An Introduction to IPv6

yet another worthless article about IPv6 by garcia · 2004-09-09 07:20 · Score: 4, Insightful

Introduction to IPv6 #1004040... This has been brought up every six months or so for quite some time and I usually post the same shit about how it's not practical at this time period for much other than reverse DNS on IRC. But this "article" is yet another worthless explanation of the same old shit.

Take for example the following IPv6 address: 43FB:0000:0000:0000:0000:BB3F:A0A0:0000 This could be shortened to 43FB::BB3F:A0A0:0 instead. Now you might ask: "What's up with the double colon?" If you thought that, good for you. You've seen something many people would not have seen on their first try. The double colon (aka "::") signifies that we have removed a series of hexadecimal blocks from the address. These will always be contiguous zeros. AKA "0000:0000:0000:0000" can be shortened to just "::". Therefore when you see the double colon in an IPv6 address, it can be automatically assumed that they are all zeros.

Ahh yes, "simplifying IPv6 addresses". No, there is nothing simple about remembering those addresses (haven't there been studies that say 7-10 numbers in a row is about all we can remember?) So here we have 10+ numbers and letters that don't make much sense (yeah some people have gotten vanity IPv6 addresses like ABCD::BEEF::). Nothing is simplified there until you get the DNS up and running for it (not that this is hard or anything but it isn't exactly easy)

It is true that IPv6 is not human friendly; however, in the long run, it will help solve a lot of issues with the current shortage of available IPv4 addresses on the internet.

Yeah, the "shortages"... Just tell the people hoarding all the damn addresses to hand them over. 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.

Be thankful people don't have unlimited IPs in their house. Most people that want to have multiple computers connected to the Internet use a NAT router and at least protect themselves SOMEWHAT from the outside threats. Can you imagine what would happen if all the Comcast retards were straight to the Net with their own IP on each computer?

ISPs make some good money (hell mine gets $5/mo more out of me for an additional IP) selling off static/dynamic IP space. You think Comcast is going to move for a switch when they make $10/mo per extra IP?

Re:yet another worthless article about IPv6 by stratjakt · 2004-09-09 07:37 · Score: 5, Funny

Studies show that monkeys can be trained to remember 10 numbers.

You're not dumber than a monkey are you? /simpsons

--
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Re:yet another worthless article about IPv6 by smclean · 2004-09-09 07:40 · Score: 5, Insightful

I think you are being just a liiitle overly pessemistic here.
Who cares if its card to remember an IPv6 address? Do you really memorize multiple IPs from multiple subnets that often? I can personally only think of 2 subnets I have memorized right now, and I work as a system admin full time.
As for the shortages, you think that it's a good idea to have scarcity in the IP market just so people will be encouraged to run NAT? I think its presumptious of you to force conditions on me, personally I'd love to have IPs for each machine in my house, but I can't because IP addresses are hard to come by.
And your last point, yes, ISPs are scumbags, but it seems that the fact that they price gouge for IPs would make you for IPv6, not against it.

--
"'Yrch!' said Legolas, falling into his own tongue."
Re:yet another worthless article about IPv6 by garcia · 2004-09-09 07:43 · Score: 2, Interesting

As for the shortages, you think that it's a good idea to have scarcity in the IP market just so people will be encouraged to run NAT? I think its presumptious of you to force conditions on me, personally I'd love to have IPs for each machine in my house, but I can't because IP addresses are hard to come by.

Sysadmins and regular Slashdot readers are in the minority. Personally I'd rather have the Comcast weenies behind a single firewall... Then I wouldn't have to block entire /16's to stop their worms from hammering me.
Re:yet another worthless article about IPv6 by tuffy · 2004-09-09 07:44 · Score: 2, Insightful

Be thankful people don't have unlimited IPs in their house. Most people that want to have multiple computers connected to the Internet use a NAT router and at least protect themselves SOMEWHAT from the outside threats. Can you imagine what would happen if all the Comcast retards were straight to the Net with their own IP on each computer?

People are going to buy some sort of all-in-one switch to connect their home computers to the internet as well as to each other, and that device will undoubtedly have a built-in firewall. That'll help secure the consumer-built home networks while unfucking the internet by removing NAT and its port-forwarding hacks.

--
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
Re:yet another worthless article about IPv6 by Enigma_Man · 2004-09-09 07:51 · Score: 2, Interesting

As a Comcast customer, I resemble that remark! :) Anyway, there aren't any other options in this area for something reasonably cost effective, for the bandwidth that I get. There's a large wireless network in the nearby area, but they won't deal with individuals, and barely offer better than 56k dialup speeds.

As someone who wishes they weren't supporting Comcast, and is reasonably technically-oriented, what alternatives could anybody suggest?

-Jesse

--
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
Re:yet another worthless article about IPv6 by attam · 2004-09-09 07:54 · Score: 3, Interesting

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:yet another worthless article about IPv6 by Have+Blue · 2004-09-09 07:58 · Score: 5, Insightful
Be thankful people don't have unlimited IPs in their house. Most people that want to have multiple computers connected to the Internet use a NAT router and at least protect themselves SOMEWHAT from the outside threats. Can you imagine what would happen if all the Comcast retards were straight to the Net with their own IP on each computer?

Not all that much different from today, for 2 reasons:
- 0wned PCs getting abused tend to max out the connections they are attached to. Once that happens, it doesn't matter if the traffic is coming from 1 PC or a hundred- only 1 upstreams' worth of bad packets are getting onto the net.
- I would wager that the vast majority of people who tend to get 0wned have only 1 computer. Any house with 2, 3, or more probably has at least one person in it who knows about security.
ISPs make some good money (hell mine gets $5/mo more out of me for an additional IP) selling off static/dynamic IP space. You think Comcast is going to move for a switch when they make $10/mo per extra IP?

If anything, they would take this chance to wage a renewed campaign of "you don't really need that router, please buy multiple IPv6 addresses".
Re:yet another worthless article about IPv6 by airConditionedGypsy · 2004-09-09 08:19 · Score: 3, Insightful

I would wager that the vast majority of people who tend to get 0wned have only 1 computer. Any house with 2, 3, or more probably has at least one person in it who knows about security.
I'll take that wager. It would be interesting to see the distribution of security experts to households with computers. Sure, some households may have folks that know enough to go to windowsupdate every couple of weeks, but I'll bet you that qualified security professionals are quite scarce, and there certainly isn't any proof that a household with 3 or 4 computers is different than a household with 1 computer in terms of the number of persons familiar with security.
Mom's machine, Dad's workstation, Billy's gaming machine, Suzie's laptop ...

--
I bootleg Fizzy Lifting Drinks.
Re:yet another worthless article about IPv6 by shawn(at)fsu · 2004-09-09 08:19 · Score: 4, Insightful

and that device will undoubtedly have a built-in firewall

And that device will undoubtedly have a defult password of admin.

Oh just think of the phone were going to have ;)

--
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
Re:yet another worthless article about IPv6 by falzer · 2004-09-09 08:27 · Score: 2, Funny

Well, how big of a monkey?
Re:yet another worthless article about IPv6 by pHDNgell · 2004-09-09 08:53 · Score: 2, Insightful

Most people that want to have multiple computers connected to the Internet use a NAT router and at least protect themselves SOMEWHAT from the outside threats.

Again, NAT does not enhance security. It just doesn't. I don't understand why people think it does. The thing that enhances security is your firewall. So instead of pretending like you get security because connections aren't mapped in, you ship home routers with a rule that says no connections may be established from the ``outside'' to the ``inside.'' Done. Then when someone wants an incoming connection, they tell the firewall to allow it.

It works exactly like doing a new NAT mapping and allowing the traffic, except you don't have to do a NAT mapping and allow the traffic, you just allow it. Oh, and if you have two computers you want to do the same kind of thing, you allow it to two computers rather than trying to decide which one of your web servers gets port 80.

NAT does nothing good for the internet. It causes confusion, it breaks protocols, it prevents certain types of connectivity from being possible.

--
-- The world is watching America, and America is watching TV.
Re:yet another worthless article about IPv6 by jadavis · 2004-09-09 10:59 · Score: 3, Insightful

That's another "restrict their freedom for their own good" argument.

The internet is successful because there is little central control (aside from DNS). When you start trying to solve other people's problems by mandating network policy, you end up with the "smart network, dumb terminal" philosphy of the phone network.

The internet doesn't work when Joe can't connect to Jane because they're both behind NAT. By discouraging IPv6, and therefore forcing NAT upon large parts of the internet, you drastically limit the number of possible connections that users can make.

Just because browsing and email work fine behind NAT doesn't mean NAT isn't limiting other new applications of the internet. And just because you can't think of new applications doesn't mean that the millions of people trapped behind NAT can't.

In fact, people already have, and they get stuck behind NAT all the time. Game servers, P2P apps, etc.

--
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
Re:yet another worthless article about IPv6 by NoMoreNicksLeft · 2004-09-09 12:17 · Score: 2, Funny

The size of the monkey isn't linearly proportional to the number of characters it can remember.

The proper equation for describing the curve involves avocadoes, imaginary numbers, and a pet chinchilla in Memphis named "Earl".
Re:yet another worthless article about IPv6 by Dmala · 2004-09-09 14:21 · Score: 2, Insightful

In fact, I'd be willing to bet that there are a lot of multiple computer households that are *much* worse off, because they are run by someone who *thinks* they know about security.
Re:yet another worthless article about IPv6 by jadavis · 2004-09-09 15:06 · Score: 2, Insightful

Creating game servers, etc, usually requires having an outside server with a dedicated IP address.

The reason the internet is successful is that every user is a peer. One computer may be a server and the other a client, but the server could just as easily be the client and the client could just as easily be the server.

Unless, of course, the client is stuck behind NAT and can't be a server. Maybe he could ask his ISP or sysadmin for permission to recieve incoming connections on a specific port.

When you tell some users that they aren't good enough to be servers, they miss out on potential applications. An example may be to create a game server and ask your friend to connect, or if you need to send your friend a large file over ftp and both of you are behind NAT.

--
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.

I'll just wait.... by callipygian-showsyst · 2004-09-09 07:21 · Score: 4, Funny

I'll just wait for W. Richard Steven's book on IPV6. That'll explain everything.

--
Best Buy can have you arrested

Re:I'll just wait.... by bloggins02 · 2004-09-09 07:34 · Score: 2, Funny

Error in AnonymousCoward.pl (line 42): Sense of humor not found. Please repost and try again.
Re:I'll just wait.... by ceswiedler · 2004-09-09 07:36 · Score: 5, Informative

He's passed on (hence the joke, I get it) but in his TCP/IP Illustrated books, he discusses IPv6 thoroughly, including how to write applications to use either protocol seamlessly.
Re:I'll just wait.... by pchan- · 2004-09-09 12:42 · Score: 2, Funny

sure, you guys are thinking that upgrading to an IPv6 is going to be sweet. you'll have tons of torque, and your computer is gonna jump off the line. what most people don't consider when going to IPv6 is all the wasted space under the hood. the v configuration of your packet driver requires a split header design, taking up space on both sides of your cpu. your motherboard will need twin exhausts, and that's really going to take away alot of the space in the case. plus, when you're trying to download slowly, you'll be eating up alot of power just idling that big thing.

that's why i'm switching to IPI6. the inline cylinders make for a faster revving processor, and the headers all fold to one side of the block. not as much torque, sure, but plenty of horsepower on tap when you really want it. the block is really not that much longer than IPv4, and you still have room for the front tie-rods if you want to upgrade to 4 cpu-drive.

well, that's my plan, anyway. for now, i'll just buy a big wing and carbon fiber case-mod and stick it on my IPv4 computer until i get promoted to shift-manager.

Not a bad start...but a couple of things on IPv6.. by Agent+Green · 2004-09-09 07:21 · Score: 5, Insightful

It's not a bad introduction, but since this is slashdot, I've got a couple of things that I want to point out:

The article suggests that DHCP will no longer be necessary. This is not necessarily true. IPv6 autoconfiguration will get you an address to get onto the net at large, but it will not give you your DNS servers, time servers, or any number of goodies that DHCP is capable of serving up. Autoconfiguration does remove the neeed to define all kinds of crazy scopes, but it doesn't help with other configurable options.

There is exists a problem with multihoming small entities that need provider diversity in IPv6. Some companies are assigning each customer their own NLA, or /48s, giving the customer 16 bits of addressing power. However, customers of Tier 2 ISPs will only get a couple SLAs or so. If I am a small business with one of the SLAs, there is still the problem of BGP multihoming with this address space, and this absolutely needs to be resolved in the not-so-distant future. I don't think there's a facility where I can go to ARIN and request my own /48 to annouce, say, between Level 3, MCI, and AT&T. While this might not make a difference to most people, it is a problem on the transport side of the house.

--
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us

idiot by BoldAC · 2004-09-09 07:21 · Score: 5, Funny

I didn't understand why we needed IP6 until one of the guys at work described why he wanted each of his light switches to have its own IP address...

Idiots... ...that's why we need IP6.

(just kidding, boss)

AC

Poor planning by MikeMacK · 2004-09-09 07:23 · Score: 5, Insightful

The simple answer is that it is due to the very poor planning in the creation and implementation of IPv4 coupled with the unexpected explosive expansion of the internet.

Was it poor planning? The article states that there was an unexpected explosive expansion of the Internet. I believe it's like the Y2K problem, they didn't think their programs would still be in use around 2000, so they only needed to store a two digit year. The same happened here, they didn't realize the Internet would become the World Wide Web, the New Economy, etc. Hell, even Bill Gates didn't see it coming.

Re:Poor planning by smclean · 2004-09-09 07:49 · Score: 4, Insightful

NAT may provide us with a nearly infinite number of IP addresses, but none of the addresses behind NAT are not properly addressable; each one can only get ports forwarded to it from the external IP address.
Therefore, there are only as many port 80's out there as IP addresses, and NAT cannot change that. IPv6 can.
To me, NAT is just a hack. Having a handful of real IPs is to me much preferable than one IP, NAT, internal IPs, and a massively complex forwarding ruleset.
Therefore, yay IPv6.

--
"'Yrch!' said Legolas, falling into his own tongue."
Re:Poor planning by Neil+Watson · 2004-09-09 07:57 · Score: 2, Insightful

Not enough organizationgs utilizing NAT. Also, many organizations in the USA have huge blocks of IPs reserved that they could never possibly use. I seem to recall reading that one university has an entire class A block.

--
UNIX/Linux Consulting
Re:Poor planning by datawar · 2004-09-09 11:06 · Score: 2, Informative

Not surprisingly, it's MIT. They own 018.x.x.x
Re:Poor planning by mark-t · 2004-09-09 14:20 · Score: 2, Insightful

Actually, with IPv6, machines behind a NAT _can_ be properly addressable, just as if they were "directly connected" to the Internet.
The key to it all is the "extension header" support that is part of IPv6. You would use multiple headers, in a IP packet. The outermost one referring to the IP of the NAT. The NAT then strips the first header out and forwards the remainder of the packet onwards. For outbound packets, the opposite happens... it adds an extension header indicating the IP address of the NAT. The actual data within the IP packet remains unaltered in all of this. so if a system isn't interested in raw IP, they won't see all the extension header stuff at all, only the original data that was sent. The construction of the appropriate extension headers could all be underneath the hood unless one were using raw IP, and the application programmer would not in general ever have to worry about it.

--
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'

Home by Rubberpants.net · 2004-09-09 07:23 · Score: 4, Funny

There's no place like 0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1

Re:Home by evil.pringle · 2004-09-09 07:29 · Score: 2

and its theres no place like ::1

anyway from tfa: " Another positive outcome of IPv6 will be better internet routing using QoS, Quality of Service, which routes packets based on priority. So for example, if one person is pinging a server and another is downloading a file, the one pinging will have less priority in their data transmission than the one downloading a file because the user who is downloading a file from has created a data stream which will automatically gain more priority over the simple ICMP data packets."

and is it just me or does QoS on the backbone seam like a bad idea?

--
mmm... plain old text.
Re:Home by leerpm · 2004-09-09 07:48 · Score: 3, Informative

No, ::1 is the home/localhost/loopback address. ::0 is when you have no assigned IP address, logically equivalent to 0.0.0.0 in IPv4.

Typo? by TonyTheTiger · 2004-09-09 07:26 · Score: 4, Funny

Is that a typo in the department line or is it intentional?

Either way it's hilarious.

I for one... by Artie_Effim · 2004-09-09 07:27 · Score: 3, Funny

I for one, welcome our new 128 bit overlords!

Re:Not a bad start...but a couple of things on IPv by segfault7375 · 2004-09-09 07:28 · Score: 4, Funny

You seem to understand the technical issues very well... Sorry, but since this is /. you must leave this discussion immediately.

Here's hoping. by r00k123 · 2004-09-09 07:30 · Score: 4, Funny

from the unless-you're-to-smart-for-it dept.

Please, oh please, let that be a joke...

Understatement of the week? by Daverd · 2004-09-09 07:31 · Score: 2

Quoth the article:
Nats will also no longer need to be used as there will no longer be a need for IP address conservation since there will now be enough IPv6 addresses available for each person on the planet to have 10 of their very own.

I might be mistaken, but I thought I'd heard that IPv6 provides more than enough IP addresses to have one for every atom in the universe. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Re:Understatement of the week? by bloggins02 · 2004-09-09 07:39 · Score: 2, Informative

Well, it is estimated that there are ~10^80 particles in the entire universe. Meanwhile there are ~2^128 addresses in IPv6.

So, since 2^128 > 10^80, then yes.
Re:Understatement of the week? by Y2 · 2004-09-09 09:37 · Score: 2, Informative

there will now be enough IPv6 addresses available for each person on the planet to have 10 of their very own.
I might be mistaken, but I thought I'd heard that IPv6 provides more than enough IP addresses to have one for every atom in the universe. Correct me if I'm wrong.
I think there was an exponent on that 10 which didn't make it into the HTML transcription. The right exponent would be about 27.
But counting how many addresses per particle or atom or gram is not actually interesting. (Press coverage notwithstanding.) It's what you can do with all that elbow room, like autoconfiguration and perhaps location-independent endpoint identifiers. (Which we almost but not really got.)

--
"But all your emitter and collector are belong to me!"
Re:Understatement of the week? by datadood · 2004-09-09 10:21 · Score: 2, Informative

Actually 2^128 is ~10^38 so there aren't enough addresses for every particle in the universe but each person on earth could have ~10^28. I think that's enough, for now at least.

IPv6 by 2008? Who's he kidding? by BridgeBum · 2004-09-09 07:32 · Score: 5, Interesting

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?

--
My UID is the product of 2 primes.

Short Sighted? by hubs99 · 2004-09-09 07:33 · Score: 3, Interesting

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.

Re:Short Sighted? by barcodez · 2004-09-09 07:43 · Score: 4, Informative

The most obvious distinguishing feature of IPv6 is its use of much larger addresses. The size of an address in IPv6 is 128 bits, which is four times larger than an address in IPv4. A 32-bit address space allows for 2^32 or 4,294,967,296 possible addresses. A 128-bit address space allows for 2^128 or 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,45 6 (3.4 × 1038) possible addresses.
The population of the earth is ~6 billion (US billion). So 56,713,727,820,156,410,577,229,101,238 each

--

----
Re:Short Sighted? by FictionPimp · 2004-09-09 08:03 · Score: 2, Funny

No, your wrong. I predict you will only need 1 IP.
It will be for your phone/computer/webcam/digital camera/mp3player/microwave/fridge/sex toy/stun gun/car/shower/beer/goatse combo device.
Re:Short Sighted? by Enigma_Man · 2004-09-09 08:28 · Score: 2, Informative

Some quick google-based calculations for number of IP addresses for every square inch of the surface of the earth (including the ocean):

(2^128) addresses / (7.9*10^17) square inches on earth = 4.3*10^20 addresses/in^2... That's a lot.

But then again, they probably thought it was a lot to begin with :) Hindsight is 20/20.

-Jesse

--
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
Re:Short Sighted? by good-n-nappy · 2004-09-09 08:53 · Score: 2, Funny

Yeah and what about the Y10K problem? It's being completely ignored!

--
Never underestimate the power of fiber.

Very hard to read. by winkydink · 2004-09-09 07:36 · Score: 3, Insightful

Not the content, the page itself.

Note to web page designers:
Dark characters, light background, sans serif fonts. Trust me. People way smarter than you and mr have already figured this out.

--

"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey

Interesting math by bojanb · 2004-09-09 07:40 · Score: 5, Interesting

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.

Switches? by ImaLamer · 2004-09-09 07:42 · Score: 4, Informative

What about the bulbs? How can check to see if they are actually on? How will my switch...

oh forget it... just give me a few million addresses

--
Get your Unix fortune now!

Guys got an error or two... by Ironsides · 2004-09-09 07:42 · Score: 4, Informative

there will no longer be a need for IP address conservation since there will now be enough IPv6 addresses available for each person on the planet to have 10 of their very own.

Given that there are 128 bits for IPs in IPv6 this translates into 3.4*10^38 IP addresses. I think this comes out to roughly 5.6*10^28 IP addresses per person.

--
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars

Only "10" IP addresses per person? by Vexler · 2004-09-09 07:42 · Score: 4, Insightful

I don't think so. Even if he discounts the bits in the addressing architecture responsible for routing and local/global flags and just focuses on the global unicast address space, that still gives you 64 bits (see Section 2.5.4 of RFC3513).

(2^64)/10000000000 = 1844674407.37 (approximately)

And that's assuming ten billion total world population. It's not just ten addresses; everyone can network his/her own cold-fusion-powered TOASTER to the Internet and we wouldn't run out of IP's anytime soon.

you losers are still talking IPV6 ? get with it! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 07:42 · Score: 3, Funny

Come on guys, theres this thing called IPV8.

get with the program!

augh!

Whatever happened to IPv5? by waynegoode · 2004-09-09 07:42 · Score: 4, Interesting

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 by mplex · 2004-09-09 07:43 · Score: 4, Interesting

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?

FrontPage by Tonik,+the · 2004-09-09 07:44 · Score: 2, Funny

Amusing... a article describing IPv6, an open standard, was created with Microsoft Frontpage 3.0. (Noticed this when changing the text colors from white-on-black to black-on-white.)

Re:Poor planning - Bill Gates by Nom+du+Keyboard · 2004-09-09 07:47 · Score: 2, Funny

Hell, even Bill Gates didn't see it coming.

Of course he didn't. He always said, "640K IP addresses should be enough for anyone."

--
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."

Re:I hate to ask a stupid question, by Marxist+Hacker+42 · 2004-09-09 07:47 · Score: 3, Interesting

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.

--
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.

I am missing some detail by wafflemonger · 2004-09-09 07:47 · Score: 3, Interesting

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?

Doomsday... by ARRRLovin · 2004-09-09 07:51 · Score: 2, Insightful

The internet is getting too big! The only way to save it is by using IPv6!

I have a feeling this is going to be about as successful as getting the United States to convert to metric.

"She'll do 20 hectares on one tank of kerosene!"

--
-Randy

I just read Slashdot for the articles! by IntelliTubbie · 2004-09-09 07:51 · Score: 2, Funny

Playboy writes

Does that mean that everyone will pretend to read the article, but no one actually will? Come to think of it, maybe Slashdot should change its name to Playboy.

Cheers,
IT

--

Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.

Reserve Addresses? by fgb · 2004-09-09 07:52 · Score: 5, Funny

Can you reserve addresses yet?

I want dead:beef:dead:beef:dead:beef:dead:beef

I had it all caps but the lame-ass lameness filter yelled at me ;-)

Re:Poor planning? BS. Poor Math? Certainly! by Spinlock_1977 · 2004-09-09 07:56 · Score: 3, Interesting

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!

--
- The Kessel run is for nerf herders. I can circumnavigate the entire Central Finite Curve in a lot less than 12 parse

There is no shortage by Wesley+Felter · 2004-09-09 07:59 · Score: 5, Informative

Dozens of /8s are available; last time I checked it was about 40% of the total address space.

Re:Not a bad start...but a couple of things on IPv by liam193 · 2004-09-09 08:07 · Score: 4, Informative

Actually some of those issues are covered in IPv6. There is a new address type called an any-cast address. The idea, which will be interesting to see how it's implimented, is that all DNS servers will use an single any-cast address. The routers will somehow be told that this any-cast exists on this particular machine. When someone needs a DNS lookup they will use the hard-code any-cast address for DNS that everyone else in the world uses; however, instead of everyone hitting the same machine, they will hit the "closest" machine with that any-cast address. The same can be true for NTP, etc. Basically these are services that do not require that you have any particular device, just one of any of the ones in the world... preferably the closest or least busy.

Re:IPv6 will never happen by Tony+Hoyle · 2004-09-09 08:08 · Score: 2, Informative

No, 6to4 is really that bad - it relies on custom tunnels and special ISP support rather than just specifying it on the routers.

I've played with ipv6 in the past, but after so many years it's still a very long way from useful. Since nobody has ipv6 machines and you need ISP support (which ISPs don't provide) putting up an ipv6 website is a sure-fire way to get zero hits.

It doesn't help that proxies eg. squid don't support it yet.. the project to do it (http://devel.squid-cache.org/ipv6) has been dead since 2001.

Distro-specific introduction by jgarzik · 2004-09-09 08:10 · Score: 3, Insightful

Setting up IPv6 is actually quite easy these days.

For Fedora Core users stuck without a direct IPv6 connection (read: most of the world), I wrote a quick IPv6 6to4 setup guide.

6to4 is "automatical tunnelling", which in layman's terms means you don't have to bother your ISP or a tunnel broker in order to set up IPv6 on your network. Most OS's these days (not only Linux but *BSD and Windows) fully support basic IPv6, including 6to4.

Re:IPv6 by 2008? Who's he kidding? by Elwood+P+Dowd · 2004-09-09 08:34 · Score: 3, Informative

Internet 2 uses it exclusively.

Boy, are you wrong.

WRONG.

(Just that sentence, of course. The rest of your post is right.)

Wrongity-wrong-wrong-wrong.

--

There are no trails. There are no trees out here.

Re:IPv6 will never happen by jgarzik · 2004-09-09 08:36 · Score: 2, Interesting

No, 6to4 is really that bad - it relies on custom tunnels and special ISP support rather than just specifying it on the routers.

Actually 6to4 Just Works(tm) in most cases. You can't get much easier than that. That is the purpose of 6to4: the special anycast prefix guarantees that you do not need special configuration or special ISP support.

I've played with ipv6 in the past, but after so many years it's still a very long way from useful. Since nobody has ipv6 machines and you need ISP support (which ISPs don't provide) putting up an ipv6 website is a sure-fire way to get zero hits.

Putting up an IPv6-only website would be pointless. The idea is for IPv6 transition to be seamless: a web server admin adds IPv6 to an existing website, and nobody except the IPv6 users will notice a difference.

My own website supports IPv6, and it gets a few hits daily from IPv6 users. It also supports IPv4, of course. And neither set of users ever need know, or care, about my web server setup. It Just Works(tm), and will continue Just Working as the world moves to IPv6.

It doesn't help that proxies eg. squid don't support it yet..

Apache does proxy caching and http acceleration quite nicely, and has stable IPv6 support.

I agree that squid lags behind, but overall you picked a poor example. Most of the core Internet software, both client and server, either has production-stable IPv6 support, or is close to it.

Re:serve Addresses? by DrStrangeLoop · 2004-09-09 08:53 · Score: 2, Funny

Can you reserve addresses yet?

I want FEED:FACE:FEED:FACE:FEED:FACE:FEED:FACE

I have it all caps so the lame-ass lameness filter ignored me ;-)

Re:Not a bad start...but a couple of things on IPv by Just+Some+Guy · 2004-09-09 08:54 · Score: 2, Interesting

IPv6 autoconfiguration will get you an address to get onto the net at large

Almost. I got a /64 from Hurricane Electric into my FreeBSD firewall/router. The problem is that I have three distinct subnets from that router:

My LAN
A DMZ
My WLAN

Autoconfig seems to require a /64 or larger netblock, but each of those segments necessarily has to be smaller than the /64 I was given. Even if I only used two bits to identify each local subnet, the resulting /66s would be too small for autoconfig to work.

So, I'm stuck with using DHCP6 or static configuration to assign IPv6 addresses at hope. I wish you could universally say that IPv6 autoconfiguration works, but there are some relatively common circumstances that give it fits.

--
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?

So very wrong, it's not funny by johne_ganz · 2004-09-09 08:58 · Score: 4, Insightful

Another positive outcome of IPv6 will be better internet routing using QoS, Quality of Service, which routes packets based on priority.

What? There is nothing in IPv6 about this. You can do this right now, today, with IPv4 by having a flexible queueing methodology and flexible packet pattern matching systems. Violla. Any packet destined to network 1.2.0.0/16 that is TCP and port 80 no gets dumped in the high priority queue.

QoS is also the perfect snake oil. In a practical sense, QoS only "kicks in" when there's contention, when there's more data that needs to squeeze in to the pipe than can fit. QoS makes the choice of which packet gets to go over all the other packets waiting to go.

In other words, the only time QoS is of any good is when you are on a over subscribed, saturated network, where there isn't enough bandwidth available to meet demand. In simple terms, the network is broken, and QoS just helps pick who gets screwed the least.

Lastly, routing will be simplified because the IPv6 information header on each packet is far more flexible and can contain more detailed information than an IPv4 header thus allowing for faster routing of data across a network or the internet. Currently, most routers need to maintain as many as 48,000 different routes in their routing tables just to effectively route data that passes through them. IPv6 reduces this number by at least 75%.

This, too, is just flat out wrong. The only way this works is if you have a "clean slate" and parcel out IP addresses in a country/provider hierarchal fashion. Want to move providers? You get new IP's, out of their block. Want to multi home? Well, that kinda blows the efficiency right out of the water because now your network is no longer contained within the providers supernet, you have to announce your individual network both via your provider and where ever else you're peered. Therefore, you just added networks to the global routing tables.

Now, quick show of hands... how many of you want to run your systems off a single homed, single provider only network? And please, none of this god awful "let the router pick which source IP to use!" crap.

Also, if you're worried about IPv6 requiring you to change all of your software, learn new protocols, new methods of connecting, new ways of sending and receiving data or anything like that, fear not. The only thing really changing with IPv6 over what was in IPv4 is that you now have a larger address space which allows for more network addressable IP addresses, a more flexible header and packet system, and faster routing.

Yea, you don't have to change a thing. Not any of your software, or nothin'. Of course, you do need a whole new IP stack to talk IPv6, but that's pretty minor right? Windows folks can make this change by simply cracking open their registries and changing the IP Version key from 4 to 6. Ta da!

Faster routing? How's that? Does it make sense to anyone that looking up a 128 bit address is going to be faster than looking up a 32 bit address? There's more to look up.

Furthermore, all routers worth their salt use hardware accelerated forwarding engines these days. Modern BiCAM's or (nearly always) TCAM's can do single cycle lookup of an address out of a potential 512K entries. It doesn't matter how many entries there are, it can always do find the correct match in a single cycle. And 512K entries is a bit more than a default free routing table (~140K entries) that's common today, so there's no worries there.

The catch is, most of these hardware lookup engines are hard wired for IPv4, and can't easily be extended to IPv6, which means the packets become exception packets and need to be dealt with by the CPU. The CPU lookups are orders of magnitude slower than the hardware lookups. This means that performance for IPv6 goes right through the floor for most routers. Newer routers/blades are starting to come with IPv6 hardware accelerated, but there's an awful lot of infrastructure out there that has no IPv6 hardware acceleration.

Therefore, for most people, IPv6 will initially result in a signfigicant performance drop in terms of packets per second over IPv4.

Re:Remembering IP Addresses by JonKatzIsAnIdiot · 2004-09-09 09:07 · Score: 3, Insightful

Contary to popular belief there is very little added security
Really? They block incoming connections to a computer, which is a great security enhancement. A NAT box will prevent you from accidentally sharing your hard drive with the world, unless you explicitly allow it. An unpatched Windows machine lasts 16 minutes or so before being compromised - unless it is behind a NAT box. You will also be protected from all worms that depend on incoming connections to propagate, as well as Messenger spam.
So - please explain to me what is so insecure about NAT.

Re:Poor planning? BS. by Y2 · 2004-09-09 09:28 · Score: 2, Informative

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?

Recall that they were superseding NCP, which used 8-bit addresses, and were building a network on which multiple hosts attached to a given router. Two bytes might handle that much, but local networks were popping up also. Four bytes seemed plenty, but it was not exactly prescient.

--
"But all your emitter and collector are belong to me!"

Artificial scarcity by j1m+5n0w · 2004-09-09 09:32 · Score: 2, Interesting

The current network providers have little incentive to move to IPv6 because they make money through the artificial scarcity of IP addresses. They like the current situation because they have an advantage - new ISPs have trouble entering the market due to the lack of large contiguous IP blocks. When we start falling behind the rest of the world (since countries without enough IPs to go around have no reason to stick with IPv4), maybe they'll start switching to IPv6.

NAT is a solution, and it may be usefull in IPv6 networks as well as IPv4 for security reasons, but it shouldn't be forced on people (it interferes with the end-to-end philosophy of the internet). Also, not all countries have enough IPs for a one NAT per household policy.

-jim

Re:what's all the hubbub, bub? by andfarm · 2004-09-09 09:38 · Score: 3, Insightful

MAC addresses aren't guaranteed to be unique, and they're useless for routing. You can look at the IP address on a packet - whether IPv4 or v6 - and quickly tell where it should go next. You can't do the same with MAC addresses, though: routers would have to keep a table of every single MAC address on the Net (!!) to route packets properly.

--

TANSTAAFI: There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free iPod.

Little extra wrinkle by riptalon · 2004-09-09 09:50 · Score: 2, Interesting

There is one small thing that the the article leaves out; where the 64-bit "Interface ID" that is the second half of the address will come from. It isn't going to be some essentially random number assigned to that computer as it is for IPv4 (e.g *.001, *.027, *.145). The first 64 bits of the IPv6 address is routing information to get you to the right subnet, like the first 24 bits in IPv4 (e.g. 145.67.56.*). But unlike IPv4, that has only 8 bits left to identify the particular machine on the subnet, IPv6 has 64 bits available.

This vastly larger space doesn't just allow for larger subnets, it is so big that it allows the values to unique, not just on the subnet but globally. So how are these unique values to be chosen? From the unique IDs embedded in the NIC hardware of course (i.e. your ethernet cards MAC address or the EUI-64 standard that will eventually replace it). So the two halves of the IPv6 address will contain routing information (where you are) and a unique ID (irespective of where you are).

As wireless becomes more unbiquitous in the future, using IPv4 addresses to track people will get more difficult. IPv6 provides the solution. As someone connects with a wireless device at different locations only the first 64 bits of routing information will change, the second 64 bits, the unique ID will stay the same. Who you are (or at least what NIC you are using) and where you are is plastered one every IPv6 packet you send.

what are they doing with Class A's? by RMH101 · 2004-09-10 00:42 · Score: 2, Funny

Probably smoking them.

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