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Feds Say They're Ready For Monday's IPv6 Deadline
netbuzz writes "By all indications and against all odds, it appears as though most, if not all, federal agencies will have met the mandate issued back in 2005 that their network backbones become capable of passing IPv6 packets by June 30, 2008. NetworkWorld quotes Pete Tseronis, chair of the IPv6 working group of the Federal CIO Council, saying, 'I have not heard of anybody who is not going to make the IPv6 deadline.' Those involved are calling this a significant milestone in what has been an extensive effort to bring IPv6 into widespread deployment."
I've heard this referred to as "ping and unplug" by two different network vendors that we've worked with. I don't think this will be much more than a very limited proof of concept.
NAT is good enough for the unwashed masses.
I am currently in Uzbekistan. Our Internet uplink goes through China (because of a domestic Internet monitoring policy that allows for only one country-level Internet provider). On the IPv4 block allocation generosity scale we are at the lower end, twice. Depending how things are configured there I am usually behind one or two layers of NAT already from the provider, not counting our own internal network. Something as simple as Skype usually goes through 4 to 8 relays, and getting a server working reliably here can be a challenge.
Market forces have decided that in the US, and slightly less so in Europe, where IPv4 block allocation was comparatively generous, NAT is enough for your own unwashed masses. Everywhere else NAT is an abomination and an administration headache that has to go away. NAT is like deodorant for the unwashed mashes where what they really need would be a good decent shower.
Since implementation of IPv6 routing elsewhere is picking up steam, we can only hope that the same market forces that have allowed the US to stick to their comfy IPv4 couch will eventually force the US to adopt it as well. Since it looks like the non-US market is growing, things are looking good here, and the story confirms it.
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
Not saying that it is not needed, I am sure the "rest of the world" outside of the US and the EU would like some IP space all of their own, but market forces have already relegated that individuals have no need for unique IP space and NAT is good enough for the unwashed masses.
NAT is only good for networks. Every ISP subscriber still gets a unique IP, and with people leaving their PC's on 24/7, those might as well be unique IP's (my ISP does not charge that much extra to get a fixed IP).
I read a statistic that by 2010 half of the global population is going to have a cell phone (currently it's 4 out of 10), with most of the growth in asia and the middle east. Currently 1 in 6 cellphone users globally has an internet-enabled subscription (even if they don't use it), but this is going to grow considerably. We could be talking about up to a billion new internet users over the next decade, in asia and the middle east, the majority of them on cheap mobile devices. NAT is not going to be the answer, and IPv6 will become a necessity to reach those markets.
The NYT did an interesting article about cellphones and the third world. What's driving the adoption is economic necessity. The cost of doing business in a globalized world is that you have to be connected. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/magazine/13anthropology-t.html
This just requires that the backbone passes ipv6, which any backbone routing device made in the past 10 years will be easily capable of doing.
What they really should do, is require that any service offered to the outside world be available with both ipv6 and ipv4 connectivity, starting with any new deployments/upgrades and gradually rolling out to existing sites.
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The "chair of the IPv6 working group of the Federal CIO Council" has "not heard of anybody who is not going to make the IPv6 deadline". In other words, goverment agency responsible for IPv6 Deadline is unaware of how unprepared the departments that he's responsible for actually are.
I live in Canada and none of the ISPs that provide internet connection to the home provide native IPv6 support. Holidaying in France the other day I found that free.fr and possibly Wanadoo/Orange provide IPv6 support. An incomplete list of Internet Service Providers providing native IPv6 is available, though it could probably be updated and as more ISPs start providing native support to their customers. DSL Reports, also has a forum dedicated to IPv6.
Myself, I have started experimenting with IPv6 simply so I can understand all the issues and be able to help out other adopters. I started using Teredo on my Mac (since it supports being behind a NAT), by means of Miredo (a nice front-end for the Mac is available here), and then moved onto Aiccu. The advantage with going using Aiccu, is that I can have an IPv6 subnet for my computers at home. Also, since I wanted to make my web server available on the IPv6 addressable net, I registered its IP address with FreeDNS, since they allow for registration of AAAA records on their servers. There are certainly other 6to4 tunnels providers, such as Freenet6, but I haven't really investigate them since I already have a solution that fits my needs.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I'm at least partly convinced that the ability to block "unauthorized" services using the fact that it's such a pain to run any kind of server from a machine behind a NAT router is one of the main reasons that the commercial internet industry has stuck with IPv4. If they moved to IPv6, their old "We can't give each of your computers a real IP address because we don't have enough to go around" excuse would fall apart and they would have to either start letting people run their own servers or they'd have to move to doing actual port blocking, which would look really bad.
And if your device talked IPv6 to this router, then it would transparently pass it through allowing a transition to IPv6 at the user's pace, rather than being forced into it due to the depletion of IPv4 addresses. After all, didn't someone once say that 4294967295 addresses ought to be enough for everybody?
If such a nifty device exists, it's sure not being talked about widely yet.
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