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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."
6bone shutting down on 6-6-6?
Hmmm...
When will they start up 7bone with its 1024 bit addressing? IPv6 is just so... limiting.
Looks like they decided to get going with their shutdown ahead of time.
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.
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."
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.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
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.
spent as much money on implementing these protocols as lobbying for two-tier networks we would all have IPv6 now.
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.-- Frontinus, 1st cent. AD
IPv6 has better than NAT: Pseudorandom, non-permanent IP addresses.
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.
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.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
it's a sign ...
The 5th Horseman
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.
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.