(Almost) All You Need To Know About IPv6

Butterspoon tips us to an article in Ars Technica titled "Everything you need to know about IPv6." Perhaps not quite "everything"; the article doesn't try to explain the reasons behind IPv6's meager adoption since its introduction 12 years ago. But it should be regarded as essential reading for anyone overly comfortable with their IPv4 addresses. Quoting: "As of January 1, 2007, 2.4 billion of those [IPv4 addresses] were in (some kind of) use. 1.3 billion were still available and about 170 million new addresses are given out each year. So at this rate, 7.5 years from now, we'll be clean out of IP addresses; faster if the number of addresses used per year goes up. Are you ready for IPv6?"

Comments

Re:Web 2.0

[L. VeGas]

Do I need to upgrade to IPv6 to use web 2.0?

I think that's why it's called Web 2.0. Because it's two more than IPv4.

Peak Internets!

[Tackhead]

> So at this rate, 7.5 years from now, we'll be clean out of IP addresses; faster if the number of addresses used per year goes up.

Ted Stevens (R-Pork): As my colleagues from across the aisle are pointing out, we're facing Peak Internets. Clearly what we need is to open up drilling in IPNAR (Internet Protocol National Address Reserve) and start drilling in those unused /8s. We need more tubes!

Ted Kennedy (D-Ham): Sure, how about 34.0.0.0/8, Halliburton?

Dick Cheney (R-Oil): Suck it, Ted. Your union buddies in 19.0.0.0/8, Ford Motor Company, ain't long for this world anyways.

Senator BOFH (I-Maginary): Umm, dudes? I didn't know DEC was still around, let alone still owned (16.0.0.0/8), and do enough people still go to Interop (45.0.0.0/8) that it deserves a whole frickin' /8 to itself?

FCC: All of y'all, shaddap. The telcos paid us good money to put us in charge of this little exercise, so we'll take it from here. Everybody switches to IPv6 on our timetable. It shouldn't take us much longer than it took to phase out analog TV.

May i be the first person to say

[Toreo asesino]

"There's no place like 0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1"

You heard it here first. iThankyou.

Re:Web 2.0

[Kadin2048]

Even better, I love how the article really heads off about 50 comments worth of Slashdot discussion:

This is usually when someone brings up NAT. Home routers (and a lot of enterprise equipment) use a technique called "network address translation" so that a single IP address can be shared by a larger number of hosts. The discussion usually goes like this:

        "Use NAT, n00b. All 1337 of my Linux boxes share a single IP and it's safer, too!"

        "NAT is not a firewall."

        "NAT sucks."

        "You suck."

Talk about knowing your audience.