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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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If you're going to start putting Interplanetary WAN infrastructure in place, might as well go IPv6 from the get go. Then once there are a few billion nodes scattered about the Solar System we won't have any addressing problems ;)
No, testing it in space isn't pointless! If the IPv6 stack fails catastrophically, there's no one around to be hurt by the flying shrapnel!
I mean after all it might even potentially set the Earths atmosphere on fire, if it were testing on the ground!
Do you see the FNORDS? I refuse to post anonymously, as I am fireproof!
This is nothing new. The ill fated STS-107 carried a complete CANDOS pacage offering a wealth of IP protocols. In fact UoSat-12 back in May of 2000 ran an ftp server. The only thing new here is IPV6. IPV4 has been in space for a long time. You an find more about this at our website http://ipinspace.gsfc.nasa.gov/
Thank you,
your NASA team
Everybody knows that satellites go round faster than earth rotates. The tubes would certainly break!
Cisco - we hold 100% of the IPv6 market*
Cisco - We circle the globe with IPv6 support.
Cisco - THE standard for aerospace IPv6 deplyment archetecture.
Cisco - Our IPv6 technology is rated "higher" than any of our competitors.
*in space
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Since nobody runs ipv6????? Sad, that so many Americans are clueless. Asia has moved into IPv6 in a big way, esp. China. They are all hoping to get a jump on it before we do. China, Japan, and even South Korea have pushed it like there is no tomorrow.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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.
Examples:
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
While it is certainly true that there aren't a whole ton of home routers that support IPv6 yet, it's on the way. Vista installs IPv6 by default and it's a pain to get rid of it. Vista tells you you've got full IPv4 connectivity, but limited IPv6 connectivity...and I've already had one client ask me what that meant, and how he could get full IPv6. Folks will buy an IPv6 router just because it's got a bigger number...and now that Vista advertises IPv6 connectivity, people will be aware that there is a bigger number to be had.
:: Which makes our old friend 127.0.0.1 something much easier to remember - ::1
Plus, some stupid applications insist on trying IPv6 if it is installed and wait forever for the packets to time out... A common problem I ran into with folks who tinkered under XP was massive slowdowns with Firefox after someone had installed IPv6. Remove IPv6 and everything was fine. Of course...Vista doesn't like it when you try to remove IPv6... Haven't had any calls about slowdowns yet...maybe Vista handles the stack better than XP did...
As far as "no-one is choosing to run IPv6 on the ground"... Well, that's just not true. Many ISPs are running IPv6 on their internal networks. You'll never see it because your modem/router/LAN live in an IPv4 tunnel...but it's there. I know I've seen Job Ads for the local hospital asking for IPv6 experience as well...though I don't know if they're actually using it yet or just preparing for the future.
"Dotted quads" may be easier for you to memorize...but I suspect this is largely because that's what you're dealing with on a day-to-day basis. Remember when you were little and it was hard to memorize addresses or phone numbers? Now that seems incredibly simple, doesn't it? Remember when you were just learning IP and wondered why you couldn't use DNS for absolutely everything (because names are so much easier to memorize than numbers). Plus, IPv6 supports a couple different ways to abbreviate addresses...such as stripping leading 0's or replacing them with
And simply re-allocating the IPv4 address space just isn't going to cut it. There aren't enough addresses out there. The only reason we've been able to stay with IPv4 for so long is NAT, which causes problems of its own. The bottom line is that we need more addresses than IPv4 has.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde