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IPv6 Adoption Up 300 Percent Over 2 Years
Mark.J - ISPreview writes "The Number Resource Organization, which is made up of the five Regional Internet Registries, has revealed that the rate of new entrants into the IPv6 routing system has increased by 300% over the past two years. The news is important because IPv4 addresses (e.g. 123.23.56.98), which are assigned to your computer periodically, are running out. IPv6 addressing (e.g. 2ffe:1800:3525:3:200:f8ff:fe21:67cf) was invented as a longer and more secure replacement." IPv6 is still gaining ground slowly, particularly in the US.
you mean it went from 1 person to 3 people?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Why is that lying?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
God, I'm tired of it being repeated that IPV4 addresses are running out. Everybody who's not a journalist should know that it's not true.
And everyone who's a network admin knows that it is.
Nat+uPNP is perfectly capable and 100% backwords compatible.
Great, so I can re-write every application to support a half-assed workaround like NAT. I'd much rather have each host bugging the crap out of the router to forward a specific port, please! than to just get the migration over with and be done with it. If you think that NAT+uPNP is a replacement for IPv6, then you need to find a hobby more suited to your skill level.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
God, I'm tired of it being repeated that IPV4 addresses are running out. Everybody who's not a journalist should know that it's not true.
There's no reason every person on earth needs an IP. Nat+uPNP is perfectly capable and 100% backwords compatible.
That really isn't entirely true.
NAT and uPnP may work well for your average home user... But it causes some headaches in larger networks. And if you've got a pile of servers that need to be globally accessible - like webservers - you don't really have an alternative to multiple IP addresses.
That's not even getting into all the millions of unused IP's being held by the early internet companies.
This is certainly true. There are several huge blocks of IP addresses sitting unused. Freeing these up would go a long way towards keeping IPv4 alive. At least for a while...
IP's just need to be charged for on a early basis. Start with $1 per year per ip to EVERYONE who owns an IP's and you'll see the "IP Shortage" vanish overnight.
It might very well vanish overnight... But it'll return eventually. The fact of the matter is that we keep coming up with new reasons to route information over the Internet. And all these new devices and gadgets require an IP address.
One of the cities that we support recently bought a new chiller for their ice rink. Their old one was just managed in-house. You had to be standing in front of the device to do much of anything. And if it was malfunctioning they had to send someone out to eyeball the machine. Their new one has a network jack and can be monitored remotely through a web interface. So we had to get them bandwidth and a static IP address so they could keep an eye on things even when nobody was physically at the civic center.
Sure, there are some absolutely stupid and frivolous things we're doing these days. Folks don't need to be able to surf the Internet from their microwave oven. But it is getting to the point where we expect to be able to gather information from just about everything, and view it just about everywhere. Folks expect to be able to hit Google or Wikipedia from their cell phones. Lots of industrial equipment can be managed remotely. I know I routinely troubleshoot issues remotely.
To a certain degree we can hide these devices behind NAT... I can have a dozen web-enabled appliances in my house and just use different ports forwarded through a single NAT'ed IP address to access them. But what about devices that don't necessarily sit behind a router? What about my web-enabled phone?
And what happens when the ISPs start running out of addresses? Are they going to install giant NAT routers themselves? Are we going to wind up with several layers of NAT?
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Any chance Slashdot could get IPv6 connectivity?
Progress in this direction is "stuff that matters", after all...
Lots of them.
Any kind of webserver. Try running two of them on the same IP address.
Of the above, especially websites using SSL. Can't have more than one per IP address.
FTP is a horrible pain when NAT is involved.
Many video conference applications.
Programs like instant messengers with file transfer.
BitTorrent and any form of P2P in general.
IPsec in transport mode
Many games. Two players trying to play online doesn't work at all with some games, no matter how much you fiddle with NAT.
Remote desktop. When troubleshooting, I can't just ask the person I'm helping to install VNC, because then I'd have to explain to them how open the port.
I'm sure the list can get a good deal longer, but this seems enough.
And everyone who's a network admin knows that it is.
You're right, 100%, and I fully support IPv6 adoption end to end, because I know managing port assignments is a pain in the ass for non-UPnP compatible apps, and the problems that NAT has created. Even more absurd is the solutions to those problems (e.g. Skype-style) that are more like hacks than fixes.
NAT has created a very lazy fix to the problem of network security and filtering. If you're behind NAT, you're not addressable unless UPnP or an explicit port forward does it for you, and that's extremely convenient.
In a situation where every single computer in a network is internet addressable (something not always desired in business, which is probably the reason IPv6 adoption is so slow), you have to implement a very strict firewall to block and filter unsolicited traffic to those machines. If you're NATing them, as long as your network is physically secure, you don't have a problem.
This puts a lot less stress on network security than there should be in a business environment, and much less attention to what should or shouldn't be allowed through a local firewall, let alone a site firewall.
I'll stop ranting, but the point is that NAT has created an artificial deficit of proper network security, and I fear that when IPv6 becomes ubiquitous, NAT will linger on as a replacement for real security. The skills required to secure a fully addressable network of machines simply aren't needed in the majority of current environments because making every host in a network internet addressable today is simply not an option.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.