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IPv6 Tested in Space
An anonymous reader writes "Remember the Cisco router orbiting on a satellite in space? Well, it's now also the first to run IPv6 in space. Since no-one is choosing to run IPv6 on the ground, isn't this a bit pointless?"
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First, what does a networking potocol have to do with a business model;
Go look up Communication clients and services, from simple IM and Voice to remote clients and client tracking.
And second, how can any company survive with a business model dependant on something not supported by most ISPs?
Go look up, "tunneling."
He has a good point. As you all know, IPv6 allows 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,45 6 addresses, while IPv4 allows only 4,294,967,296 addresses (tinyurl.com/6gqkc). Nothing like planning ahead, eh?
The real PITA then, is trying to get people to do something about this problem before it really becomes a problem. People keep commenting on the slow transition to IPv6 as if it's a failure of the protocol. No, as you implied, it's a failure of the software developers who aren't implementing it, the hardware manufacturers who aren't supporting it, and the ISPs who aren't providing it. Instead of trying to free up more IPv4 address space we should be letting it become a scarce resource to force the guilty parties to make the necessary updates so that nobody's caught short on that fateful day when we well and truly are out of IPv4 addresses. We should be taking every step possible to limit the amount of software and hardware from being deployed that we already know will be useless a couple of decades from now, instead it seems like so many people are quite happy to take their sweet time with it until alarm bells start ringing.
You'd think with things like the Y2k bug and numerous other situations which exposed the fallacies of the "it'll do for now, we'll deal with that later" ideology that the computing industry would be all too happy to see that the IP address situation was spotted well ahead of time and would be embracing the ability to future-proof their software and IT infrastructures. Instead it seems like we're going to have another case of fingers-in-their-ears-"la-la we're not listening - oh shit! we're out of IP addresses!" situation with a mad dash to half-assed implementations and slap-dash patches.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
Reallocate the IPv4 space reasonably, force organizations such as Apple, HP, IBM, Merck, and Halliburton justify their IP allocation request like I had to for my puny /27 block, and then there will be plenty of space for all.
If I may make a car analogy...
Let us say that IPv4 is the oil we get from the ground and all cars run off it. Then a small group of scientists do a study and say discover "Egads! We've only got 10 years worth of oil left!"
Everyone panics and the scientists come up with a pure ethanol based car (IPv6) that has none of the limitations of oil when it comes to making new ones (In theory we could eventually use up all our natural resources in production of corn, but that would take thousands of years so that is someone eles's problem)
However, such a switch over would cost millions if not billions of dollars spent replacing all the oil based motors, but they start the work.
Then.... Some smart ingenious mechanic finds a way to make regular engines work off 50% ethanol and 50% oil (NAT addressing) and everyone goes "Phew! Problem solved!"
However, that doesn't resolve the fact that oil is still going to run out in 20 years but by then that will be someone else's problem.
But in reality, I think the US, Canada, and Europe will switch to IPv6 when their counter parts in China and India surpass us economically in 10 to 20 years. (As in Chinese companies start buying US companies and then tell their network departments to migrate so they can communicate better)
Asia is the big pusher for IPv6 because they simply did not get any of the IPv4 to start with and NAT isn't helping them much considering they will have literally the majority of world's internet users. Unless, like you say, the big US tech companies give up the IPv4 spaces to companies in Asia I think they are on the path to complete IPv6 networks over there.
Either way... I think most of us will get IPv6 equipment when it was cheaper for the manufacture to not disable the feature in our standard IPv4 products (think built in modem or video into the mother board trend) but this might be some time from now.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
"Neither of my ISPs (work or home) supports it"
You dont need their support. Use 6to4. Or a tunnel.
"NONE of my routers support it"
You dont need them to. Use 6to4.
"A lot of applications I run don't support it."
Some do tho. It's wonderful to be able to ssh and scp directly into the boxes you have behind a NAT gateway without having to resort to two-stage jumps.
"Dealing with it on apache would be a PITA, wouldn't it?"
No.
"who wants to deal with IPv6 when dotted quads are easier to memorize?"
There's this new development called DNS you know...
"Just wrench the class A"
Mmm, like that's going to happen...
Meanwhile I sit here on a bazillion addresses, merit of having one single v4 address. Get with the times, it's not like IPv6 is rocket science anymore.
Ever use a new cell phone? Want to watch TV? The truth is IPv4 addresses are almost gone. Not the number of hosts, but amount of allocatable new address are almost gone. Companies do not usually give back allocated addresses even when they are acquired or merge plus of course the number of hosts are ever increasing.
;-) :-) :-S :-( lol " which are poor substitutes for seeing and hearing actual emotion and reacting to it.
The practical number of usable IPv4 addresses is about 250 million. Remember there is at least one host address AND THEN gateway and broadcast when provisioning new Internet services. This is very inefficient and one reason why there is not the notion of broadcast domain in IPv6. Also companies especially early on were given large blocks of addresses. So yes there are addresses out there which can be reused, but are you going to start calling up companies and universities and ask them for addresses? Not very realistic.
It should only take just a couple of examples to see why companies already have and will have to move to IPv6:
Remembering there are about 250 million usable addresses, what if you want to IP enable 80 million cell phone customers for web, video, IM, e-mail and other services? Where are you going to get all of those addresses? How will you get about 30% of the world's useable IPv4 addresses so you can make money from the new services? You can not. This is why NTT moved to IPv6 about 4-5 years ago.
Another example could be a US cable service provider (no names - protecting the innocent) who has 40 million customers and wants/needs to roll out new IP enabled digital set top boxes so they can provide video (1 address), VoIP (1 address), and Internet data (1 address). If each customer bought all three services the ISP would need 120 million address. Do you think anyone will give up their addresses so this one provider can have about half (120 million) of all of the useable IPv4 address in the world? No. IPv6.
The fact that you do not understand how to subnet IPv6 or understand how it works is irrelevant. It is needed because of the scale of IP enabled devices and services. Should people in developing counties do without the Internet revolution because Americans have most of the addresses and we are fat, dumb, and happy (it is phase meaning complacent) because we already have the lions share of the IPv4 addresses and as such many of the services already? --Yes I know we have fallen way behind Asia and Europe in many areas.
Also, IPv6 is needed to enable more interactive use of IP enabled technologies. Sitting behind NAT devices inhibits accessibility. (I know most are saying..well duh...) But networks should be secure and accessible. Think of talking to your friend on a mobile phone and then sharing/watching with him on your and his mobile phones some of the highlights of a sports game you watched last night and are being streamed from home your home server --of course taunting him while watching because your team won.
Of course some of this can be done now, but it is more male geeks doing it manually. When it can be seamless and by the main stream, then things will really be different. We will live in a much more collaborative society. One where using technology will not create social misfits who do not know how to interact with real people anymore, but one that uses technology TO interact socially with people. When you can video conference from your mobile, PC, work, school, or living room and the clarity of visual and sound are so good it seems like the people are there, you will not longer have to do "
So what does IPv6 enable? The future.
-Andy
Because we all know that newly-implemented code never requires patching, and is guaranteed bug-free...
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Isn't that because it's tunneling IPv6 over IPv4? So of course the latency is going to be much higher. I would be hard pressed to imagine why latency would be higher for IPv4 versus IPv6 so long as it's an apples to apples comparison. If what I read is correct on the URL you provided, it's like comparing IPv4 verses IPv4 traveling over an VPN. So of course the latency is going to be higher...but one has nothing to do with the other if a fair comparison is your intention.
Please correct me if I failed to properly interpret "tunneling", as stated on that site.
Remembering there are about 250 million usable addresses, what if you want to IP enable 80 million cell phone customers for web, video, IM, e-mail and other services?
Since every phone has a unique address (PSTN address, AKA phone number) within the cell network, you don't even need to touch 10.0.0.0. You can give every phone the address 192.168.0.2, router 192.168.0.1, and NAT them all by PSTN at your border router.
I would *prefer* to have my cellphone be something like $CARRIER:PREFIX::$PSTN:IN:OCTETS but you don't actually need this capability.
If you're going to flame, I'm going to flame. You're an idiot.
He never said that knowledge of IP addresses is totally unnecessary, he said that memorization of IP addresses is unnecessary.
New and different technology means new and different ways of management. Just because it means you have to re-think how you manage and impliment things doesn't mean that it's a bad thing or bad idea..
Once again: "Somehow, you are suggesting that knowledge of IP addresses is totally unnecessary on the administration and development side." <-- No, he really isn't.
IPv6 is stable and ready for deployment. It has been for a long time.