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Accelerating IPv6 Adoption With Proxy Servers

Posted by timothy on from the wool-over-your-own-eyes dept.

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."

3 of 341 comments (clear)

  1. 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.

  2. 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...

    --
    Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
  3. 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.