deploy things quickly and securly. Of course for the rest of us it might take another 5-10 years before all running on IPv6
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
I just whipped up a spreadsheet.
2^128 is enough IP addresses to give 2.68*10^15 addresses to every square millimeter of surface area of every planet in the solar system, plus the moon, Charon, and the Galilean Jovian satellites.
That should last a while. But I'm all for overkill. I was glad when Maxtor finally punted and made BigDrive able to address a BIG ASSED address space; if you're redefining a standard, no point in just doubling it or even *16; go big!
IPv6 improves upon IPv4 in a number of ways:
One of the principle design goals of IPv6 was to simplify the workload for routers. IPv6 achieves this in a number of ways:
1. Part of the reason that IP addresses are so long is that part of the address space is being used for an improved addressing hierarchy. In turn, this will allow routers to maintain much shorter routing tables.
2. IPv6 routers not longer fragment IP datagrams
3. IP Header checksums are been removed
As many people have noted, the IPv6 addressing structure supports a much larger number of IP addresses. Experts are predicting that the number of IP addresses required are going to increase enormously in a relatively short amount of time. Most people are familiar with cell phone adoption rates and the impact on IP address assignment. Potentially a more interesting example is the impact of new PC bus architectures on networking models. Intel has announced a new bus architecture titled PC-Express. What makes PC Expressing interesting is that it applies a data networking model to the PC bus. [Thinking addresses, flow control, retransmissions, etc] Where this gets interesting is that PC Express can be scaled from the level of a PC bus up to an enterprise class switching fabric. Once this gets widely deployed, there is no reason why the processor on one system could not control the video card on another. We are rapidly migrating to a model in which all sorts of peripherals - processors, sound cards, hard drives - will need to be configured with their own IP addresses.
IPv6 provides much better support for autoconfiguration. This is critically important for the consumer electronics manufacturers in the Asia/Pacific.
IPv6 requires IPSec, so we might finally get pervasive network layer security. I'll be very happy to get rid of abominations like "SSL VPNs".
There is a LOT of good stuff coming down the pike.
Does anybody know why TPTB decided on 128 bits for IPv6? 64 would have been more than enough. IP addressing is not like memory or disk space, where you can envisage ever-increasing requirements. It's an addressing scheme for devices. 64-bit addresses are big enough to have nearly a billion uniquely addressable devices for every human being on Earth. Why isn't that enough, even allowing for some spare bits to make address-assignment easier? Do you plan to ask for a billion addresses for the billion devices you plan to attach to the Internet?
I don't think thats very likely. Its much more likely that someone would be assigned their own subnet. That way everything you have will have its own ip address. Sure, thats all tinfoil hat stuff for most stuff but when you can traceroute6 to your keys to find its one hop from "couch" you'll wonder how you ever did without it.
Hypothermal dumbells? Cold weights? You guys are all off your heads, or are on crack, or something. Start speaking some sense here please. Slashdot used to be a great site back in the 80s.
Get your own free personal location tracker
Um...actualy yes, but not for that reason. According to cisco recommendations for ipv6 access services, it is suggested that a /48 subnet is given to each access server. The access server can then proceed to assign a /64 subnet to each ppp client (modem,ISDN,adsl you name it) that connects. The IPCP phase of the ppp will be abolished hence the address,prefix,default route and mtu assignment in the link will be done through address autoconfiguration which is the default method in ipv6. One good thing is that the access server will actually be able to remember the subnet you were given last time, so your address will be mostly the same for large periods of time. Also you won't have to use nat (unless a /64 prefix is not enough for you!!!) as you can use any number of machines you like behind the connection.
Oh, one last thing, your ethernet network card may have only 48 bits address, but the 48 bit address is converted to a 64 bit address which is called EUI-64 address. This is done to include in the EUI-64 space all kinds of link technologies, not only ethernet but also token ring etc
Yes, you can use hexadecimal numbers, and I think I'd recommend it too. :-)
::ffff:1.2.3.4. ::1 in shorthand form. ::0.
There are some "address concatenation" features/rules to make IPv6 addresses shorter.
- You can skip leading zeroes.
- One sequence of 16 bit blocks of zeroes can be replaced by a double colon -- "::", but not more than once.
Some examples:
- An IPv4-mapped IPv6 address:
- IPv6 address 3ffe:ffff:100:f101:0:0:0:1 becomes 3ffe:ffff:100:f101::1 in short form.
- 127.0.0.1 in IPv4 (localhost), i.e. 0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0001 in IPv6, becomes
- 0.0.0.0 in IPv4 (anyhost), i.e. 0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000 in IPv6, becomes
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Experts hope this will solve a predicted IP address shortage as more devices are created to use the Internet.
This falls into the general category "Death of Internet Predicted". The internet is not running out of IPv4 addresses at the rate predicted in the early '90s, for a number of reasons, including NAT (whether you like it or hate it) and the simple fact that not everyone who wants to browse the web needs a publicly routable address.
Much better reasons for adopting IPv6 is that autoconfiguration is to a large degree built into the protocol (including its associated ICMP messages) and doesn't have to be done by a separate mechanism like DHCP. Also, IPv6 has a fixed length, small packet header, which should make it easier to do all sorts of routing tasks.
If you're running a Linux or BSD kernel, check out one of the many 6to4 tunnel brokers to get onto the 6bone or your own friendly neighborhood IPv6 backbone.
Marklar: marklar
While that's certainly the sensible point of view, who says that ISPs, especially large commercial providers, are going to break with the one-connection, one-machine business model they've held so far? While they currently allow NAT because there's really no technical way to prevent it, connecting more than one computer is still against most ISPs' terms of service.
Ultimately, you're coming at it from the wrong end, asking why they shouldn't give you more than one. I suspect the thought processes are closer to "so why on earth should we give out more than one IPv6 address?"
NAT != firewall.
NAT without a properly configured firewall is basically a false sense of security, and is trivially easy to get around.
If you have a proper firewall in place to protect your machines, (i.e. block all unauthorised inbound and outbound ports) with NAT as well, then fine. But NAT is a one-to-many hack, not a security feature.
IPv6 will mean you won't have to use all the kludgy port forward hacks you do when using NAT, while still being able to protect machines properly with a firewall.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
Of course, you can Google for yourself, but it's apparent from some previous posts that some of you don't have access to Google. So, to you, cheers.
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely. E. Tufte
Shortage, perhaps not, however why do I have to pay more for more than 5 static IPs with SBC? Why does another local SDSL provider (Arrival.net) charge $5/month/ip? If there was no shortage, and some ISPs were just giving away addresses like it was nothing, then I would say it wasn't a problem. Right now, the problem is that there is a finite amount of addresses, so ISPs will only give out as many as you can justify, as they have to justify them to ARIN/RIPE/APNIC.
/48. That's /16 worth of /64s (/64s being what you commonly assign to a LAN to use automatically addressing with EUI-64). In other words, I've got the equivalent of a Class B worth of networks to play with, or 65536 /64 netblocks, just for my company.
/64 and then have a nearly unlimited amount of nodes online without the ISP having to micromanage IP allocations.
/64 for a single end user or a /48 for a company, you just do it. Yes, a company with a /48 should allocate it internally as wisely as possible to minimize routing tables, etc., but that's a given already with IPv4 RFC1918 addressing.
The same is somewhat true of IPv6 allocations, except that the allocations are HUGE in comparison. From Sprintv6 we received a
The advantage with IPv6 deployments is that every subscriber of an ISP could easily have a
My point is that you don't think about if you can justify allocating a
People on Earth: ~6,349,797,441
IP per person: ~5.358948377215462*10^28