Slashdot Mirror
How Things Will Change Under IPv6
Da Massive writes "IPv6 Forum leader Latif Ladid provides an insight into the workings of IPv6. He also talks about how peer-to-peer file serving as we know it today will be redundant with the newer protocol." From the article: "Q: What is the most significant benefit that IPv6 offers the world? A: Global connectivity. Currently we have less than 50 percent world-wide Internet penetration, and we have used most of the address space. If you look at the Western world, we have more than 50 percent penetration. In total we have close to a billion people connected to the Internet. So it is a false perception that we have full Internet penetration. We have six billion people on the planet. When the Internet protocol was designed back in 1980 there were 4.3 billion address spaces; it was already insufficient for the population. By 2050 we will be nearly 10 billion people. But there are not only people. There are things. Billions and billions of devices that will service these people."
How long will a complete transition to IPV6 take? Many many years IMO, if it ever happens at all. None of the firms I know of or work with have even started looking into migrating yet. Hell they are'nt even talking about it.
On the comment "Billions and billions of devices that will serve these people", it seems to be unmentioned that (random estimate, not researched in any way) half of them will not be directly hooked into the interweb. Many of those are intended to be that way, since you want your layers of security, and that's why we have however many thousands of addresses in the range 10.0.0.[0-256]; technically they're using the same IP, but it doesn't matter because that IP is kept internally, and not in contact with the web.
IPv4 does not have enough numbers to give every single device its own unique IP. On the flip side... if we were locked into the system, it would still be workable.
Browsing with +2 to insightful posts and a higher threshold makes the average post seen seem a lot more ingenious
Q: Besides the obvious thing about address space, what other advantages does it have?
A: Penetration! Because we don't have everybody connected yet!
Q: And how does IPv6 increase penetration? Does it build wires to people's houses or make provide satellite dishes to third-world countries?
A: No, but it does make sure we have enough addresses once they have some money to buy the actual hardware stuff!
Look, I know that eventually we're going to have to transition off IPv4 because of the address space issues, and that we might as well start now, but articles like this make it more like a marketing stunt to sell new hardware RIGHT NOW.
With IPv6, you still have private address space, if you want, so your reasoning for staying is faulty. The problem is that there is no ip space as more ppl want ip's than are available. Quite honestly, we need to move to IPv6.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Actually, it'll eliminate the need for costly conversions to a new standard for a period of time, after which we'll all need to upgrade anyway, when it'll be even more costly.
Ladid's main point seems to be that NAT-proponents take this kind of short-term, client/server-centric view. There's nothing wrong with client/server, but it's a significant hinderance for independent development of things like VoIP, where peer-to-peer makes far more sense.
Basically, it's not just that we're running out of address space; it's also that treating NAT like anything other than a (relatively) short-term fix ultimately hinders the development of new uses for the internets.
hang brain.
Why does IPv6 make P2P any easier to implement?
Why does it remove the need for servers?
Why does it mean that we "won't need providers such as Skype anymore because we'll be able to do it all ourselves"?
I don't see how IPv6 lets you do ANY of these things. You'll still be firewalled, you'll still need servers and software vendors like Skype. In fact the only thing about IPv6 that would seem to me to help P2P is that slighly more people might end up not being NATed but that won't affect anything much.
Does this person actually know what they're talking about or are they from marketing?
To all o' you people asking, "What does it give me?"
/. users-- old, out-of-date, and constantly reminiscing about the old days.
It gives you nothing. You're already on the internet.
IPv6 is going to give India and China and other high-populous countries connectivity. As it is, they don't have enough IPv4 addresses even to *nat* their country, let alone to provide real services with which NATing interferes.
And that's why you and I have very little say about the adoption of IPv6. It's gonna happen, and it's gonna happen soon (say, the next 5 years, tops). Pretty soon, those of us who remember IPv4 are going to be like 3-digit
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Address space isn't why we should gloss over IPv6. Yeah, its nice that we can get rid of NAT, but the bigger deal is virtual circuits. IPv4 can't handle streaming data, keeping us from high-broadband technologies like TV-over-IP. IPv6 was designed to optimize routers for doing high-broadband transfers. That should be the biggest selling point of IPv6.
Ah yes, in the immortal words of Carl Sagan
gasmonso http://religiousfreaks.com/Uh... no.
How about anyone that is running software that requires a peer to peer connection (and I'm not just talking about filesharing software)? And it's further worth pointing out that the only people that require such connectivity are not just the techie geekoid people. Running VoIP through NAT, for example, is a bitch and a half, and often not even possible if the end user does not have administrative rights on the NAT.
Your argument does touch on a very good reason why NAT would not be entirely obsolete even upon the move to IPv6, however.
(Also, by playing around with IPv6 extension headers and a gateway that adds or strips headers to a packet, it's theoretically possible to do routing right _THROUGH_ a NAT on IPv6).
So really, it seems that the only argument against IPv6 migration is just that people are lazy and cheap and don't want to do it right now because it'd actually require some effort.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Of course companies and academics don't want IPv6 they already have the only real advantage it provides - per machine addressing. Why would they invest money to get something they already have?
IPv6 benefits individuals. It benefits P2P, VoIP, photo sharing, blogging and email (yes email - you don't need a third party server if you have a permanent web presence). Yes you can have all of that with IPv4, but its held together with hacks like NAT, port forwarding and man-in-the-middle servers. That's fine, if like me, you hold a degree in computer science and arn't put off by the nuances of network security, berkley ports and subnet masks but if you're a noob who just wants to share their Christmas pictures with friends and family its a pretty steep learning curve.
I'm a pretty typical nerd. My home network has 4 computers that regularly connect to the internet. Of those, 2 offer services such as SSH, bittorent, email and my testing web server. After christmas that will probably extend to a new XBox360 and a PSP (admittedly passive net users). Next Christmas it might be my mobile. The Christmas after that my espresso machine will probably be consulting a distributed database to see what is the best way of brewing Co-op's Fairtrade Java.
You can buy a computer the size of a pack of gum with a complete Linux operating system and enough horse power to run a web server for ~$200. That's too expensive to be ubiquitous but in 2-3 years time that figure will be in the region of $20 and it will be a WiFi network. It's going to happen.
IPv4 forces our devices to be passive because configuring a NAT Router and Firewall is hard for Joe Public. IPv4 means that we have to poll to get system updates. IPv4 means that I can't just ask my fridge what its contents are without configuring a seperate box. IPv4 means that I'm happy when a third party agrees to handle my communications - I actually ask them to listen in and they 'promise' not to read my mail or listen to my conversations. IPv4 means that when I get an email from my girlfriend at 195.95.195.94 I have no method of authenticating that.
IPv6 means that I buy bandwidth and nothing else. I don't get 100MB of web hosting, or a whopping 5 emails addresses, I get to use my over powered desktop machine with 200GB of 'web space' and as many email addresses as I please. IPv6 means that I can start to build a web of trust, so that I can start to authenticate the messages I receive against a web of my peers - not a single verisign certificate. IPv6 means that consumer electoronics can be connected to my data pipe and that the manufacturer can be responible for its up keep - including firewalls and virus protection.
In short IPv6 allows people to own a bit of the internet and say it's theirs rather than renting an inch and getting kicked off that inch every 4 hours.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
No? Why not? Why can't you just get more IPv4 addresses so that I can connect to each of them?
The advent of NAT has solved the main problems that ISPs have had with giving their customers addresses to use for connecting to "content providers", but it has pretty much eliminated the original "every node is a peer" architecture of the internet.
Sure, if you're an ISP that works for you, but if you're some random guy that wants it to be easy to connect two (currently natted) devices together without involving a third device as a go-between, it's not such a good solution.
It's easy not to get it, just because we're all so used to having to do things the way we have been forced to. The epiphany comes when you realize how much more flexible the system is when NAT is not involved.
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
IPV6 could well be DOA, because it solves the wrong problem.
IPV6 solves the problems of the Internet, as originally conceived - egalitarian and end-to-end.
Nobody in power wants that any more. I'm sure that those in power would mostly prefer that the Internet would just go back and hide under the rock it came from, but they DO like the benefits it gives to THEM. If IPV6 goes forward, it'll only be because it has enough momentum as the "logical successor," and because TPTB can't propose what they'd really like.
If IPV6 were being designed TODAY:
It would have DRM built-in for the ??AA, as well as router-based monitors and controls for peer-to-peer networking.
It would have built-in provisions for wiretapping, even at the opportunistic VPN level, for government TLAs.
It would have content and traffic filtering provisions, for China and the Religious Right.
Of course IPV6 really runs counter to all of these "design criteria."
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.