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?"

Comments

Re:Pointless? No.

[user24]

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?

Re:Gee, why is no one switching to IPv6?

[LighterShadeOfBlack]

Besides, who wants to deal with IPv6 when dotted quads are easier to memorize? Just wrench the class A address assignments away from the current assignees (not a single one of them needs a class A block) and reallocate them reasonably. Apple does not need a class A block, Merck doesn't, HP doesn't, GE doesn't, IBM doesn't, MIT doesn't. Halliburton doesn't, and the DoD certainly does not need multiple /8 assignments. Besides, isn't the DoD largely on IPv6 now? 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. - And who wants to deal with dotted quads when a single digit is even easier to memorise. Except that wouldn't be much good when the 11th person comes along and asks for an IP address would it? Same with IPv4. We will run out of IPv4 addresses. Maybe not today, tomorrow or even next year, but short of the annihilation of civilisation as we know it it will happen sooner or later. It doesn't matter if we liberate x hundred million unused addresses, that will only delay the inevitable by a few years or maybe a decade at most.

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.

Re:Gee, why is no one switching to IPv6?

[vertinox]

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.

Re:Gee, why is no one switching to IPv6?

[Znork]

"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.

Re:Pointless? No.

[thegameiam]

Because we all know that newly-implemented code never requires patching, and is guaranteed bug-free...