An Introduction to IPv6

Playboy writes "Here is a great introduction to IPv6 in general, the technological background, the reasons for the move and the effects this will have on networks. Understandable for network novices like me but still includes many details on the technological side of things."

Comments

IPv6 by 2008? Who's he kidding?

[BridgeBum]

If this is a measure of when people will start using IPv6, the answer is today. It's already there. Every major TCP/IP stack out there supports IPv6. Tunnel networks exist through IPv4. Internet 2 uses it exclusively.

When are corporations going to start moving to IPv6? Who knows...that will depend on individual needs, but in general, large corporations aren't going to see a big need to move towards IPv6 any time soon. Without end user by in, who is going to 'force' people to use IPv6?

Yes, IPv4 space is running out. It has been for a long time. That's why Network Address Translation and private address space are so common in today's world. They may be hacks, but they do the trick. Where's the business case involved in reorganizing major networks?

Short Sighted?

[hubs99]

The article instantly delcares that IPv4 was short sighted because it didn't allow for enough IP address but is IPv6 any better? The articles states that it will allow every person in the world to have close to 10 IPs but with the expanding products that carry addresses could this be short sighted as well? Think about the products that people are getting or are supposed to have within the next 20 years.

Phone (Voip)
Cell
Computer (could be many)
TV (could potentially need IP)
Webcams

then we have the possible use that people keep proclaiming will happen

Fridges, and other appliances. This list could continue to grow and I could potentially see 100 being the closer value for many folks in many years. This being said of course not every person in the world is going to need lost of IP addy's since many people dont even need to use one now.

But just think how fast the growth of Ip-Address need has grown in the past 30 years and use that to predict the growth for the next 30. As soon as there are available addresses people will use them. The only reason they aren't being used as liberally now is because they are not available.

We might look back in 10 years and think how short sighted IPv6 was and why another 2 byes weren't just added to the protocol to make its growth laster for many, many,.... years.

Interesting math

[bojanb]

since there will now be enough IPv6 addresses available for each person on the planet to have 10 of their very own.

Heh, only if there is an "unexpected explosive expansion" of the human race. Last I checked, IPv6 address space is more than enough for a loooooooooot of addresses per capita.

Oh, and I almost skipped the obligatory bashing - his first reference at the bottom of the article is Understanding IPv6 by Microsoft Press.

Whatever happened to IPv5?

[waynegoode]

If you ever wondered what happened to IPv5, check here.

Now if we can just find out what happend to Netscape v5.

IPv6 Multi-homing

[mplex]

Last time I looked at IPv6, it seemed there was no way to multi-home hosts to two or more ISPs. Of course, this capability is essential for IPv6 to succeed. BGP has scaled pretty well thus far, but it is impossible to support peering on IPv6 like it is done on today's internet due to the size of routing tables and it's heirarchical nature. Anyone familiar with this problem or know if any progress has been made?

Re:I hate to ask a stupid question,

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Don't need to move entirely- just get a NAT that supports IPv4 on the LAN side and IPv6 on the WAN side. No problem.

I am missing some detail

[wafflemonger]

I was under the impression that a 128 bit addressing scheme was enough to directly address every molecule in the Universe with some bits left over. Why then is IPv6 limited to 60 thousand million addresses? I understand that some addresses cannot be used because of multicast addresses and some other things like that, but what other sort of limits reduces the available range down to such a (relatively) small number?

Re:yet another worthless article about IPv6

[attam]

Sorry but MIT, Apple, etc, as much as I respect their contributions to the human race, do not need a Class A. Allow for the redistribution of the IPs and we should be good to go for quite some time
last time i checked, there were only 4 class A's left (stanford was the fifth, but they gave theirs up a few years ago i believe)... so thats ~70mil addresses to give back. i dont believe that would makes us "good to go for quite some time"

Re:Poor planning? BS. Poor Math? Certainly!

[Spinlock_1977]

I thought it amazing that the designers of IP carved out a 32-bit address rather than 16. When there was just a couple of universities on the internet, who woulda though 4 billion addresses would eventually be needed? But our author says with IP v6, we get enough addresses for every person on the planet to have 10 of their own. Let's see... 5 billion people, 10 addresses each... 50 billion? IP v6 only offers up 10 times the address space? I don't think so!