Little Interest In Next-Gen Internet

Ant wrote in to mention a Computerworld article that is reporting on the slow acceptance of the IPv6 version of the internet. From the article: "Information Technology (IT) decision-makers, in U.S. businesses and government agencies, want better Internet security and easier network management. However, few see the next-generation Internet Protocol called IPv6 as helping them achieve their goals, according to a survey released Tuesday by Juniper Networks Inc."

Comments

just wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

...untill they run out of addresses

Oh Dear

[taskforce]

"There's an education job to be done," said Rod Murchison, senior director of product management for the Security Products Group

Translation: "There's a marketing job to be done"

I thought education was for important things which you need, and marketing was to convince you to use products and services?

Duh

[Heliologue]

Which is why IPv6 isn't going to be in full effect until 2025. They figured that acceptance would be slow. The fact is, at this point, people don't need IPv6. But when the numbers start to run out, they'll be clamoring for it.

Re:Duh

[Heliologue]

Substantial portions of that address space is reserved for private network, loopback, etc. You could end up using these addresses, of course, but that would require reengineering every network-capable device that's been built to-date. You don't think that within a decade, there'll be 4 billion mobile phones, each with it's own address? NAT only goes so far.

NAT works...

[Gopal.V]

NAT is the reason why ipv6 has not really been needed. The idea of having an IP address for everyone on the planet and for his dog too was really not needed.

Once NAT+Firewalls became popular enough, the requirement for large IP chunks for offices and stuff disappeared.

No backward compatibility, ugly naming scheme (tell me , who like ::1 ?) and over all lack of a need helped kill IPv6 from becoming too popular.

Re:NAT works...

[Anonymous Coward]

NAT is not good enough.

Too many things have to work around NAT problems.

I run a small network and all the users running filesharing programs have problems. I have to give them each a port.

What happens when more than one of them wants to run server for a protocol which needs a specific port? SMTP?

Why shouldn't people be able to have full IP connectivity? NAT does not provide that, and UPNP is not enough to fix that.

Re:NAT works...

[MenTaLguY]

I guess you've never had to merge two large private networks that are behind NAT.

NAT itself is okay, but using private IP ranges behind it doesn't really work for large organizations, especially large organizations that can (and do) need to merge with other such large organizations.

I've been on the receiving end of a couple of these situations; it can cause a LOT of pain.

Doesn't achieve their goals?

[nganju]

How about providing static IP addresses to DSL and cable modem users, so we can actually use simple DNS (or even just memorized IP addresses) to host things with servers in our living rooms? Seems to me that would be a huge value proposition for any ISP to its customers.

India and China

[naveenkumar.s]

Developing countries dont have an option other than to move to IPv6 due the apparent shortage of IP numbers. And if that's the way, then the rest have to go for IPv6 because, they say v6 cannot inter-operate with v4.

Re:Give me an easy upgrade path

[garcia]

For example I am setting up a nature webcam site which will be ipv6 only for exactly this reason.

Until the porn world goes IPv6 only there will be no major rush to upgrade. I really hope that your "nature webcam site" is really nude women running around in the forest or I just don't see it making a difference.

Few articles actually address IPv6 benefits

[SgtChaireBourne]

The biggest problem is probably lack of awareness, just like in many other situations.

Few articles actually address real IPv6 benefits and instead pull out strawmen about a purported shortage of IP addresses. That's got to be the least significant and least relevant change between IPv4 and IPv6. Maybe that's all the 'journalists' can get their teeny minds around, or maybe it's mandated spin because certain key advertising accounts *cough*MS*cough* aren't looking to be IPv6 compliant any time soon.

Some of the main advantages of IPv6 over IPv4 are:

• quality of service
• simplified headers
• multicasting
• security (that's certainly buzzword compliant, why is it never brought up?)
• autoconfiguration
• improved routing
• authentication

Japan and China are already rolling out IPv6 networks. Since the article specifically points out the U.S., maybe it's time that U.S. businesses start getting technical news from sources other than their MS account representative.

Your Goals != ISP's Goals

[sweatyboatman]

Most ISPs don't want their users hosting ANYTHING out of their living-room. That would use up bandwith which is directly linked to the pocketbook of your ISP. What ISPs want is home users paying a regular rate and using a minimal amount of bandwith (e.g. surfing the web, checking email). Not serving up their home movies or getting slashdotted.

Not to mention that by making dynamic IPs the industry standard, they can treat "static IP" as an extra feature and charge through the nose for it. (Much like text-messaging & ring-tones on cell phones.)

All of which is to say, ISPs see no profit from giving all their users static IPs. IPv4 is a blessing because it makes static IPs precious. Moving to IPv6 would just cut apart that revenue stream (at least in the short-run, which is all most companies seem to be concerned with).

-tom