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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?
ought to be enough for anybody
I read this snippet from Computer Weekly earlier on: - http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/it-downtime-blog/2008/10/microsoft-speech-glitch-raises.html Which pretty much sums up how not to do it!
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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Well I'm sure that we can address at border routers with the UK. Since they have to switch all of the bits from the left side to the right side of the tubes, they might as well do 6to4 as well.
The summary clearly fails to realise that not all broadband in the UK goes through BT's network. Virgin Media offers cable broadband through fibre optic. Don't know what their take on IPv6 is though.
Yet more FUD?
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.
Didn't you know that "BT" stands for "Behind the Times?" OTOH, If you insist on IPv6 you get to do lots of tunneling since almost no one else is on it either. Just goes to show you what happens to innovation in the presence of a large userbase and expensive infrastructure.
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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
Nope. This isn't a problem with CPE support for IPv6, it's a problem in BT's network.
There's some more information in this discussion thread:
http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Board=btsupplier&Number=3448119&page=1&view=expanded&sb=5&o=0&fpart=
The title "No IPV6 for UK broadband users" is significantly misleading. BT are far from being the only broadband provider in the UK. My ISP - using ADSL over BT lines - provides me with full IPv6 connectivity and has done for some time.
BT and the other big players are targeting the mass market and Joe Public hasn't even heard of IPv6 yet, let alone asked for it. If you want competent technical support then you don't use BT or any of the other mass-market players.
BT provides the backbone network and local loop used by most UK ISPs. AAISP is trying to provide IPv6 and can't because BT won't fix a bug in their network. Where's the FUD?
A latent existence
They'll just NAT the world.
Deleted
Try reading the article. AAISP states that the problem is in BT's routers and a patch is available but they would rather say they don't support IPv6 than install the patch. How is it FUD?
A latent existence
we are switching over from analog to digital television transmission in february 2009. at that date, analog tv will simply disappear. if you have an older tv without a converter, it simply won't work. to get this to happen, the government and broadcasters had to sit down, make a timetable, and implement it
in this way, and ONLY IN THIS WAY, were we ever going to switch to digital transmission. furthermore, in this way, and only in this way, will any country ever make the switch to IPv6
there is no free market solution to this problem. in fact, according to principles of the free market, you are punished for making the extra expense and becoming a first adapter: you spend all this time and money, and no one is going to consume what you offer on the new protocol. why? because everyone is making their material avaiable on IPv4, so that's where the audience stays. the inertia is heavy
so either everyone switches to IPv6, or no one switches IPv6. there is no gradual changeover, because there is no incentive, and only punishment for all of the effort, for being a first adapter
governments have to mandate IPv6 changeover. that is only way IPv6 will ever happen. doesn't matter in the slightest how superior IPv6 is. punishment of early adapters trumps all observations of technological superiority
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
So in short, as soon as they start having to pay more for IPv4 blocks, they'll update their firmware. Merely some billable network admin hours, not millions of pounds wasted as the summary implies.
Stuff.
The solution to IPv4 address exhaustion is offshore IP address drilling, but Obama would rather punish small business owners with outdated equipment!
...I think I've been watching too many political conferences/debates.
They'll just NAT the whole country, everybody, behind one honking big firewall and monitor everybody's traffic
At first this was funny, but on review it got a little bit scary.....
Haven't they noticed the IPv4 exhaustion report yet?
IPv6 will continue to be used until the pain of using IPv4 exceeds the pain of switching to IPv6. The issues are many, varied, and thoroughly discussed elsewhere. My personal highlights are NAT having eliminated most of the address space limitations - most companies, even medium-large ones, can make do with 4-8 external IPs - and the complete and utter unwieldiness of IPv6 addresses. No way am I going to be able to memorize one of those, ever. DNS will become mandatory to do anything. That, and nobody uses IPv6 in the first place.
Upgrading to an "all-IP" core? What had they been running on? Appletalk? IPX? Banyan Vines? DECnet?
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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