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Accelerating IPv6 Adoption With Proxy Servers

jgarzik writes "IPv6 presents a catch-22: the most popular web sites on the Internet don't have any incentive to switch to IPv6 until a large portion of their userbase is on IPv6, and their user base does not have a large incentive to switch to IPv6 until many of the popular Internet destinations support IPv6. My proposed solution is simple: Configure a proxy server that serves IPv6 requests, passing those requests through to underlying IPv4-only servers that not have yet been transitioned to IPv6. This article describes how to configure Apache's proxy server to fill this role, and suggests a few ideas for use."

9 of 341 comments (clear)

  1. But wait: by Trejkaz · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Is it just me? I can't see any AAAA records for ipv6.org itself. I would have thought they would be the FIRST to change.

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  2. Not a Catch-22 by back_pages · · Score: 5, Interesting
    IPv6 presents a catch-22: the most popular web sites on the Internet don't have any incentive to switch to IPv6 until a large portion of their userbase is on IPv6, and their user base does not have a large incentive to switch to IPv6 until many of the popular Internet destinations support IPv6.

    Nice try, but that's not a Catch-22.

    A Catch-22 is when the solution creates the problem. From the book (yes, there was a book) if the doctor diagnosed you as crazy, you didn't have to fly any more bombing missions. The catch was that you would have to be diagnosed crazy by a doctor to want to fly more bombing missions. Thus, by achieving the status of "unfit to fly", you were actually certifying yourself to fly.

    What we have here with IPv6 is two parties with no immediate reward for an investment. If one of them stepped forward, the other would step forward, and the world would enjoy IPv6. There is nothing about this that is remotely close to a Catch-22.

  3. IPv6 Needs a Killer App by That's+Unpossible! · · Score: 5, Interesting

    That killer app may be VoIP. If everyone wants their own IPv6 phone number.

    Or that killer app may be someone coming up with an awesome spam/virus/security solution that requires features found in IPv6.

    But just wanting people to switch for no good reason will never work. Market forces...

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    Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
  4. Re:Most people don't care about IPv6 by DAldredge · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There are just a few other reasons to switch to IPv6...

    http://www.ipv6forum.org/navbar/events/birmingham0 0/presentations/YanickPouffary/sld025.htm

    Also, from another site:

    *
    A powerful addressing scheme that makes possible the allocation of public addresses to every device inside home networks

    *
    A protocol specification more powerful thanks to the extension headers

    *
    Restore the end-to-end of the Internet and facilitate the peer-to-peer communications

    *
    Simple: Plug and Play (thanks to stateless autoconfiguration)

    *
    A larger range of services to propose to customers

    *
    Security is natively defined in the protocol

    *
    IP mobility optimized

    *
    Multicast mode easier to deploy

    *
    (For the ISP, routing process more efficient)

  5. Re:What about dhcp? by kkane · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Oh, yeah, I forgot one more point:

    Whether or not your "prefix" changes each time will be much the same as whether or not your single IPv4 address changes each time you connect. Either your ISP statically assigns you one (perhaps for an extra fee), or it doesn't. But that 64-bit prefix will be your global identifier that gives you an address space, much as the single IPv4 address is your global identifier now, except your address space is only 1 address.

  6. IPv6 as a "solution" to NAT? by venomkid · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This may be a bit OT, but I'm reading many people talking about NAT like it's some horrible thing.

    As a longtime NAT user I like the fact that just one of my computers is hooked to the real internet and the others can't be diddled by outside computers.

    Even if I had unlimited IPs, I'd still probably do it this way.

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    vk.
  7. multicast? by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Most people know that IPv6 delivers a bigger address space, and IPSec security. But what ever happened to its multicast tech? Is anyone sending a single multimedia stream over IPv6 to multiple recipients, without having a separately addressed packet stream like in IPv4? That feature would be the most timely, arriving just as large audiences are developing for online streaming multimedia content.

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  8. What problem? by Zaffle · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Seriously, what problem is this solution solving?

    I run ipv6 here at my site, every PC ont the LAN is using it.

    Inside the LAN its almost totaly native IPv6. Only the printers are IPv4 only. When surfing the web, the users browser does a AAAA DNS lookup, if it succeeds, then it does a native IPv6 connection. If you try to connect to IPv4 only site (very common), then the PC initiates an IPv4 connection. Our Internet router provides the IPv6 tunnel and does NAT'ing for IPv4. Its all totaly transparent, requiring no end-user setup or mucking around with.

    I regularily use IPv6 websites, and I don't notice that they are IPv6 unless a) the website notifies me I'm connecting over IPv6 (eg http://www.ipv6.org/) or b) i look at the traffic going through.

    The only thing I could do to "improve" the situation here would be to have my ISP IPv6 aware, so I didn't need to use a tunnel broker.

    The way that would work would be the ISP would issue a single IPv4 address and a IPv6 prefix on connect. Then the would would be a great place :)

    All my applications I write are IPv6 aware, infact they are primarily IPv6 applications with fallback to IPv4.

    Most applications you use today are IPv6 aware. The next step for IPv6 is hosting companies and ISPs proving IPv6 natively. This will happen once the backbone routers are fully IPv6 aware.

    Nick

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    I use to have a funny sig, but slash cut it off, and I forgot what the punchline was.
  9. IPv6 is getting a jumpstart. by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 3, Interesting

    At the current rate of non-progress, IPv6 will never reach critical mass. IPv6 needs a jumpstart.

    IPv6 is getting its jumpstart. From the upcoming mobile IP vendors. They want IPv6 for tracking their phones/modems (for which they can't buy enough IPv4 address space to be confident of not hitting a wall). So they have made it a checkbox on equipment acquisition (i.e. you don't sell 'em a router unless it has IPv6 - period).

    Since they're talking equipment purchase totaling into the billions this is NOT something the equipment vendors are ignoring.

    Once there's a bunch of endpoints out there that can only be reached by IPv6 (or NAT/tunnel servers bridging to it) there will be a lot of pressure to migrate the rest of the net.

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