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No IPv6 For UK Broadband Users
BT (the incumbent telephone company in the United Kingdom) are in the process of spending millions of pounds on upgrading their network to an all-IP core. However, they have failed to consider 21st Century protocol support, preferring to insist that IPv4 is enough for everyone. Haven't they noticed the IPv4 exhaustion report yet?
But not enough for everybody.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
BT is too busy selling everyone's personal info and browsing habits to notice that in a few years their customers wont be able to do anything on t'internet because of a lack of IPv6.
It'll give them a good excuse to jack up prices because their 21CN (21st Century Network) is about as efficient as 1st century roman plumbing and is unable to handle current traffic let alone allow for any growth.
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I find a disturbing unwillingness to learn in the IT world.
I too am guilty of being reluctant to deploy technologies I don't fully understand...IPv6 being one of them. (I am told it isn't THAT big a deal but still... I don't know it and I know IPv4) And it is my guess that just as many IT groups want to solve problems with MS Windows (because that's all they know) BT probably wants to solve their problems with IPv4.
I'm sure everyone is going to see that your IP address is 10.x.x.x soon. Enjoy the big NAT box in the sky. And I wish you luck getting your ports forwarded.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
Haven't they noticed the IPv4 exhaustion report yet?
It seems IPv4 exhaustion is the new Y2K. Lots of reports, few problems.
There is a small but growing number of folks who think IPv6 may be stillborn. The rationale goes something like this:
1. It's very expensive to upgrade an infrastructure of non-trivial size to IPv6 and that's only one of the several serious disincentives against deploying IPv6.
2. IPv6's rate of deployment to date can only be described as an abysmal commercial failure.
3. IPv6 fails to solve the Internet's core routing problem (reference the IRTF Routing Research Group). It's possible that a protocol which does solve that problem will leapfrog IPv6's deployment.
4. 2^32 addresses IS enough for everybody, IF most client computers are behind a NAT firewall. The count is too low only if most client computers need their own globally-routable address. That most client computers need their own globally-routable address is a dubious claim in light of today's wide deployment of NAT.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
It might me possible that there's not much demand for static IPs in UK. When most customers don't have problems with DHCP, IPv4 address space will be sufficient because not all customers would be using their connections 24 hours.
There's a few problems with that statement:
First: Unlike dialup users, broadband users tend to stay connected continuously (always-on).
Second: Even if the users were to disconnect from their service provider when not using the service, the DHCP lease would probably still be assigned.
Plus, it's not a long-term solution. Much like the other broadband issues here in the US (capacity), restricting users will only work temporarily. Eventually you'll still need to upgrade the system.
~t
You have succinctly summed up the opinion of most of the network-engineer types that I have spoken to on the subject. Especially the part about "breaking the Internet" -- that's a very familiar refrain.
And you know what? You're probably right, in a hypothetical, pie-in-the-sky network engineer's world. But the rest of us have already accepted the fact that, as with so many other things in life, we're going to have to put up with what we get. I don't own an ISP. You don't own an ISP. So what are we going to do? Write letters? Threaten to take our business -- where? To the ISP down the block? Which has the exact same policies as the one I subscribe to now?
Telling the major telcos that they need to convert their entire infrastructures to IPv6 is like telling America it needs to switch to the metric system. Again, quite astute -- so where are we on that? The engineers have pretty much gone over to metric, but the rest of us are still counting rods to the hog's-head. Think it's going to change?
It takes force to overcome inertia. The more inertia, the more force to overcome it. In this case, the "force" is going to have to be a market force. Until the telcos see a real problem with IPv4 -- a business problem, such as being unable to reach new customers, or their services not being perceived as competitive -- they won't change. Network engineers are demanding change, but they aren't offering any reasons -- not reasons of the type that businesses understand.
And not the type of reasons that customers understand, either. I get my email, I get my Web, I get my movies and MP3s and chat rooms and everything else. In 1988 I had a 1200 baud modem. In 2008 I have a 6 megabit dedicated Internet feed. "Waah waah," indeed! Your response? "I have my head in the sand/my ass." Well, again -- as well-reasoned and cogent an argument as that may be, it's just not a compelling reason to go IPv6, in my opinion.
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