Slashdot Mirror
The State of IPv6
Gnea writes submits this article "about the current state of IPv6, the Next Generation of Internet Protocol version 6, mostly according to Cisco. It's also an interesting roadmap about where and how IPv6 will proliferate around the world.. Apparently China has a grasp already with Korea and Japan, who leads the "Five key Chinese carriers, including China Telecom, China Unicom, China Netcom/CSTNET, China Mobile, China RailCom and CERNET (China Education and Research Network), are slated to join CNGI, building their own national IPv6 backbone independently, while interconnecting with at least two IPv6 IX." while Verio appears to have already tuned into some turnkey solutions recently that are publicly available."
And SgtChaireBourne writes "ZDNet is reporting that the EU and South Korea will collaborate to develop IPv6 applications and services. The agreement was finalized at the
Global IPv6 Service Launch Event in Belgium last week. There are good reasons to move to IPv6, including security, multicasting, simplified header structures, and better routing to name a few."
...if we don't quickly develop a plan to start working with IPv6. Most Pacific rim countries have already started, and for them, it is a matter of necessity. Since the US was responsible for a lot of the early internet (DARPA), we have the vast majority of the IPv4 addresses. Other countries (such as China) see IPv6 as a way to "equal the playing field" in addition to solving their "how do I get enough IPs for 1.2 billion people" problem.
libertarianswag.com
If China, South Korea, Japan move ahead of the US, with regard to broadband, the internet, and amount of homes hooked up to broadband, etc.?
If so how will this change our direction, or would it?
OK, we don't have anough addresses. Ok, lets firewall and subnet. Outcome? I can't connect directly to my friends's computer, and I can't run games (or any other) servers. Decentralised P2P suffers similarly. Rock on IPv6! I have my own IP address, unlike about 1/2 the people at my university and all my friends at other universities, and it's damn useful. Rock on IPv6!
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
IPv6 may have a better and safer design, but have you ever considered the software that's going to use it? I see networkrelated security issues popping up "all the time" with IPv4 software. Now, what will happen when we do move over to IPv6, which is in fact a more complex protocol? I have a feeling we will be seeing quite a few security reports on not only the various stack implementations, but also on userspace programs.
I guess I'm not quite sure I "get it", but why is NAT necessarily a "bad thing"? Because it's not "how it's supposed to be"? Because it's klugey? Bad design? Insecure?
... it basically needs to happen sooner or later. But what's wrong with IPv6 plus keeping NAT around? Or is it just the excitement of "We don't have to anymore!"?
I guess my thinking is, if I've got a house full of electronic devices (let's say a dozen computers, an IP-enabled toaster, fridge, television, etc.) I don't really need or want world-visible IP addresses on all of them. I'd like them to be just 10.* or whatever IP addresses, and if any communication ever needs to go on between them and the Internet they should necessarily go through some central house-server/router/firewall. I should have the option of having, say, three of the computers have world-visible IP addresses, but the rest having local 10.* addresses. But why make my toaster be visible to the Internet when, really, there's no need for him to be?
Or am I missing something terribly here?
Not to say that IPv6 isn't a good thing
Dlugar
Computer Go: Writing Software to Play the Ancient Game of Go
It's vital to Americans that the United States maintain it's lead as a technological innovator, because from a global economic perspective, what do we have left?
We don't really build anything here anymore. We have gotten out of the business or agriculture (We could, even now, provide enough food to end world hunger, but we don't.). Metaphorically, we are becoming a nation of gurus and burger flippers. We have people that can afford expensive cars, and people that wash them.
Our niche lies in development. If we are no longer the leader in that space, then the United States will be doomed to global mediocrity.
Domestically, we already have a kind of class warfare between the "Haves" and the "Have nots" (I don't particularly subscribe to that... It's closer to "Haves" and "Have laters." Even poor Americans have televisions and refridgerators.). Having enjoyed a prosperous history, America as a nation could not stomache becoming a nation of "Have nots."
IPv6 is coming... In some places, it's already arrived. In others, it'll be there Real Soon Now. It needs to find it's way here, and the sooner the better, for three reasons:
Making the switch today would be traumatic, because there are a lot of devices that need to be upgraded, modified, or otherwise reconfigured.
Further delay will only mean that there are even more devices that will need to be changed in the future. The Internet continues to grow explosively.
A conversion to IPv6 now would result in far less duplication of effort later.
For those that would die defending it, Freedom
has a sweet taste that the protected will never know.
I disagree. New technology brings new exploits and/or means to exploit. It's a myth to think exploits are going to hit a ceiling. As a given hacker's understanding of a given protocol or technology increases so will the chance of him cracking it somehow. While Code Red in its current incarnation may have been stimied, it is far more likely that a new "Code Red" would be implemented. In the short term, obscurity would be on your side but the more pervasive a technology the more likely it will be targetted.