A Humorous Introduction To IPv6

zollman writes "Jonathan Richards, in the London times, explains how the introduction of IPv6 will change the Internet. From the article: 'As use [of the Internet] grew, it became clear that the old protocol, IPv4, wasn't big enough, so a new one was created using 32-bit numbers. That increased the number of available addresses to 340 undecillion, 282 decillion, 366 nonillion, 920 octillion, 938 septillion -- enough for the foreseeable future.'"

Comments

IPv6

[Sinistah]

IPv6 uses 128 bit addresses. IPv4 uses 32 bit addresses.

Re:IPv6

[The Darkness]

IPv6 uses 128 bit addresses. IPv4 uses 32 bit addresses.

I thought the same thing at first. After re-reading the summary I concluded that when they said 32 bit numbers they meant 32bit.32bit.32bit.32bit (128 bits) for ipv6 to help explain it to the laymen who is used to the 8bit.8bit.8bit.8bit representation of ipv4.

Of course, those of us familiar with ipv6 addresses realize they aren't represented that way but as :: delimeted hex. ;-)

Re:Fuzzy Math

[CastrTroy]

He just doesn't have his facts straight at all. IPV4 uses 32 bit addresses, which gives you about 4 billion addresses. IPV6 on the other hand uses 128 bit addresses (please correct me if i'm wrong), which gives you an unbelievably large number of addresses, which will be able to address every atom in the universe with it's own IP address. This time we aren't running out. Of course, you could assign multiple addresses to each machine, and get rid of the need for ports...

32-bits? Uhhh...

[Mattintosh]

FTA:

When the internet was developed in the 1980s, programmers had no idea how big it would become. They gave each address a "16-bit" number, which meant that the total number of available addresses worked out at about four billion (2 to the power of 32).

But as use grew, it became clear that the old protocol, IPv4, wasn't big enough, so a new one was written based on "32-bit numbers". That increased the number of available addresses to 340 undecillion, 282 decillion, 366 nonillion, 920 octillion, 938 septillion -- enough for the foreseeable future, Mr Kessens said.

IPv4 uses 32-bit numbers. There are four octets. Octets contain eight bits. So each address is 4 x 8 = 32 bits.

IPv6 uses 256-bit numbers broken into 32-bit chunks.

Next thing you know, this guy will be telling us they're building more tubes.

London Times?

[Neeex]

Forget the incorrect numbers of bits and the lack of humour, I'm more worried by the submitter's reference to the "London times": there's no such thing. The newspaper is called "The Times". Where did the "London" come from? It's a national newspaper, so calling it "British Times" would be less wrong...

Re:London Times?

[soliptic]

You're right, however calling it the "London Times" when discussed in an international context, to distinguish it from the many other papers of the same name, is pretty common practice. I've seen it loads of times before, it's some sort of quasi-standard I think.

I'm a Brit, and I can get narked when people on slashdot or elsewhere make stupid/erroneous statements about British things, but this isn't one of them...

6to4 Routing

[paul248]

Probably the simplest way to get an IPv6 address these days is using 6to4.

Every IPv4 address has been assigned a big block of IPv6 addresses, with a prefix of 2002:[IPv4_address]. If you've got a 6to4 address, and want to send a packet to another 6to4 address, it just gets encapsulated and sent directly to the destination over the IPv4 Internet.

However, if you want to send a packet from a 6to4 address to a "real" IPv6 address with a 2001: prefix, then it needs to get routed through a 6to4 gateway.

If your ISP has a clue, then you should be able to traceroute to the 192.88.99.1 anycast address, and reach a gateway that's somewhat close to you. For a fun time, try it from different computers on different ISPs to see where you end up.

The nice thing about 6to4 is, if you can get your router set up with a 6to4 address, then it can advertise that prefix on your LAN, and all your LAN computers can have a public IPv6 address.

At some level, it's like the ultimate stateless NAT traversal system: you can send packets directly from one LAN to another without needing to do any of that port forwarding nonsense. It really shows you how the Internet was designed to work in the first place.

Well anyway, here's the Wikipedia article on 6to4:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6to4

Re:Quotation Fingers

[spiffyman]

Generally, copy editors (and page designers in print) have the final say on typographical elements. Even if the journalist knows what he/she is talking about, the copy editors may not and may force quotation marks where they're unnecessary.

Of course, the fact remains that copy editors are also often fact-checkers. They should know better.

Morons

[The Cisco Kid]

I would file this under complete and utter stupidity, with outright incorrect information thrown in to boot.

IPv4 uses 32-bit addresses
IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses

Theres the incorrect information part. I'll leave it up to the reader to recognize the utter stupidity part.

Ok, how long an answer do you want?

[jd]

First, let's assume for a moment that address space was what IPv6 was about. It isn't, by a long way, but let's assume it was. Would it still be useful? Yes. Why? Because routing sucks using IPv4, that's why. An address of w.x.y.z could be absolutely anywhere on the Internet. The backbone routers on the Internet need a router table entry for every friggin' block of IP addresses whose next hop cannot be inferred from the broader IP block. With CIDR, this problem is actually a lot worse, as you can't simply say that some C-class network is in that general direction. Any of the subnets could be absolutely anywhere. You don't know if 130.88.12.118 is a machine inside the 130.88.12.x network - it might just as easily be off the 131.23.42.x network. But the router for 130.88.x.y might be off 132.79.42.y, so you can't pass the packet to the router for the general case, you have to pass it to the router for the most specific case. Because many routers don't allow netmasks with "holes", you could in theory end up with router tables with up to 512 million entries with no efficient method of searching it. You have to check the destination against every entry + netmask for the most accurate match.

IPv6 mandates hierarchical addresses. In fact, if you use automatic address assignment, you don't get a choice. Every router WILL have a subgroup of the parent's IP block, and every IP address WILL have a prefix that matches the host router's prefix. This means that routers can largely dispense with routing tables. If the prefix matches the prefix of the router, up to the prefix length of that router, it goes on the local network. Everything else goes upstream. If you are on a peered network, you need to add one prefix check per peer. This means that a router with N ports and M tunnels has an absolute maximum of (N + M - 1) prefix tests. On a huge, 256-port router, with no pipes used for redundancy, you're looking at 255 tests.

That's one hell of a difference, when it comes to latency.

Ok, so what are the other differences? Well, IPv6 mandates IPSec. If you comply with requirements, you WILL use encrypted connections. So, sure, the Government can mandate that ISPs send them all the traffic. Let them. Give them all the triple-DES or AES-encrypted streams they like. Won't do them much good. From a privacy standpoint, IPv6 is about as good as it gets. Even the UK's requirements of handing over encryption keys if there is a reason to believe you have them is of no use - IPSec is opportunistic, per-unit of time, per-session. You don't know the keys, you have no reason to, and most Operating Systems won't let you have them even if you did want them.

Mobility. IPv6 mandates mobility for computers AND for networks. IPv4 - well, it's possible but (a) both providers need to support it, and (b) routing won't be optimized. Ever. With IPv6, upstream routers become aware of your move and the routing becomes corrected over time. You don't need cooperative ISPs, it's built-in. It will simply work.

Zeroconf. Again, you can do this with IPv4 - if the ISP (or network admin in a corporation) is feeling uber-generous. With IPv6, zeroconf is the norm. You can use DHCPv6 if you really want, but you're not stuck with it.

Multicast. This has existed within IPv4 for many decades, but the bloody ISPs won't enable it in their routers, so you can't use it. This is sheer bloody-mindedness on their part, as multicast doesn't place a greater strain on their networks. It would actually reduce it something fierce. It doesn't require any additional effort on their part, other than to enable PIMv2 on the upstream and downstream connections. Everything else is automatic, as multicast has been natively supported on the backbone for at least a decade. Two settings. Two tiny, insignificant settings, and they could cut network traffic at peak times by an order of magnitude.

(FTP-over-multicast exists. I'm sure bittorrent-over-multicast would be doable, if it hasn't been done alrea

Re:Ok, how long an answer do you want?

[Tony Hoyle]

Where do I start?

1. IPV6 mandates *support* for ipsec. IPV4 also supports ipsec. 99% of communication will not use it anyway, and that which does could have done it with IPV4 anyway, so no difference there.
2. Mobility. Huh? Another solution waiting for a problem. I guess that all those laptops in starbucks *aren't* quite happy with the functionality of DHCP then.
3. First, that's not zeroconf. Go google what zeroconf is then come back. Also IPV6 does *not* remove the need for DHCP - it just has a different kind of server to hand out the (random) IP addresses it uses. You still need DHCP to hand out DNS, NTP, WINS, default domain and to handle dynamic DNS registration.
4. ISPs won't enable multicast on ipv6 either. Or they might, for a price... but probably not.
5. IPV4 autosenses the largest packets too.. has done for 20 years..
6. Devices will continue to drop packets they don't understand. I'd consider that a basic function of a firewall - you don't want rogue data on your network.

Out of your list the only point that makes sense is it'll simplify the routing tables.. but I don't exactly see people screaming that their routers aren't powerful enough (and anyway processing power is many times what it was in 1996) so that's a non-problem anyway.

Which leaves us back with IPV6 having more addresses.

Re:Why 128 bits?

[networkweenie]

Each subnet has a /64 allocation so that hosts can arrive and pick their
own address in the network with very small chance of collision, even
without a server.

This is described in RFC2462: IPv6 Stateless Address Autoconfiguration.

The systems also test the addresses for uniqueness (so there's no
birthday problem either). This means IPv6 hosts will typically just
start getting an address immediately they are plugged into a network,
and on average you have more chance to be struck by lightning than
to have your (well distributed) IPv6 address selection collide
with another host: It just works.

It also removes artificial boundaries to the size of subnets.
You won't have to change your subnet plan because 20 more
computers are installed on the 'HR' network for example.

"The Netherlands already uses IPv6"

[Fjan11]

From te article:

and IPv6 is in use in some countries, including the Netherlands

That is way too generalistic a statement. It is used in a few academic intitutions and I can think of one consumer ISP that hands out IPv6 addresses (www.xs4all.nl) and then only if you ask for it. The rest of us here in teh Netherlands are stil on regular old IPv4.

Re:This is humorous?

[rm999]

OMG how have so many people stumbled into this thread and so badly missed the point? I'll spell it out:

-The original poster said "this isn't funny, why is the slashdot headline and summary calling it funny?"
-Someone replied "it's funny because the article is so bad and the guy is stupid"
-I replied "it's elitist to derive humor from those who are more igorant or stupider than you."
-10 people replied who clearly hadn't read the conversation up to this point

Re:Thst's (sic) a whole lot of internets.

[networkweenie]

It's nothing to do with DNS.

The DNS names won't change, they will just be mapped to an IPv6 address using an AAAA record.