IPv6 Still Hotly Debated

inkslinger77 writes "A significant stumbling block to IPv6 adoption may be IPv4 loyalists who are keen to keep the old protocol in preference to the 'new improved' version, according to a Computerworld Australia article. The article covers the views of Cisco's senior technical leader for IPv6 technologies, Tony Hain and Geoff Huston, a senior Internet research scientist from Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (Apnic)." From the article: "Go to your favourite venture capitalist and say 'I want to be an ISP'. By the time he stops laughing and [finds you want to run] IPv6 - the discussion gets terminated. No one wants to hear this. IPv6 is well ahead of adoption in this market so everyone is deferring. No one is running IPv6, because there is no business case for it ... if we really wanted to leave a legacy to our children we'd review the crap we have today which is pretty ghastly ..."

Comments

One Reason Alone is Enough

[Nom du Keyboard]

One reason alone is enough to make IPv6 a "good idea." Permanent static IP addresses for everything.

I, for one, will welcome the end of the NAT kludge.

Market Forces

[bizitch]

Just like anything else, market forces will dictate when this gets adopted.

Are we really running out of IPv4 numbers? The market will tell us.

Is there a killer app for IPv6? The market will tell us.

Can we ram IPv6 down everyone's throat? The market will retailiate and hit back.

BTW - what's with this "wont somebody please think of the children" bullshit about? If we need to get to IPv6 - we'll get to it - relax already!

Re:Me too

[cnlohfin3109]

IPv6 gives us more then just more address space. The ip is designed heirarchally(sp) which will help _significantly_ with routing, decreasing tables etc. Not to mention not wasting time havening to check checksums all the time... cause there is none! Its silly if we get into the terabit speeds and still wasting so much time just tring to route the ethernet frames, not to mention the sheer processing power required by a router for those speeds.

Market? Or cynical manipulation?

[DoctorNathaniel]

"The death of IPv4 has not really killed the Internet. In fact, far from it, we've managed to make an industry around it."

In other words, by keeping IPv4, we can sell NAT boxes (which we're already selling in huge numbers.. the wireless network hub in my den is a prime example.) Cisco has a big investment in building hardware to take care of IP space limitiations.

"You will still be able to get addresses, if you pay for them, because a market will appear."

In other words, this damned internet isn't making us enough money, because IP addresses are free. We want people to start trading them, so we can get commissions on the sales.

It's clear that this is "good buisiness" for the big internet companies: why invest in a new system that will make users's lives cheaper and easier when we can continue to sell patches on the old stuff, and make a market so that we can start charging the freeloaders?

It's also clear to me that the only way IPv6 will get adopted is if public bodies start using them and demanding their use. For instance, if Internet2, the US military, or all of .gov start adopting, then it will get off the ground. Of course, this is unlikely to happen because Cisco doesn't sell IPv6 switches.

I'm no expert, but to my cynical eye it looks not like market forces, but like the usual problems with capitalism exploiting a local maximum and avoiding short-term risk.

----Nathaniel

Re:Me too

[Kadin2048]

This is a misunderstanding, and has been debated elsewhere: NAT offers no security by itself, it's because normally NATs have a firewall effect at the same time that they create the illusion (and in some cases reality) of security.

There's no reason why using IPv6 with a firewall wouldn't be just as -- and probably more -- secure. Especially because you wouldn't have to spend time configuring the NAT functionality and could instead configure it as a single-purpose stateful firewall.

It is possible -- although you probably wouldn't want to -- to create a situation using static NAT without any firewalling effect that leaves your computer just as open to attack as it would sitting on the public net. Likewise it's possible to assign every computer on a LAN a globally routable IP address and secure them using a properly designed firewall (that's actually how my company is set up).

If your comment had just said you didn't want your fridge and toaster exposed to the internet without your trusty Linux firewall between it and the internet, I would heartily agree. Although I don't doubt some would argue for you about choosing Linux over BSD. :)