6Bone IPv6 Network Shutting Down Tomorrow

theberf writes "On June 6, 2006 the experimental IPv6 network, the 6bone, will be shut down. All 3FFE:: addresses will revert to the IANA and should no longer be used. All IPv6 traffic should now be using production IPv6 addresses delegated by Regional Internet Registries. The 6Bone has been in operation for 10 years." Here's some more information about "IPv6 day."

Comments

Sign of the Apocolypse?

[fredistheking]

6bone shutting down on 6-6-6?

Hmmm...

Re:Sign of the Apocolypse?

[Spy der Mann]

Er, don't you mean... apocalypse?

Re:Sign of the Apocolypse?

[Ant P.]

If you're abbreviating the year to single digits, then it also started up on 6-6-6.

Re:Sign of the Apocolypse?

[StarkRG]

Actually it's abbreviated to two digits and then dropped the leading zeros, two very common practices, just not generally done together. Why would you drop the leading zero for day and month but not for year? do you always write 06/06/06? Generally, no. So there shouldn't be anything wrong with dropping all the leading zeros to make 6/6/6. Ten years ago would be 6/6/96 since 9 is not zero.

Re:Sign of the Apocolypse?

[JasonTik]

Yep! Just like the last hundred times, failing to count B.C.

Re:Sign of the Apocolypse?

[Jugalator]

Why would you drop the leading zero for day and month but not for year?

To make the number become 666. You don't honestly believe he said that for any other reason, do you?

Re:Sign of the Apocolypse?

[WilliamSChips]

Actually, I think he really means "eschaton". The Apocalypse was the revealing of the eschaton, the book of Revelations itself.

Re:Sign of the Apocolypse?

[Floydius]

Well, since we're getting technical, it's actually the book of Revelation (not plural). In greek, "APOKALUYIS IWANNOU" (Apokalupsis Ionnou), or, "a Revelation of John".

Re:Sign of the Apocolypse?

[x_MeRLiN_x]

do you always write 06/06/06?

Yes.

Re:Sign of the Apocolypse?

[MECC]

Would you be the geek satan?

Re:Sign of the Apocolypse?

[fireman sam]

No, the geek Satan is number 0x29A

Re:Sign of the Apocolypse?

[knBIS]

"0101100101?" thats meaningless... [looks in mirror] "1010011010!" [screams]

Re:Sign of the Apocolypse?

[Shanep]

If you're abbreviating the year to single digits, then it also started up on 6-6-6.

Oh my god! The 6-bone peoples sense of humour and irony is not YY compliant!

Re:Sign of the Apocolypse?

[Anonymous Coward]

06-06-2006 To those of us not in Hollywood.

Re:Sign of the Apocolypse?

[appleLaserWriter]

# chmod 0666 *

Re:Sign of the Apocolypse?

[StarkRG]

To make the number become 666. You don't honestly believe he said that for any other reason, do you?

Of course not, but logically there's no reason not to, logically it's obvious. Which, of course, shows the problem with thinking in pure logic...

Oh, and the question was why do it for the month and day, but not for the year. Not why do it for the year.

Re:Sign of the Apocolypse?

[myth24601]

"Er, don't you mean... apocalypse?"

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by itslef but the wrod as a wlohe.

Re:Sign of the Apocolypse?

[after fallout]

"Nreuuoms pmeeononnhs peossss uiapocmltecnd etaaoilxnpn; nwttdtsniinoahg, the pdseuo-snfiiiectc spssliiimtm is not snfiiiectc and eieecndvs are oetfn mdanleiisg"*.

Though it may be (almost) true, there is little evidence that an English university actually did studies that show this. For more information visit http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/~mattd/Cmabrigde/

Re:Sign of the Apocolypse?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? Me too.

Where I work, I have to write out the date around 140 or 150 times per day and every time it's "2006-06-06".

ISO format dates ftw!

Re:Sign of the Apocolypse?

[andy landy]

do you always write 06/06/06?
No. Sometimes it isn't the 6th June 2006, and at those times I write a different date.

Re:Sign of the Apocolypse?

[Baikala]

Nice futurama quote

huh

[ToyImp]

erm... what?

So...

[Anonymous Coward]

When will they start up 7bone with its 1024 bit addressing? IPv6 is just so... limiting.

Re:So...

[HunterZ]

I know what you mean. I'm trying to set up a cluster of web servers on every subatomic particle in my body, and while I haven't run out of IPv6 addresses yet, I'm also not getting any thinner these days...

Re:So...

[lxt518052]

Shouldn't the next generation called IPv8? We don't have an IPv5 in between IPv4 and IPv6, do we?

Re:So...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Shouldn't the next generation called IPv8? We don't have an IPv5 in between IPv4 and IPv6, do we?

Yes, we do.

But it was an experiment that didn't work out into somthing that got deployed.

Re:So...

[Jo Owen]

Of course we do, it just wasnt all that good.

Re:So...

[Tony Hoyle]

But it was an experiment that didn't work out into somthing that got deployed.

So, just like IPV6 then.

The 6bone dying means the last ipv6 broker I know of just went out of commission...

In some ways it's a pity that ISPs never deployed it - it could have been in wide use by now. As it was you had to search all over the world for a broker and cope with 500ms first hop ping times & service that was never reliable.. the world has moved on and no longer needs it.

Re:So...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

When will they start up 7bone with its 1024 bit addressing?

When you can cram enough memory into routers to handle the tables.

(Note that some of the tables are not what you'd expect, but are from algorithm hacks to speed up searching to achieve adequate instruction/packet ratios.)

For 1024 bits, absent algorithmic breakthroughs, you'd need so much that storing one bit per quantum on all the particles in the router wouldn't be adequate. You'd have to go to chipped or even nudged quanta (though you probably wouldn't need to go all the way to pizzication.) B-) See Hal Draper's MS Fnd in a Lbry if you don't know what I'm talking about.)

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

> The 6bone dying means the last ipv6 broker I know of just went out of commission...

Just google for 'IPv6 tunnel broker', there are several out there.

> In some ways it's a pity that ISPs never deployed it

Mine did :-)

Re:So...

[Megane]

I'd be careful about switching to IP version 7.

Re:So...

[petermgreen]

the 6bone shutting down is the result of thier belief that the production IPV6 network is now stable enough not to need it.

if you wan't IPV6 and only have IPV4 connectivity then provided you have a capable machine direct on a public IP you have no need for a tunnel broker you can just use 6to4

Re:So...

[Zarhan]

Use 6to4, not a tunnelbroker. Google for 6to4 Linux if you need help (Windows XP starting from SP1 supports this automatically). Anyway, with 6to4, the nearest gateway is found by IPv4 anycast address (192.88.99.1) so you don't even NEED to know the tunnel brokers.

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been trying to do that with every particle in the universe, no luck yet.

Re:So...

[lxt518052]

Thanks for the information.

I should've googled it before posting.

Re:So...

[imroy]

If I do a tracroute on 192.88.99.1, it goes off to the US somewhere. There doesn't seem to be any 6to4 gateways here in Australia. I'd still much rather use the AARNet IPv6 Migration Broker. I get a /48 prefix in their brand new network. And it's not on the 6bone, they have a proper 2001:: prefix.

Re:So...

[soft_guy]

That gives me an idea for a new diet fad - IPv4.

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's ironic. If I traceroute 192.88.99.1 from the US it goes off to Switzerland somewhere. :)

Website won't load

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like they decided to get going with their shutdown ahead of time.

Well, it ipv6 has to start somewhere

[the_humeister]

As it stands, there is no real impetus to use ipv6. Hopefully we'll run out of addresses soon and then maybe we'll all switch.

Re:Well, it ipv6 has to start somewhere

[Anonymous Coward]

Could be that making IPv6 available will bring about more widespread usage of addresses. The fact that we're not running out yet could simply be due to conservation on the part of companies who don't want release a bunch of products requiring IPs when there aren't currently enough to support the type of launch they'd like to see.

Re:Well, it ipv6 has to start somewhere

[AnyoneEB]

If we are not running out, then why do I only have one IPv4 address for five computers? I thought part of the idea of IPv6 was that we could get rid of NATs, so we would not have to worry about NAT transversal hacks anymore.

Re:Well, it ipv6 has to start somewhere

[menace3society]

IPv6 needs a killer app, and thanks to the local network address ranges, it probably won't be running out of addresses for several more years. Somebody needs to write the most useful program ever, and make it only communicate over IPv6.

Re:Well, it ipv6 has to start somewhere

[tepples]

why do I only have one IPv4 address for five computers?

Because you are a residential customer and have no compelling need that would justify paying more money to the last mile provider. Even under IPv6, you'd still get a /128 under the billing schemes that the incumbents prefer. Don't like it? Tough feces; last mile incumbents have entered into exclusive contracts with municipalities.

Re:Well, it ipv6 has to start somewhere

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you are a residential customer and have no compelling need that would justify paying more money to the last mile provider. Even under IPv6, you'd still get a /128 under the billing schemes that the incumbents prefer. Don't like it? Tough feces; last mile incumbents have entered into exclusive contracts with municipalities.

I remember when as a residential customer I couldn't even get a single IP address at a reasonable cost. Heck, or broadband.

The cost of an IP address, like the cost of broadband, has gone way down. IPv6 will bring it down a lot more, so even us "residential customers" can get enough for all of our computing needs.

Just because we don't have it today doesn't mean we couldn't make good use of it.

Re:Well, it ipv6 has to start somewhere

[Tony Hoyle]

There is IPV6 NAT. NAT is going nowhere.

NAT is useful to obscure corporate networks, so cisco routers all have it.... corporate desktops must *not* be directly addressable. Ever.

Re:Well, it ipv6 has to start somewhere

[rcw-home]

Even under IPv6, you'd still get a /128 under the billing schemes that the incumbents prefer.

No, the plan is to hand out a /48 even to dialup customers.

Re:Well, it ipv6 has to start somewhere

[AnyoneEB]

I am sorry. You are correct. NAT can be useful. I was more referring to residential users being able to easily use p2p apps, VOIP, servers, and direct IM/file transfers.

Re:Well, it ipv6 has to start somewhere

[Wesley Felter]

That's the IETF plan, but I suspect the telco/cable duopoly plan will be different.

Re:Well, it ipv6 has to start somewhere

[David_W]

corporate desktops must *not* be directly addressable. Ever.

You know, I've never understood why people are so adamant about this. Where I work, all of our desktops have direct, public IPs. As far as I've heard that's caused about zero security issues, as we have a firewall.

Re:Well, it ipv6 has to start somewhere

[HermanAB]

Hmm, it may make hacking a whole lot easier...

Re:Well, it ipv6 has to start somewhere

[0racle]

It's one less thing to worry about.

Re:Well, it ipv6 has to start somewhere

[MajroMax]

You know, I've never understood why people are so adamant about this. Where I work, all of our desktops have direct, public IPs. As far as I've heard that's caused about zero security issues, as we have a firewall.

Agreed. People think that NAT is the only way to have a idiot-proof external-facing security, but they're confusing NAT and a simple stateful firewall. It's easy enough to do. A NAT implementation basically requires a stateful firewall to be useful, and it's often people's first exposure to said firewall. It's no more difficult (and in fact it's easier) to have a stateful firewall in a non-NAT environment, though.

The one unique security advantage that NATs have is that it's difficult (and with enough paranoia in the configuration impossible) to tell from which computer behind a NAT router a given connection is coming from. The amount of information leaked in this manner is trivial, and if you're in a situation where somebody would actually gain a benefit from knowing that IP X visits website Z at 8am, whlie IP Y visits the same website at 9:30am, then you need similarly paranoid worker procedures.

Re:Well, it ipv6 has to start somewhere

[barawn]

The one unique security advantage that NATs have is that it's difficult (and with enough paranoia in the configuration impossible) to tell from which computer behind a NAT router a given connection is coming from.

Eh. You can masquerade connections on a firewall, too, and gain all of that as well. You might then ask "well, then, why have public IPs?", but with a firewall, you could choose to masquerade certain connections while leaving others live.

There aren't really any security advantages to NATs. It's just a trick to allow multiple computers to use one IP address. The security advantages you gain exist in other, less limited, forms by a firewall.

Re:Well, it ipv6 has to start somewhere

[ImaLamer]

Interesting!?!?

This is a basic troll. This is the summary of many previous Slashdot discussions. The least the user could do is use a comma or semicolon so I could read that in one fluid sentence.

Re:Well, it ipv6 has to start somewhere

[Jesus_666]

NAT does, however, have one big advantage when you're dealing with a home network: Easy configurability. By default it's completely locked down, which is great when you try to install Windows without instantly joining some botnet. Also, I don't know what you pay for a decent router/firewall configuration, but NAT routers are pretty cheap.

Re:Well, it ipv6 has to start somewhere

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody needs to write the most useful program ever...

Aweseome! Let me know when you're done.

Wait a second, you meant somebody else, didn't you? Shocking.

Netcraft confirms - IPV6 is dead :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

It had to be said.

IPv6day.org slowly being slashdotted

[thib_gc]

From the website:

In March 2003, the IETF decided that was the right time to start the phase-out of the IPv6 experimental network (6Bone), which started in 1996. This included a phase-out plan that defined that on 6 of June of 2006, no 6Bone prefixes will be used on the Internet in any form.

Moreover, the IETF IPv6 working group has started the process to advance the core IPv6 specifications to the last step in the IETF standardisation Process (e.g., Standard). IETF protocols are elevated to the Internet Standard level when significant implementation and successful operational experience has been obtained. Vendors with IPv6 products are encouraged to participate in this process by identifying their IPv6-enabled products at the IPv6-to-Standard site.

This event want to acknowledge the efforts of all the 6Bone participants, the IETF community which developed IPv6, other organizations engaged in the IPv6 promotion, and operators and end-users that have been early adopters. All them have been key contributors for the success of IPv6. Service Providers and other organisations that provide on-line IPv6 services are encouraged to register those services in the IPv6 Day website.

On June 6, 2006, end-users will be able to connect to the above web site to learn about issues like how to turn-on IPv6 in their operating systems, how to obtain IPv6 connectivity and how to try some of the available services.

With the occasion of this virtual celebration, we have a couple of quotes from two key people on this subject:

        * Bob Fink (6Bone Project): "After more than ten years of planning, development and experience with IPv6, with efforts from all around the world, it is gratifying for me to see the 6Bone phase-out on the 6th of June 2006, having served it's purpose to stimulate IPv6 deployment and experience, leaving IPv6 a healthy ongoing component of the future of the Internet!"
        * Brian Carpenter (IBM, co-author of multiple IPv6 RFCs and IETF chair): "It's very encouraging to see IPv6 moving forward both technically and commercially, with its address assignments now routinely managed by the same registries that look after the rapidly diminishing IPv4 address pool. I look forward to the day the Internet reaches ten billion active nodes with public addresses, which will only be possible with IPv6."

Experimenting with IPv6

[Midnight Thunder]

I feel that while we don't need IPv6 yet, waiting until we do need it would be foolish. Think of this in the same terms as the Y2K issue, which never became an issue because people took proactive action.

Some useful IPv6 related links:
    - http://www.simphalempin.com/dev/miredo/
    - http://evanjones.ca/macosx-ipv6.html
    - http://www.bieringer.de/linux/IPv6/
    - http://www.hexago.com/
    - https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/590/ - displays ipv6 address in firefox, if it has one
    - http://www.ipv6.org/impl/windows.html

All that is really needed is for the pockets of IPv6 networks to join up, rather than staying as pockets. Maybe an IPv6 based P2P or something of the sorts might help provide some sort of momentum.

Re:Experimenting with IPv6

[Keruo]

> Maybe an IPv6 based P2P or something of the sorts might help provide some sort of momentum.

Shh. Don't tell anyone, that NNTP(usenet) is ipv6 compatible, and has free servers(ipv6 only) which don't require monthly fees.
And bittorrent doesn't have any issues with ipv6 either.

Re:Experimenting with IPv6

[Flimzy]

I feel that while we don't need IPv6 yet, waiting until we do need it would be foolish. Think of this in the same terms as the Y2K issue, which never became an issue because people took proactive action. Amen! This is a tried-and-true strategy in all venues of life! From Internet protocols, to Iraqi WMDs!

Re:Experimenting with IPv6

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't find any by googling, could you please provide an url for more info. on these NNTP-servers?

Re:Experimenting with IPv6

[Andy Dodd]

If I recall correctly, supporting IP Multicast was required instead of optional for IPv6 implementations.

If this is the case, a multicast-aware BitTorrent would be THE killer app, IF IPv6 were deployed sufficiently for multicast torrents to be effective.

The way things are now, a multicast torrent would be pretty much the same trafficwise as the way things currently are for the backbone, since for the most part everyone is tunneling to one of a small handful of IPv6 brokers.

Re:Experimenting with IPv6

[Loonacy]

You have to use the IPv6 Google.

Re:Experimenting with IPv6

[theberf]

You can also try out basic IPv6 connectivity without setting up your own IPv6 tunnel. If you just want to test some simple IPv6 pings, IPv6 traceroutes, or other IPv6 enabled commandline tools, just find a free shell provider with IPv6 connectivity. There are a few out there. For example, FreeShells.ch has IPv6 connectivity.

Re:Experimenting with IPv6

[ampmouse]

I can't find google's IPv6 address anywere...
Would you mind posting it?

Re:Experimenting with IPv6

[Keruo]

Try with better keywords?
It's first result if you use "ipv6 news server".

Re:Experimenting with IPv6

[TheRaven64]

By design, it is difficult to move BitTorrent to multicast, since it uses stream-based TCP, and multicast only really works with datagrams. The protocol I designed and implemented as my third year project didn't have this limitation, since it was built on UDP (and even reserved some space in the headers for multicast). I should really tidy up the source code and release it at some point...

Re:Experimenting with IPv6

[Andy Dodd]

Yes, there are definately major issues to be dealt with for some sort of multicast support for BT (such as, for example, the fact that torrent users don't all have the same downstream bandwidth, and even when multicast support starts appearing in ISPs it'll take a long time for full penetration so the "legacy" way needs to be supported.) There's also the TCP streams vs. UDP datagrams issue.

It would actually be easier to implement this as a seperate protocol that was designed to augment BitTorrent. (i.e. getting data both via BitTorrent and via a multicast mechanism.) Either way, end-to-end multicast support on the public Internet would contribute to a massive reduction in backbone load from P2P, which has in the past been claimed to consist of 30-50% of all backbone traffic now. (I don't know how accurate this number really is though.)

Re:Experimenting with IPv6

[ichigo 2.0]

Google it!

so, is *anyone* outside academia using IPv6?

[poopie]

Seriously.

We've looked at it for internal use, but it's so *different*, there appear to be a bunch of compatibility issues for running a pure IPv6 network and everyone thinks it's weird and counter-intuitive.

I'd really like to see dozens of replies from people using this... because I'd say that IPv6 adoption right now is going about as well as metric system adoption in the US has gone.

Re:so, is *anyone* outside academia using IPv6?

[El Torico]

I'd really like to see dozens of replies from people using this... because I'd say that IPv6 adoption right now is going about as well as metric system adoption in the US has gone.

It should go faster; at least the DoD is mandating adoption of IPv6 by Service Agencies. This will prove to be an "incentive" for those ISPs that contract to the DoD, which is probably every U.S. Tier One ISP. As for pure IPv6, that may never happen completely.

Re:so, is *anyone* outside academia using IPv6?

[Teetow]

Meanwhile, in the rest of the world...

Re:so, is *anyone* outside academia using IPv6?

[Anonymous Coward]

You analogy of the metric system in the US is a good example of why "everyone thinks [IPv6 is] weird and counter-intuitive."

I remember when I was in grade school they started that big push to get metric used. The biggest problem (at least from my perspective) is that, not being born in to it, I never had a native/intuitive feel for metric. I can visualize 5 1/2 miles... I can break the distance down in my head to a number of city blocks (another imperial measurement), and even spatially in comparison to the size of my city. I can't do the same in metric any more than I can speak French with out an accent.

The gist of it is, if the community wants to move over to IPv6 then make a full switch and not stand in the middle of the road... it'll be painful, but at least the next generation will have been born in to it.

Re:so, is *anyone* outside academia using IPv6?

[lelitsch]

Given that the Federal (US) government is required by the OMB to switch to IPv6 by June 2008, I seriously hope you are not looking to do any business with them or any federal contractor after that date.

On the other hand, in typical US government fashion, according to the GAO implementation speed is seriously behind schedule.

Re:so, is *anyone* outside academia using IPv6?

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

Meanwhile, in the rest of the world...

Wait. There's a rest of the world? When did that get here? :)

Re:so, is *anyone* outside academia using IPv6?

[Tony Hoyle]

They might do it internally, but on their external links? Never. That'd be equivalent to cutting themselves off. ipv4 compatibility is a requirement that'll not go away soon if ever.

Hell, the way IPV6 is going there's plenty of time for them to change their minds and dump the idea.

Re:so, is *anyone* outside academia using IPv6?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=ipv6+disn DISN IPv6 network of the DOD run by Defense Information Systems Agency.

Re:so, is *anyone* outside academia using IPv6?

[Tiro]

Personally, I prefer running 5Ks to 5 miles.

Re:so, is *anyone* outside academia using IPv6?

[bastion_xx]

After getting burned back in the late 80s / early 90s with the OSI protocol mandates, I'm leery of anything the US government mandates. Then again, look how well Ada turned out too.

I'm torn on the IPv6 situation. I hate the NAT issues we run into on every project that requires site to site connectivity (we're using 172.16/16.... Oh neat, so are we!) and the NAT hoops you have to jump through. But then again, it's hard to work with "network engineers" that get lost once you start moving off of octet boundries for netmasks.

If there was a decent ISP that provided both IPv4 and IPv6 connectivity with little to no overhead, I'd seriously start looking and doing pilot projects. Until that happens or the IPv6 killer app comes along, I don't see much movement from IPv4, which is a testament to the flexibilty and scaleability of the protocol stack. I really am in awe at what IPv4 has been able to do....

Re:so, is *anyone* outside academia using IPv6?

[jguthrie]

I've had Web servers up on IPv6 addresses up for most of the last decade and I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times anyone has used IPv6 to access those sites that wasn't either connected to my own network or part of a test of the IPv6 connectivity. Now, those sites are not exactly the hottest on the Internet, but there's steady traffic to them, so I'd have to conclude that there are damn few people running IPv6 in the wild.

I've never been particularly impressed with the whole argument behind concentrating on developing the IPv6 backbone capability and presuming that the end user will naturally follow. Historically, demand for addresses come from the leaves of the network, not the trunk of the tree. While there is an environment of scarcity surrounding IPv4 addresses, plenty of addresses are available if you're willing to pay for them. (How much do you think MIT would want for their class-A address block? I'm sure there are plenty of governments, and quite a number of businesses, that would be willing to pay that much, if addresses really were that scarce.)

The argument that routers did not have the resources to handle the available routes may have been compelling when a large router might have 16 megabytes of RAM in it. However, you can fit every /24 on the Internet into 192 MB and 192 MB is a tiny amount of memory for a computer nowadays and a router is just a computer with one or more network interfaces and software that can be configured to forward packets.

Re:so, is *anyone* outside academia using IPv6?

[Wesley Felter]

I've heard IPv6 is big in Japan (they get everything first), but it appears to be more for political posturing than practical reasons. ...there appear to be a bunch of compatibility issues for running a pure IPv6 network...

That's because you're not supposed to go pure IPv6; you should run dual-stack for 10-20 years before dropping IPv4.

Re:so, is *anyone* outside academia using IPv6?

[jc42]

So how would one outside academia get experience with IPv6? I've seen lots of hype about it, and some low-level specs. But I've never seen anything that tells me the details of things like to get an address for a machine, how to do IPv6 routing, etc.

Funny thing is that my Mac Powerbook has both an "inet" and an "inet6" address on its wireless port. It gets the IPv4 address from the Airport's DHCP server, but I have no idea where that IPv6 address came from. It doesn't seem very useful, either, because my gateway (linux) box doesn't have any IPv6 addresses, so I'd guess that it doesn't know how to route IPv6 packets. I have accounts on a couple of other machines with IPv6 addresses, but I wouldn't know how to use those addresses to get anything done.

So where can I read all about the nitty-gritty details, enough to join the crowd?

Re:so, is *anyone* outside academia using IPv6?

[petermgreen]

its likely just a link local address (it begins with fe80 right?).

first assuming the linux box has a public IPV4 ip and your isp isn't providing native IPV6 connectivity you wan't to setup 6to4 on the linux box.

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Linux+IPv6-HOWTO/configuring -ipv6to4-tunnels.html

then you'll need to use other parts of that howto to assign a /64 to the lan and set up routing within the /48 that 6to4 gives you.

Re:so, is *anyone* outside academia using IPv6?

[igb]

at least the DoD is mandating adoption of IPv6 by Service Agencies

They did the same for OSI at one stage, as did most European governments. It didn't help. Protocols tends to take off fairly rapidly, or die a horrible slow death: I can't offhand think of a protocol which sat unused for years and then suddenly burst forth. Had IPv^ just been IPv4 with longer addresses, things might have been different, but IPv6 suffered from the OSI disease of attempting to standardise things for which there was almost no fielded experience or which were shortly to be solved problems anyway.

Multicast and IPSec haven't exactly taken the IPv4 world by storm for anything other than specific tasks, but they're mandatory in IPv6. More seriously, a lot of comprises were made in order to structure the addresses to make routing easier: well, I've taken my Cisco IGS routers out of service a long time ago, and the horror stories (``IPv4 addressing means core routers will need, like, a GIGABYTE of RAM'') just aren't as frightening as they used to be.

IPv6 claims to solve the problems of the 21st century, but it also attacks a lot of the problems of the 20th (RAM is expensive, comms links are slow). In the meantime, the big wins have been the reclamation of most of the Class A space, the absolute ubiquity of CIDR and the tendency for large enterprises to use RFC1918 for internal systems (1996: you want every client on the Internet; 2006: you hide 20K hosts behind one touchpoint).

ian

Re:so, is *anyone* outside academia using IPv6?

[aminorex]

host -t AAAA www.google.com
google.com AAAA record currently not present

Not very useful, then, is it?

Re:so, is *anyone* outside academia using IPv6?

[Anonymous Coward]

So use 6to4. There's no overhead when connecting to another 6to4 host, and not too much overhead for connecting to native ipv6 (for me it is about 40ms latency, because that's about how far it is from me to the nearest 6to4 relay router). All you need is a single public IPv4 address for your local 6to4 router, which runs radvd and assigns/routes ipv6 addresses to your other systems. Of course, you'll also want to set up a good firewall since the inside systems wouldn't be guarded by NAT anymore (not that NAT is really sufficient anyway).

Re:so, is *anyone* outside academia using IPv6?

[An Audience of One]

In the UK Andrews and Arnold (www.aaisp.net.uk) will do you natively routed IPv6 or IPv6 over a 6to4 tunnel if your modem/router doesn't support native IPv6.

Re:so, is *anyone* outside academia using IPv6?

[iphayd]

10.4 uses IPv6 to communicate whenever it can. For instance, anytime you use Bojour.

This frightened me the first time I saw IPv6 addresses in my 10.4 Server logs. I was wondering how they got there as I had not configured anything to do with IPv6. It took a IM to a Apple tech acquiantance to tell me that they switched Bonjour to IPv6.

Re:so, is *anyone* outside academia using IPv6?

[Lord Ender]

There is nothing wrong with having every internal computer on the Internet. Proper border firewalls would allow you to be rid of the complexity of NAT/PAT, with no compromise in security.

Re:so, is *anyone* outside academia using IPv6?

[Nevyn]

If there was a decent ISP that provided both IPv4 and IPv6 connectivity with little to no overhead, I'd seriously start looking and doing pilot projects. Until that happens or the IPv6 killer app comes along, I don't see much movement from IPv4.

This is the killer bit for me, I recently moved my network from a /26 to a /28 Ipv4 (it was faster) ... and it cost a non-trivial amount. I asked about only having a /29 with ipv4 and having ipv6 too, assuming it would be cheaper (and I could handle a bunch of machines being ipv6 only), but my ISP doesn't offer any ipv6 ... and they said it's because it would cost them more than just getting ipv4 addresses.

Even discounting the whole ipv6 migration problem, the fact you can't even realistically get ipv6 conectivity years, and years after it was introduced is stopping it.

Re:so, is *anyone* outside academia using IPv6?

[ArtStone]

This could be a shocking prediction - but TCP/IP isn't going to be the last communication protocol ever developed, and there will be an information communication tool created some day that replaces the Internet and the WWW with something even better.

IPv6 was not it. It was government funded research trying to push a string.

Re:so, is *anyone* outside academia using IPv6?

[igb]

It was government funded research trying to push a string.

Government funded's not of itself a bad thing: TCP/IP springs to mind. OSI was worse: it was funded by an unholy alliance of regulated 80s telcos (all that ``no more than 16 telcos per country'' business) and subsidised European computer makers (ICL, Bull, Siemens) and the EU. Quietly, they hoped to leverage one-country/one-vote processes to kick the Americans. And the technology was horrible (I speak as someone who's run a production X.400(88) mailer as the only mail conduit between 500 people and the Arpanet).

ian

If telecoms

[Watson Ladd]

spent as much money on implementing these protocols as lobbying for two-tier networks we would all have IPv6 now.

Re:If telecoms

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh how I wish I had mod points today. . . I'd mod the post insightful.

Somewhere on that site...

[jd]

...they also say that if you have an IPv6-reachable service up by 6Bone Day, to write in and let them know.

Examples of services that can be configured to be IPv6-reachable would be websites using Apache or Roxen, the games of Empire or PennMUSH - dunno if Freeciv is IPv6-aware or not, the Yum RPM updater - not sure about Apt, BIND, and probably a fair few others I can't think of right now. (They don't specify if games would be acceptable or not - but anyone who hosts a celebration on 6-6-6 is probably not hopelessly straight-laced.)

If you want to set something up, I'd encourage it. All you need do is set up a tunnel with one of the standard free brokerage services, enable IPv6 on your box, and have at it. I'd particularly encourage it if it means there's a snowball's chance in hell (!) of IPv6 being seen as used.

Why

[hckrdave]

Why did they choose June 6th to shut down 6Bone IPv6? Just because it sounds cool?

Why the funky addresses?

[nbritton]

Why in IPv6 did they pick the funky address style, why not just extend IPv4 to the 5th power and call it IPv5?:

256^4 = 4,294,967,296
xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

256^5 = 1,099,511,627,776
xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

Re:Why the funky addresses?

[Tony Hoyle]

I always wondered if you could implement that anyway...

An extension to the network stack.. TCP+1 and UDP+1, that takes an extra byte. The first 4 bytes are your public IP address (routed normally, using the IP packet), plus an extra byte (or 3 or 4..) to route to your internal machines. Nat traversal on steroids basically.

Hell, you might be able to do it with TCP without much change anyway, using optional fields in the header. UDP is the funky one.

Re:Why the funky addresses?

[petermgreen]

well through 6to4 you can do just that and gain connectivity to the public IPV6 internet into the bargin thanks to a routing convention involving IPV4 anycast. Though the address is obviously much longer than just an extra byte.

Re:Why the funky addresses?

[petermgreen]

they decided to make the addresses far bigger for several reasons

1: they didn't wan't a repeat of the IPV4 mess of running short of addresses in the space of a few decades and having to implement a lot of additional complexity in network routing to overcome this (classless routing).
2: they wanted stateless autoconfiguration for machines on a lan based on thier mac address (this is why half the address is alocated for use within a lan).
3: they wanted to have a clear demarcation between hirachy levels (/16 for really major groupings, currently 6bone, production and 6to4,/32 for ISPs,/48 for end sites, /64 for lans).

As for the "funky" style (groups of 4 hexadecimal digits) its just to make the human readable form of a 128 bit quantity a bit more concise. It also makes it easier to see how CIDR masks will apply to the address.

Re:Why the funky addresses?

[bmah]

The "funky address style" is just a way of expressing the much longer IPv6 addresses in a way that's 1) not onerous to enter manually, for the cases where you need to do this and 2) visually and syntactically different from existing IPv4 addresses.

At one point (~1994) the IPng working group in the IETF was contemplating 64-bit addresses, but roughly, they decided to go to 128 bits with the reasoning that they didn't want to repeat another major transition a few years down the road. (Think long-term...I think the goal was for at least a 20-year lifetime for the protocol.) Well, it's taken quite a bit longer for IPv6 to be widely adopted than was once originally believed, for a variety of reasons, but that was the rationale.

IPv6 got its version number from the value 6 assigned to it in the IP header (the "header version" field is the first four bits). The value 5 was already assigned to an experimental and mostly-forgotten network protocol called ST-II (I think). So "IPv5" was never really an option.

Privacy Implications of IPv6

[STDOUBT]

I honestly don't understand the hard-on a lot of people seem to have for IPv6. I LIKE NAT. I thinks it's neat. I like the idea that my systems can have un-real IP addresses. IP addresses that can actually change! Wow -cool! When the day comes that each box on my home LAN is required to be perma-identified, I for one, will be royally pissed off.

Re:Privacy Implications of IPv6

[Tony Hoyle]

Don't worry IPV6 has NAT too.

And if you ever have an ISP that supports it they'll very probably give you a /128 and you'll be in the exact same position you are now.

Basically IPV6 is no change to the normal user. Only large coroporate users will see the change, and they'll NAT as a basic security measure anyway.

Re:Privacy Implications of IPv6

[TheGavster]

IPv6 has NAT. The larger address space is only one of the changes that the new standard makes (it's just the most visible, and easiest to describe). IPv6 also allows for better security, QoS routing, and new 'plug and play' autoconfiguration capabilities (ie, generate an IP address from the hardware address)

Re:Privacy Implications of IPv6

[wheatking]

ipv6 may be useful once voip (w/ SIP+XMPP) is a reality beyond the farce that is vonage/skype/ ?

Re:Privacy Implications of IPv6

[Ant P.]

IPv6 has better than NAT: Pseudorandom, non-permanent IP addresses.

Re:Privacy Implications of IPv6

[kestasjk]

You'll still be able to use NAT if you want. The difference is you won't have to use NAT, and entire cities which are currently using NAT (Milan for one IIRC) can start to use public IPs again.

Re:Privacy Implications of IPv6

[modeless]

IPv6 includes robust support for renumbering; i.e. changing the IP addresses of whole swaths of a network. Your address will be assigned by DHCP and you can change it regularly if you want. In fact, since there are so many more IPv6 addresses, you're likely to receive a large block of public addresses you can switch around in, instead of having one public IP address that perma-identifies your entire network.

Re:Privacy Implications of IPv6

[Anonymous Coward]

You are joking, right?

Re:Privacy Implications of IPv6

[adrianmonk]

I honestly don't understand the hard-on a lot of people seem to have for IPv6. I LIKE NAT. I thinks it's neat. I like the idea that my systems can have un-real IP addresses. IP addresses that can actually change!

IP addresses that can conflict with the range of addresses that some Internet cafe chose when you try to VPN into your network from outside! Conflicts that cause routing nightmares! Hey, my home network and Starbucks are both using 192.168.1.0/24 so it's impossible to tell the difference between my 192.168.1.99 and the 192.168.1.99 that another Starbuck's customer is using! Yay! ;-)

Seriously though, the public side of the NAT has to have a routable address. With IPv6, you could have a routable address for the hosts on your private network, but you don't have to have that address visible in any packets that leave your private network. You can still do NAT, and your routable addresses won't be visible to the outside world, just like your 192.168.1.0/24 addresses aren't visible to the outside world right now.

Re:Privacy Implications of IPv6

[MoogMan]

I'm thinking this was intended as funny, but it was modded as insightful, so;

are there any technical limitations against doing Nat on ipv6? Forgive my ignorance, but providing authentication/encryption is not mandatory, I don't know of a reason why Nat would not work.

Saying this, the real reason for nat is to overcome the lack of up addresses. Hopefully, with plenty of IPv6 addresses, ISPs will allow you to have 5 or 10 etc. For the majority of purposes, using nat as a quasi-firwall is foolish, given the disadvantages it brings.

Re:Privacy Implications of IPv6

[takev]

Actually with the amount of IPv6 addresses you will get assigned a /48 range, that is 16 bits for subnet routing and 64 bits for addresses within such a subnet. I believe this is mandatory (rules from RIPE, the european IANA) for an always-on customer.

Re:Privacy Implications of IPv6

[Anonymous Coward]

ONE (1) IPv6 address that the ISPs can give you is a /64 address. For networks (if you have more than one network), then you'll probably be able to get a /48 address. There is probably some flexibility in the /48, but your IP address for IPv6 will always be /64.

Re:Privacy Implications of IPv6

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Milan is not using NAT as an "entire city". Do you think there's some kind of communist regime with a single government-sanctioned network? There are in fact multiple ISPs, each with its own block of public IPv4 addresses. Only one of them, fiber optic-based FastWeb, infamously gives customers private addresses and uses NAT to access the global internet.

Re:Privacy Implications of IPv6

[Ant P.]

Nope.

Re:Privacy Implications of IPv6

[Anonymous Coward]

... you try to VPN into your network ...

IOW, you or your network engineers shot their own feet by leaving the addresses at their default settings.

Never, EVER, use 192.168.1.x for an internal network. Roll some dice, pick numbers out of a hat, or anything to pick something different for that 3rd octet. You have nobody to blame for that configuration problem except yourself.

(Now if you're talking about two offices who both happened to use the same non-standard IP address range... now you've got a reasonable issue. But the odds of that should be around 1:250 if you have competent network engineers.)

Re:Privacy Implications of IPv6

[Lord Ender]

There is no security benefit of NAT/PAT+private IPs compared to a firewall+Internet IP6 address. Doing it the old IP4 way is more expensive, too, because of the addes complexity of NAT/PAT.

Re:Privacy Implications of IPv6

[adrianmonk]

Never, EVER, use 192.168.1.x for an internal network. Roll some dice, pick numbers out of a hat, or anything to pick something different for that 3rd octet. You have nobody to blame for that configuration problem except yourself.

Sure, that's mostly effective. If people pick the third octet at random, that will avoid a lot of collisions. Not all of them (think of the birthday paradox, and there are only 256 possible third octets, compared to 365 possible days in a year), but it will reduce the odds a lot.

However, in my opinion, this is one of those areas where you can think of ways around problems, but the fundamental truth of the situation is that the design of IPv4 isn't really working well for the current needs, and all these little tricks (like thinking to choose the third octet randomly) are just coping mechanisms. If IPv6 were in wide use, you would just have unique numbers and there would be no need to play games with choosing random octets to avoid collisions.

Now, having said that, in my particular case at the site where I am the admin, I didn't choose 192.168.1.0/24, but some previous admin did back when the company was really small, and now I'd have to renumber the entire network to get us off of that. Did I mention that some of the hosts on the network are in an office over 1000 miles away? Yes, it's possible to fix this, but most likely we will just live with it instead, because the benefits of fixing it don't outweigh the cost.

Of course, if it were me, I never would've picked any block out of 192.168.0.0/16. I would've picked something out of 10.0.0.0/8, and if I had been smart, I would've picked the middle two octets at random.

Where have I heard that before?

[tepples]

The cost of an IP address, like the cost of broadband, has gone way down. IPv6 will bring it down a lot more

"The cost of music has gone way down from when it had to be performed live every time. Compact Disc will bring it down a lot more." Yet the major record labels never significantly lowered the price of a new release CD in current dollars. Just because a seller has an excuse to lower the price of a good or service doesn't mean that the seller will lower the price. If the demand curves are inelastic enough, the seller can pocket the cost savings.

Re:Where have I heard that before?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The cost of music has gone way down from when it had to be performed live every time. Compact Disc will bring it down a lot more." Yet the major record labels never significantly lowered the price of a new release CD in current dollars.

That's nice, but what does that have to do with IPv6? Recorded music has always sold for about the same rate (within an order of magnitude or so, I'd guess).

Networking services, OTOH, have offered an order of magnitude more bandwidth every few years, and all the features they can cram into it. Remember when you got 1 email address from your ISP? Now you get 5 or 10 or more. The trend is clear: if it's just a software switch on their side, they'll flip it, because if they don't, their competitor will.

Assuming that the hardware side of things is taken care of for IPv6 (which government requirements should do), then it's just a software switch for them. They don't even need more storage space and backups, like they did when they decided to offer gobs of free webmail accounts, or free web space -- with FrontPage Extensions!

Record companies are not selling CDs dirt-cheap, because they (a) cost money to produce, they (b) get money per CD, not a recurring fee per unit time, and (c) it has no perfect substitutes.

If they charged $0.25 for a Bob Dylan CD, I'd pay it, they'd make much lower profits, and wouldn't make any more money off me, even if I listen to it every day for 10 years. So they charge $20 each, knowing that if I want a Bob Dylan CD, it doesn't matter if I can buy a Britney Spears CD for $0.01.

IPv6 isn't free to deploy, but it's getting cheaper, and at some point it *will* be as simple as flipping a switch. And then they'll have to flip it. Like photons, a free flow of IPv6 packets with a specific latency and bandwidth is the same no matter who sells it to me.

If you want something to compare it to, look to Wifi. Wifi is free in many/most places now, even though it required new hardware.

So--that's it for IPV6 then...

[mkcmkc]

Thank you for competing. Better luck next time!!! As your consolation prize, you'll take home this nearly new 3000-pound ATM switch and a lifetime supply of MiniDisc blanks.

Re:So--that's it for IPV6 then...

[nsayer]

Not even close.

The 6bone was always meant to be a temporary experimental network. Nowadays allocations in the 2001:: network can be had from some ISPs, and the 6to4 network (2002::) is available for anyone with a single routable IPv4 address.

Re:So--that's it for IPV6 then...

[Tony Hoyle]

Almost all the tunnel brokers have now closed down.

Good luck finding an ISP that supports the 192.88.99.1 6to4 gateway let alone gives you a proper ipv6 address. All the ISPs shutdown that address a few years ago as far as I can tell.

Re:So--that's it for IPV6 then...

[DA-MAN]

Good luck finding an ISP that supports the 192.88.99.1 6to4 gateway let alone gives you a proper ipv6 address. All the ISPs shutdown that address a few years ago as far as I can tell.

Done!

http://www.hexago.com/index.php?pgID=20

Quote: Freenet6 is powered by Hexago's flagship product, the Migration Broker®, which allows users to take advantage of innovative features such as a permanent IPv6 address and prefix, as well as DNS registration and reverse delegation. Freenet6 users can get IPv6 connectivity from anywhere, including from behind any NAT device or from outside of their home network.

Re:So--that's it for IPV6 then...

[sshore]

Works fine here with the local cable company, though it takes several hops to get to it.

It's a virtual network, so as long as one provider advertises it you should be able to use it almost anywhere.

Sure there is.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

As it stands, there is no real impetus to use ipv6.

Beg to differ.

IPv6 is used in certain foreign countries - at least partly to support mobile computing.

You can't sell networking equipment into some of them (notably Japan) without having an IPv6 solution available.

Re:Sure there is.

[Wesley Felter]

There's a big difference between having IPv6 available in equipment and using it. Virtually all new routers now support IPv6, but the ISPs don't turn it on.

MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

Moderators, it's _informative_.

Yes

[Apoklypse]

it's a sign ... The 5th Horseman

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

it's a sign ... The 5th Horseman

funny... I thought it was the 6th Horseman...

Re:Yes

[Doppleganger]

funny... I thought it was the 6th Horseman...

It's a zero-based indexing scheme, naturally.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

it's a sign ... The 5th Horseman

Don't you mean 6th?

What happened to IPV8 ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever happened to IPV8?

Geographic duopoly

[tepples]

The trend is clear: if it's just a software switch on their side, they'll flip it, because if they don't, their competitor will.

So what if the competitor doesn't, citing cost and "security" issues? Or what if only one ISP serves residences in a particular geographic area?

They don't even need more storage space and backups

But they may need more memory in their routers.

Like photons, a free flow of IPv6 packets with a specific latency and bandwidth is the same no matter who sells it to me.

Unless every ISP who would sell it to you requires that you move house in order to be in the ISP's coverage area.

Re:Geographic duopoly

[earthbound kid]

So what if the competitor doesn't, citing cost and "security" issues?

The genius of capitalism is that in the absence of a monopoly, eventually one competitor will out of short term greed.

Or what if only one ISP serves residences in a particular geographic area?

Having only one provider is of course the kind of monopoly condition that will prevent positive change. Fortunately, there's competition between cable and DSL now and hopefully WiFi and maybe broadband over powerlines in the future.

Re:Geographic duopoly

[Jesus_666]

The genius of capitalism is that in the absence of a monopoly, eventually one competitor will out of short term greed.

Or a cartel forms.


Having only one provider is of course the kind of monopoly condition that will prevent positive change. Fortunately, there's competition between cable and DSL now and hopefully WiFi and maybe broadband over powerlines in the future.

Cable still exists? Over here in Germany I heard people discuss it in the late 90s, but like PLC (which has only recently resurfaced) it was pretty much dead. (Okay, a quick look at the 'Pedia tells me that German cable networks just aren't built for that kind of data transmission, which explains why cable is virtually nonexistant over here with an 0.2% market share.)
In the end we have DSL, a bit faster DSL, ISDN (offered by the same companies selling us DSL) and powerline, which has about the same market penetration as cable. Oh, and satellite, but nobody uses that. My hope actually rests on UMTS - it's not cheap but in some cases it's a good alternative to DSL.

Re:Geographic duopoly

[earthbound kid]

Cartels are illegal, at least in the States.

I'm in Japan now, and my broadband options are DSL from YahooBB (secretly softbank, I think?), DSL from NTT, and cable from the local cable company. There might be other options that my semi-illiteracy is hiding from me though. Speeds are high, and service is reasonably priced.

Re:Geographic duopoly

[Jesus_666]

Broadband ain't that expensive over here, either. The telcos are giving each other enough competition to keep prices down (and I'm in a pretty well-saturated region; AFAIK I can choose between T-Online, Tiscali, QSC and various resellers). However, if they really wanted to they could artificially keep the prices high.

Remember: If they can make more money off price-fixing than the backlash (fines and damage to the corporate image) will cost them they will go and screw the customers immediately. They are corporations and their only concern is how to make more money, so they will go where he dough is. This applies especially when in some areas they are the sole provider so people won't be able to switch to someone else.

So I guess this means ....

[Anonymous Coward]

That the 6bone users are getting the bone ?

the great thing is

[petermgreen]

through 6to4 everyone with a public IPV4 address gets a /48 IPV6 prefix free.

these things come and go..

[YesIAmAScript]

At once time, government projects had to use Ada. In the 80s, you had to use UNIX (it led to the development of Apple's UNIX back then). In the late 80s, OSI was going to be required.

In the end, none of these had any effect (the UNIX stuff died long before Linux game around). I dont know if this will be any different.

And besides, just being able to do it is probably enough. Mac OS X does IPv6, but does anyone use it?

IPv6 service in the US

[jroysdon]

I've thought for a long time that IPv6 is going to be one area that the US will lag behind in networking. Cisco/Linksys will have support (Cisco routers all do now) as they compete in Asia, etc. where IPv6 is already in widespread use.

Can you name 2 ISPs in the US that you can get native IPv6 assignments from?

For some time, I had a 6-bone /48 from Sprintlink.

I know that Verio announced IPv6 service some time ago (2+ years) and that Hurricane Electric has had IPv6 service for a very long time (you can even use HE as a Tunnel Broker).

But how about small/medium businesses or home users that aren't going to pay for a dedicated T1 to one of these ISPs when a cablemodem/dsl is just as fast for downloading and works just fine? While I can tunnel to HE, I'd really like to have native IPv6 service.

Having said that, I haven't dinked with IPv6 in 2 years, and it's been 3 years since I was doing anything serious with it (hosting an IRC node and a MUD, both with native IPv6 access). I want to use it, but it's like the internet in '93 vs. '06...

Re:IPv6 service in the US

[jroysdon]

BTW, I tried a tunnel to freenet6 (very simple interface) just now, and tested stuff like ipv6.chat.freenode.net, a few random ipv6 sites, and even an FM broadcasting site in mplayer. It all worked, but it was still way laggy as before... non-native (tunneled) ipv6 is just too slow. Other than the geek factor of being on freenode with an ipv6 address, I don't see the point just yet since 99.999% of the internet doesn't even support ipv6, and you have to hunt for sites that even support it (feels like the days of '94 when I used to comb geek magazines for cool sites to visit since there really wasn't much to see on the internet then).

New technology lets you search the WWW

[shani]

The 6bone dying means the last ipv6 broker I know of just went out of commission...

Intersting... perhaps you should try a "search engine" to find a new tunnel broker. It's a technology that lets you enter in one or more keywords and it will try to find web pages that have that word. Here's a site that I hear it is pretty good for this:

http://www.google.com/

If that's too hard, I can recommend the following tunnel broker. I use it for a server I have in a non-IPv6 network (my server is in Amsterdam, and the broker is in Switzerland, so I have an extra 20 milliseconds of delay for IPv6 traffic vs. IPv4 traffic, but the broker seems to be reliable):

http://tunnelbroker.as8758.net/

My ISP at home, xs4all, provides IPv6 for their customers. So everyone who wants it gets a /48. I'll give you the link, which you can use until you figure out this whole "search" concept:

http://www.xs4all.nl/

Redundant, but..

[funkdancer]

They should wait till 20:06 in the UTC+06 timezone.
What a nice datetime: 2006-06-06 20:06+06.

Re:Redundant, but..

[after fallout]

or even 2006-06-06 20:06.06+06

And Sixxs ?

[J4nus_slashdotter]

What's about Sixxs ?

Cost...

[Duncan3]

Just look at how much IPv6 address space costs per year.

Now you know why noone is using it.

Example of route change

[kickdown]

Networks are changing their setups right about now. A series of traceroute6's from just a few minutes ago shows (note the disappearance of the 3ffe address at hop 15, and the new routing path afterwards):

swinter@aragorn ~ $ /usr/sbin/traceroute6 www.kame.net
traceroute to www.kame.net (2001:200:0:8002:203:47ff:fea5:3085) from 2001:a18:1:8:205:5dff:fea1:c541, 30 hops max, 16 byte packets
1 fwint-1.restena.lu (2001:a18:1:8::1) 1.308 ms 0.203 ms 1.282 ms
2 gate-1.rest.restena.lu (2001:a18:0:800::1) 1.066 ms 0.962 ms 2.024 ms
3 gate-2-v8.rest.restena.lu (2001:a18:0:200::2) 1.787 ms 2.768 ms 2.682 ms
4 gate-2-v27.bce.restena.lu (2001:a18:ff:107::1) 3.773 ms 3.205 ms 3.024 ms
5 gate-1-v33.bce.restena.lu (2001:a18:ff:10a::1) 4.273 ms 2.85 ms 3.973 ms
6 restena.rt1.lux.lu.geant2.net (2001:798:20:10aa::1) 3.271 ms 3.149 ms 4.166 ms
7 2001:798:cc:1401:2001::1 (2001:798:cc:1401:2001::1) 7.957 ms 8.184 ms 9.086 ms
8 abilene-gw.rt1.fra.de.geant2.net (2001:798:14:10aa::e) 103.26 ms 103.369 ms 102.861 ms
9 nycmng-washng.abilene.ucaid.edu (2001:468:ff:1518::1) 112.948 ms 105.242 ms 108.61 ms
10 chinng-nycmng.abilene.ucaid.edu (2001:468:ff:f15::1) 137.817 ms 124.527 ms 123.776 ms
11 iplsng-chinng.abilene.ucaid.edu (2001:468:ff:f12::2) 131.448 ms 137.687 ms 127.681 ms
12 kscyng-iplsng.abilene.ucaid.edu (2001:468:ff:1213::2) 135.977 ms 146.231 ms 142.167 ms
13 dnvrng-kscyng.abilene.ucaid.edu (2001:468:ff:1013::1) 146.69 ms 146.515 ms 146.526 ms
14 snvang-dnvrng.abilene.ucaid.edu (2001:468:ff:1017::2) 174.782 ms 171.421 ms 183.414 ms
15 3ffe:80a::b2 (3ffe:80a::b2) 312.12 ms 312.369 ms 312.872 ms
16 hitachi1.otemachi.wide.ad.jp (2001:200:0:4401::3) 312.544 ms 317.784 ms 312.253 ms
17 ve-4.nec2.yagami.wide.ad.jp (2001:200:0:1c04:230:13ff:feae:5b) 315.371 ms 314.195 ms 322.631 ms
18 lo0.alaxala1.k2.wide.ad.jp (2001:200:0:4800::7800:1) 313.097 ms 316.308 ms 317.586 ms
19 orange.kame.net (2001:200:0:8002:203:47ff:fea5:3085) 312.409 ms 312.538 ms 313.941 ms

swinter@aragorn ~ $ /usr/sbin/traceroute6 www.kame.net
traceroute to www.kame.net (2001:200:0:8002:203:47ff:fea5:3085) from 2001:a18:1:8:205:5dff:fea1:c541, 30 hops max, 16 byte packets
1 fwint-1.restena.lu (2001:a18:1:8::1) 1.314 ms 0.868 ms 1.257 ms
2 gate-1.rest.restena.lu (2001:a18:0:800::1) 1.688 ms 0.973 ms 2.072 ms
3 gate-2-v8.rest.restena.lu (2001:a18:0:200::2) 2.723 ms 2.96 ms 1.942 ms
4 gate-2-v27.bce.restena.lu (2001:a18:ff:107::1) 2.189 ms 3.258 ms 3.003 ms
5 gate-1-v33.bce.restena.lu (2001:a18:ff:10a::1) 3.014 ms 3.92 ms 2.814 ms
6 restena.rt1.lux.lu.geant2.net (2001:798:20:10aa::1) 3.55 ms 4.289 ms 3.124 ms
7 2001:798:cc:1401:2001::1 (2001:798:cc:1401:2001::1) 8.03 ms 8.276 ms 8.432 ms
8 abilene-gw.rt1.fra.de.geant2.net (2001:798:14:10aa::e) 104.804 ms 103.79 ms 142.273 ms
9 nycmng-washng.abilene.ucaid.edu (2001:468:ff:1518::1) 108.557 ms 103.712 ms 103.23 ms
10 chinng-nycmng.abilene.ucaid.edu (2001:468:ff:f15::1) 123.748 ms 127.777 ms 122.562 ms
11 2001:400:2005:7::1 (2001:400:2005:7::1) 123.113 ms 128.574 ms 134.733 ms
12 2001:400:2005::2 (2001:400:2005::2) 130.627 ms 134.921 ms 123.079 ms
13 chicr1-10ge-chislmr1.es.net (2001:400:0:a6::1) 123.652 ms 124.411 ms 123.919 ms
14 snv2sdn1-oc192-chicr1.es.net (2001:400:0:54::1) 172.982 ms 171.455 ms 172.394 ms
15 snv2mr1-snv2sdn1.es.net (2001:400:0:97::1) 171.831 ms 172.539 ms 172.444 ms
16 snv1mr1-snv2mr1.es.net (2001:400:0:95::1) 171.445 ms 172.94 ms 176.18 ms
17 snvcr1-snv1mr1.es.net (2001:400:0:9d::2) 171.435 ms 183.06 ms 171.105 ms
18 snvrt1-ge0-snvcr1.es.net (2001:400:0:61::2) 172.712 ms 172.569 ms 172.758 ms
19 2001:200:0:4410::1 (2001:200:0:4410::1) 302.266 ms 301.313 m

Re:Example of route change

[Anonymous Coward]

That's like geek pr0n!

Tying of e.g. cable Internet to cable TV

[tepples]

Cartels are illegal, at least in the States.

So the cartels set up shop outside the United States and sell to the United States. This happened with OPEC. Or, more relevantly in the case of residential ISP duopolies, the cartels wait until a big-business-friendly administration (e.g. that of President Bush) is in office.

I'm in Japan now, and my broadband options are DSL from YahooBB (secretly softbank, I think?), DSL from NTT, and cable from the local cable company.

In many parts of the United States, if I get cable Internet without cable TV, the local cable company will still charge me for cable TV, and if I get DSL without a voice line, the local telephone company will still charge me for a voice line.

Question-Static ips and money

[dmbtech]

I have a question. I currently registered and recieved an ipv6 subnet from sixxs.net. Are these ipv6 addrs mine, like do i own them? Will they be available forever? Also, when ipv6 becomes main stream if it ever does, will it cost money to get a ipv6 address or subnet? Will everyone be guarenteed a subnet?

Laugh--it's a joke

[mkcmkc]

Just kidding. Still, I can't tell you how many times over the last decade (?) I've read an IPV6 whitepaper, tutorial, or FAQ, telling myself that someday I'm going to need to know this. Well, I've had time to forget everything I know about IPV6 several times, and I've still never touched a host that was using it...

Nope...

[Dareth]

Looks like they can't get it "UP"... get it UP ha ha ha!

No interoperability == no ipv6 any time soon

[Anonymous Coward]

We would have had a significant IPv6 population by now if interoperability were baked in, like the MX mail record transition. Instead we have funky ways to support both setups (6to4, Teredo, etc). So IPv6 is a toy for admins, with little real benefit, except to alleviate the bogeyman address crunch in the indeterminate future. End result is balkanization and a few golden bridges.

DJB still has it right: http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/ipv6mess.html .