U.S. Government to Adopt IPv6 in 2008

IO ERROR writes "The U.S. Government is set to transition to IPv6 in June 2008, according to Government Computer News: 'In the newest additions to the IPv6 Transition Guidance, the CIO Council's Architecture and Infrastructure Committee has provided a list of best practices and transition elements that agencies should use as they work to meet the deadline. The latest additions, (MS Word) released in May, are a compilation of existing recommendations and best practices gathered from the Defense Department, which has been testing and preparing for the transition for years, the private sector, and the Internet research and development community.'"

Comments

Experiment with Teredo

[Midnight Thunder]

Anyone not having access to an IPv6 network, say because you are behind a NAT, and are wanting to try out IPv6, because it is in your blood to do so, I recommend giving Miredo a go. If I suggest this one over other solutions, is because of the number of platforms supported (including, Linux, Windows, MacOS X, BSD). There is Freenet6, but it won't work from behind my NAT with MacOS X.

Re:2008?

[Mariner28]

Actually, the DoD is transitioning to IPv6 capability by 2008, and yes, there's no way all systems will be capable of supporting IPv6, let alone transitioning to IPv6 exclusively, by then. So as systems, and more importantly - applications, are upgraded over time, they will get there.

Ironically, it's not the government that's dragging its feet - it's the contractors. You'd think they've never heard of IPv6 before, even though every contract written in the last year or so is supposed to contain a clause stating that the system/application delivered under that contract will support IPv6...

Re:What are the Downsides to IPv6? Anyone?

[Abcd1234]

IPv6 addresses are four times the size of IPv4 addresses. That means additional computation is necessary to handle the simplest IP tasks (routing.)

Uhh... what? One of the big advantages of IPv6 over IPv4 is that it will make routing *easier*, thanks to the hierarchical address space.

Re:Stats on IP usage?

[Intron]

According to IANA, there are some big blocks of wasted space out there:

• BBN has three entire class A
• HP+DEC has two entire class A (isn't it interesting that they were side by side?)
• Halliburton has their own class A
• multicast reserves 16 x class A but is largely unused

Remember that a class A contains 16M addresses.

Re:Stats on IP usage?

[kbnielsen]

For a long time, it has been predicted by various studies that we would run out of IPv4 addresses around 2010, based on the comsumption rate after introduction of NAT's and the changes made by CIDR (RFC 1817).

However, a more recent study by Cisco and others argue that we might be running out of addresses as soon as 2008 if the current consumption rate holds up. And with major pushes for 3. world countries to enter into the tech sector, my guess is that it is not a totally invalid assumption. They also argue how long the reclaiming of existing class A (or /8 in CIDR notation) networks would prolong the time where the IPv4 address space is exhausted.

There are also lots of problem by using the D and E class networks for general putpose traffic, since the D class is classified as experimental and E as broadcast, and so it cannot be guaranteed that all equipment can handle these addresses or will even allow these addresses to be used, since previously it would have been a configuration mistake to use these (especially the D class) addresses...

Re:Stats on IP usage?

[arivanov]

There is a tremendous waste of space all over the place, not just class thos few class As you mention.

As an example: In one well known red brick UK university you have to have a public IP address and you are not allowed to put kit behind a NAT even if that kit OS something esoteric and obsolete like the Silicon Graphics or AS1 that drives Bruker NMRs. As a result you have the choice to leave it unconnected which is a major annoyance as it is designed for network connectivity or to leave it at the mercy of the elements. This is done so that the "usage is not reduced" so that the overall university allocation is still justified.

While at it, IIRC the aforementioned Bruker as a class B which is not used for anything but to give semi-unique addresses to different components of Lab machinery which sit on internal networks worldwide. Classic abuse of public address space for what amounts to textbook RFC 1918.

IBM is holding 9.0.0.0/8 which it practically does not use, There is a huge block in the high /8 area which is unused and reserved for edu.

The only place where there is some IPv4 address shortage are the APNIC blocks. RIPE and especially ARIN still have plenty of address space to go around even without going and starting to ask people like IBM if they actually use those class As.

Re:What are the Downsides to IPv6? Anyone?

[TCM]

However, comparing a packet's address to a target address involves four times as many bits in IPv6 as in IPv4.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong! Do you think the target address is scattered randomly through every packet? No, it has a fixed place in the header.

Additionally, there are less options in IPv6, making the logic to analyze a packet even more simple than for IPv4.

Random Google result:

The improved routing, or movement of information from a source to a destination, is more efficient in IPv6 because it incorporates a hierarchal addressing structure and has a simplified header. The large amount of address space allows organizations with large numbers of employees to obtain blocks of contiguous address space. Contiguous address space allows organizations to aggregate addresses under one prefix for identification on the Internet. This structured approach to addressing reduces the amount of information Internet routers must maintain and store and promotes faster routing of data. In addition, as shown in figure 5, IPv6 has a simplified header because of the elimination of six fields from the IPv4 header. The simplified header also contributes to faster routing.

http://www.cybertelecom.org/dns/Ipv6.htm

If you keep spreading FUD instead of doing a simple Google search we will never get IPv6.

Re:Stats on IP usage?

[TCM]

IPv6 addresses are not cryptographic keys, even if their space is as big. Relying on the ability to "hide" in the address space is so bad, you shouldn't even begin thinking about it. Better keep your services up-to-date and secure.

Also, IPv6 NAT should never ever see the light of day.

Re:The first

[lgw]

Not to mention they'd piss off a bunch of home users who would have to replace all their equipment (routers and such) with IPV6 hardware. There's probably a lot of people still running OSes that don't support IPV6.

Where did DavyGrvy mention turning off IPv4? They work together, you know. Do even Slashdotters not understand that adding IPv6 to a network does nothing to reduce IPv4 connectivity? It's win-win.

IPv6 tunnels over IPv4. IPv4 tunnels over IPv6. Machines running IPv4 can talk to machines running IPv6. Machines running IPv6 can talk to machines running IPv4.

IPv6 still has issues, to be sure, but interoperability with IPv4 isn't one of them.