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No Business Case For IPv6, Survey Finds

alphadogg writes "Business incentives are completely lacking today for upgrading to IPv6, the next generation Internet protocol, according to a survey of network operators conducted by the Internet Society (ISOC). In a new report, ISOC says that ISPs, enterprises and network equipment vendors report that there are 'no concrete business drivers for IPv6.' However, survey respondents said customer demand for IPv6 is on the rise and that they are planning or deploying IPv6 because they feel it is the next major development in the evolution of the Internet."

340 comments

  1. Ever? by WillKemp · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm beginning to find it hard to believe that IPv6 will ever be implemented. It seems to have been on the verge of it for close to a decade now.

    1. Re:Ever? by WillKemp · · Score: 1

      Derrr... I mean universally implemented. I know it's partially implemented.

    2. Re:Ever? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just like if Duke Nukem Forever'll be released, right?

    3. Re:Ever? by unlametheweak · · Score: 5, Funny

      The problem is that the guys that were working on the big IPv6 transition quit there jobs to work on the Duke Nukem Forever project.

    4. Re:Ever? by bytesex · · Score: 5, Informative

      As a person who's involved in an implementation of IPv6, let me say that it's difficult to see it implemented without ubiquitous gigabit networks all around, as well as network equipment (routers) that run on the kind of CPUs we don't nowadays expect such hardware to run on. On the one hand, they've made stuff easier (no more checksums on IP level, addresses that tell you something about themselves); on the other they've made it more difficult (potentially quite a lot of headers before you get to ICMP for example, as well as up to seven addresses that any device must listen to, address sizes that don't fit a natural integer), but the network is also busier: network meta-messages fly around all the time - much more so than with IPv4, its ICMP, IGMP and ARP (ARP times out in 20 minutes; link-layer address mapping in IPv6 expires in less than a minute), and don't forget multicast: it's obligatory and used a lot on IPv6, meaning that routers will be so much more busy synchronizing.

      Then again; the time that hardware and linespeed catches up, *will* come. It's just not now, and nobody is in a hurry either. But running IPv6 over lines that do 1 Mbps in practice, however doable; it wouldn't make anyone happy.

      --
      Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
    5. Re:Ever? by mellon · · Score: 5, Informative

      Um, what the heck are you talking about? The ARP timeout is two minutes, not twenty. Speaking as someone who's also implemented IPv6 and used it pretty extensively, it sounds like you really don't know what you're talking about.

      There is a known failure mode with ICMPv6 if you have a 127-bit prefix, but this is well-known, there's a fix for it in the standards, and the workaround is that you just don't ever use 127-bit prefixes. There's no particular benefit to using 127-bit prefixes, so this is kind of a no-brainer.

      As for CPU consumption, again, what are you talking about? On the backbone, the proliferation of micro-routes for IPv4 is a *huge* problem. IPv6 route aggregation makes things *faster*, not slower, and consumes less CPU time as well.

      If you are working over low bandwidth links, you might want to take a look at 6lowpan, which allows you to statelessly compress headers down to under twelve bytes.

      Bottom line, the conclusions you've drawn are, as far as I am aware, complete nonsense. I'm sure you believe what you've said, and it's the result of real things that you saw, but without a bit more back story, I don't think it contributes any useful knowledge to the discussion.

    6. Re:Ever? by Cyberax · · Score: 2, Informative

      You can use IPv6 _now_ with 6to4 or Teredo.

      It's quite simple, actually. You can start IPv6 on your network in about 1 hour (including stateless autoconfiguration setup).

      First, follow this tutorial: http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Linux+IPv6-HOWTO/conf-ipv6-in-ipv4-point-to-point-tunnels.html (I suggest the 'deprecated' method, because it actually works fine :) ).

      Then install radvd ( http://www.litech.org/radvd/ ), don't forget to turn on IPv6 routing and you're set!

      Being able to SSH directly into every machine on my network is UBER-COOL.

    7. Re:Ever? by Melkman · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Well, it is already implemented. Maybe not with much US based businesses but AMS-IX saw a ten fold increase in IPv6 traffic this year: http://www.ams-ix.net/mnt/verliernix/img/flow/ipv6/all/ipv6bps_yearly.png

    8. Re:Ever? by kasperd · · Score: 1

      take a look at 6lowpan, which allows you to statelessly compress headers down to under twelve bytes.

      How would that work? There will always be at least one endpoint with an IPv6 address, which you have no control over. That is 16 bytes of potentially uncompressable data right there. What you could do is for the two units at the ends of the slow link to have some shared state with a list of the most frequently used IPv6 addresses. Maybe even a list of the most frequently used pairs of (IP,port), such that you just have to do one lookup in a table to decode it. That way you could compress 36 bytes of header data down to just 2 bytes in most cases. But you would need some way to update the state. You could reserve one of the 16 bit to indicate that you are sending a new sender and receiver pair, the two bytes would then be followed by the full 36 bytes. You'd have to keep sending the full sender and receiver addresses until the other end of the link has acknowledged that the table is updated on the other end. I have no idea if that is how 6lowpan works, but clearly to compress an IPv6 header to 12 bytes, you need some kind of state.

      --

      Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
    9. Re:Ever? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Honestly, Who wants to struggle around with such a shitty syntax?

      Q: Hey what was the IP of your webserver already?

      A: http://[2001:0db8:85a3:08d3:1319:8a2e:0370:7344]/

      *sic* ...

    10. Re:Ever? by QuoteMstr · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Me, I would have preferred to extend the dotted-quad notation over using the colon-separated hex format usually used for IPv6. Dotted quads look more familiar for network administrators, software developers, and so on. As you noted, IPv6 addresses look strange and scare people. This fear of the unknown is a barrier to adoption. Any unnecessary break with IPv4 hurts IPv6 adoption, and we can't afford that; IPv6 with dotted quads is better than IPv4.

    11. Re:Ever? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      i.e. At no point in your rambling, incoherent action were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having witnessed it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

    12. Re:Ever? by xaxa · · Score: 1

      Me, I would have preferred to extend the dotted-quad notation over using the colon-separated hex format usually used for IPv6. Dotted quads look more familiar for network administrators, software developers, and so on. As you noted, IPv6 addresses look strange and scare people. This fear of the unknown is a barrier to adoption. Any unnecessary break with IPv4 hurts IPv6 adoption, and we can't afford that; IPv6 with dotted quads is better than IPv4.

      I doubt Joe the Plumber will be any more scared by http://20014860a00368/ (to use a real example) than by http://67.215.65.132/
      Fortunately, he'll only ever need to use http://www.google.com/

    13. Re:Ever? by xaxa · · Score: 1

      Since Slashdot can't even cope with a £ symbol I don't know why I expected it to work with an IPv6 address...
      You'll have to imagine the colon: http //[2001:4860:a003::68]

    14. Re:Ever? by Lord+Ender · · Score: 2, Informative

      I work for a software company. We are seeing IPv6 labs popping up around our global offices because customers are starting to ask for it in our products. It's showing up on RFPs. It's coming.

      And having worked with it for a while, I must say it's a dream compared to v4.

      --
      A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
    15. Re:Ever? by QuoteMstr · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Your post demonstrates my point perfectly: the colon-separated hex notion screws up URL parsing, requiring algorithm changes for everyone, and as you see, lots of people still haven't gotten it right. Dotted-quad notation wouldn't have required nearly as much effort. The new notation was an unnecessary barrier to adoption.

      We're talking about Joe Sysop and Joe Programmer, whose opinions regarding IPv6 are far more important than Joe Plumber's. These people see IPv6 as something exotic and frightening, and try to avoid it as long as they can. IPv6 should have been made as similar to IPv4 as possible; instead, the IETF tried to do too much too fast, and now we're paying the price.

    16. Re:Ever? by RulerOf · · Score: 1

      As a sysadmin, I agree. If it's up to me to do a network implementation, it will be IPv4 because I know enough about it to get it online and secured. It may be ugly, but I can do it. I can't even get through the setup of a DHCP server running IPv6. I can't pick a class C space (or whatever its ipv6 analog may be) or figure out if my ISP will assign enough IP's to me to make everything inside my network public. All the terminology is different (for example, there's no more subnet mask, it's called something else, but means the same thing and is notated differently), and any guides that explain IPv6 seem to be geared toward the "holy-fuck-i'm-drowning-in-cisco-manuals" types of people, as opposed to those who simply use networks to get their jobs done.

      I don't understand BGP or OSPF and so on, and I suspect I never will because it's not my area of expertise. But IPv6... with what I know about IPv4 and the amount of times I've gone to get some information to understand it better (I would love to convert my home network, for example) I should at least know how to make it work for local communication...

      I would like ipv6 as well, but it really ought to be base 10 and dot separated, because then it would at least make some sense to IPv4 users who don't understand anything about it.

      --
      Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
    17. Re:Ever? by mellon · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Ohforgod'ssake. You're going to *type in* raw IPv6 addresses in a URL? I don't *think* so. I do it for debugging, but there's no way I'd ever ask an end user to type one in, and if I did there's no way the end user would do it. Which makes it a non-problem.

      Decimal dotted quads are too big, and they wouldn't look like IPv4 dotted quads anyway. For instance, my IP address as a dotted quad is:

      32.1.31.56.2.6.0.0.2.23.191.255.254.133.196.90

      In hex, it's:

      2001:1938:206: :223:dfff:fe85:c45a

      You really prefer hex? You really think that's going to look familiar and comfy to a person who can't handle the hex format? Naw, dude - this is really a great way to weed out people who shouldn't be on staff - if they can't handle the hex, there are a lot of other much more important things they also can't handle, in IPv4-land as well as IPv6.

      Admittedly, there's always resistance to new stuff by a certain number of people, and that's perfectly understandable and not grounds for firing. But those people will get over it after a bit of hands-on.

    18. Re:Ever? by oh_bugger · · Score: 1

      It will be implemented on the year of the Linux desktop

      --
      Go home and shave your giant head of smell with your bad self
    19. Re:Ever? by marcosdumay · · Score: 1

      "I can't even get through the setup of a DHCP server running IPv6."

      That is because IPv6 networks don't generaly use DHCP. They use autoconf or similar tools.

      "I can't pick a class C space (or whatever its ipv6 analog may be) or figure out if my ISP will assign enough IP's to me to make everything inside my network public."

      Forget about IPv4 shortcomings, ok. Well, you should have at least a /64 network (that's for end users), you'd probably be able to get a /32 if needed, but that should be rare, since a /64 net is already bigger than the entire IPv4 space. Now, at the real life, lots of ISPs are reluctant to make IPv6 available, and some of them will just give you one address. If you get a good one, tough, you'll have nothing to fear.

    20. Re:Ever? by davolfman · · Score: 1

      Neither is very good. Trying to memorize one of those to go punch into a configuration on another machine (an unpleasantly common tasks on small IPv4 networks) would be like memorizing 50 digits of pi. I think that might be more of a problem than anything else.

    21. Re:Ever? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Yeah, I can confirm that being able to SSH directly into every machine on your network is UB3R-C00L.

    22. Re:Ever? by Darkk · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Sounds too familiar.... Kinda like the damn analog tv to digital switchover which been planned, discussed and advertised for YEARS!! Then it got delayed....AGAIN!! Cuz those 6 million viewers think analog tv works just fine and don't want to switch to digital and they don't comprehend that fact digital is better using a $50 converter box.

      Sheesh. Ah well.. good luck with IPv6. I know it'll be the holy grail for the Internet but right now they don't see the immediate benefit and won't upgrade unless they are forced to.

    23. Re:Ever? by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 1

      There are technical benefits to IPv6. But we don't need them yet, or for at least 10 years more. Effective NAT, and better handling of non /8, /16, and /24 network spaces has heavily reduced and nearly eliminated the need for them for the next decade. Yes, there is an issue for routers engaging in complex behavior, but you know what? Most of that complexity can _go away_ if they'd stop trying to do complex billing rules for bandwidth.

      So for everyone who doesn't directly manage sophisticated routing tables, we're just not going to bother.

    24. Re:Ever? by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      The reality is, there is no business case for IPv6 ie. 'FREE' IP addresses for everyone. Especially when a whole lot of people with vested intrests picked up all the IPv4 addressees for free and now rent them out for tens of millions of dollars.

      How ever being one the schmuck end users, I am all for free IPv6 addresses ie. either give me a free IPv4 address or a free IPv6 address, I really don't care.

      On the flip side of that those companies that got free IPv4 addresses and want to charge me rent it, 'fuck you' ;).

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    25. Re:Ever? by dasmoo · · Score: 2, Informative

      Yeah, but over the same time period v4 traffic there increased from 250Gbps to 450gbps. Maybe they just got a bunch of new companies peering with them? Also it's 1Gbps out of 450Gbps. That's the kinda reach v6 currently has.

    26. Re:Ever? by dasmoo · · Score: 1

      The idea someone gave me when I mentioned this last time was to run an ipv4 address on the same machine. That really said a lot.

    27. Re:Ever? by dryeo · · Score: 2, Insightful

      And how is digital better if on the fringe? Analog decays gracefully, some snow but still watchable. Digital means having a miserable wife as she likes TV when you can watch it, not when there is a blank screen.
      IPv6 is the same, great when you don't mind spending a bunch of money to downgrade to the newest thing but crappy if you have old software.

      --
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
    28. Re:Ever? by knorthern+knight · · Score: 1

      > Me, I would have preferred to extend the dotted-quad notation over using
      > the colon-separated hex format usually used for IPv6. Dotted quads look
      > more familiar for network administrators, software developers, and so on.

      Major problem with that... people with dual-stack TCP/IP implementations will be using both IPV4 and IPV6 *SIMULTANEOUSLY*. *THEREFORE THE TWO SYNTAXES MUST BE UNAMBIGUOUSLY DIFFERENT SO THAT AN IPV6 ADDRESS CANNOT BE CONFUSED WITH AN IPV4 ADDRESS*. Not even by dumb software written by dumb programmers. Example 1.2.3.4 versus 1.2.3.4.5.6. An IPV4-only app that gets IPV6 address 1.2.3.4.5.6 might go to IPV4 address instead. Not good if 1.2.3.4 is a typosquatter or pornsite.

      --

      I'm not repeating myself
      I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
    29. Re:Ever? by johnw · · Score: 1

      3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510

      On the other hand, the digits of pi change far less often than your average IP address.

    30. Re:Ever? by compro01 · · Score: 1

      would you like 129.241.132.156.187.194.143.167.192.149.193.145.164.164.183.193 better?

      --
      upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
    31. Re:Ever? by arkhan_jg · · Score: 1

      I'm in a similar boat. I did try setting up a ipv6 tunnel a couple of years ago on one machine; it worked but was was so slow, I canned the idea of extending it immediately.

      Currently, I'm looking at using 6to4 with either an airport extreme or switching out my dd-wrt router firmware with one with radvd (which is the equivalent of DHCP in IPv6 space). With 6to4, every global IPv4 address has a /48 IPv6 range assigned to it. (that's 65K subnets of 2^64 addresses!)

      Theoretically that should be it; my IPv6 internal boxes will automagically generate IPv6 addresses from the prefix on the radvd server on the gateway, which will then route them out to IPv6 space automagically, encapsulating then routing via the IPv4 address to the anycast 192.88.99.1 address, which should take me to the nearest box willing to route me to the rest of the IPv6 only world (or sends me direct to the IPv4 address of another service using 6to4)

      Reverse DNS for inbound connections can be be a bit tricky by the sounds of it, but I've no need to publish static servers at home on IPv6 just yet.

      I'll be interested to see if it works as easily as it sounds - the odds of getting natively routed IPv6 addresses for my router via my ISP anytime in the next decade are pretty remote.

      --
      Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
    32. Re:Ever? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Windows 7 beta shipped with Teredo enabled and working, even from behind a NAT. Slow because it was using some service in europe, but yes it works. Not sure if they will leave it enabled when Windows 7 ships, but hey, if it automatically gets people onto ipv6, there is much less to complain about "NO ipv6" business case.

    33. Re:Ever? by tenco · · Score: 1

      Trying to memorize one of those to go punch into a configuration on another machine (...) would be like memorizing 50 digits of pi. I think that might be more of a problem than anything else.

      You heard of this new invention? It's called "pen & paper", I think.

    34. Re:Ever? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "...quit there jobs..."

      As opposed to 'here jobs'?

    35. Re:Ever? by PsychoSlashDot · · Score: 1

      Replying to undo click-o moderation. Meant to be +1 Insightful. You're 100% right.

      --
      "Oh no... he found the .sig setting."
    36. Re:Ever? by TheLink · · Score: 1

      The reality is there is actually a business case for Big Media to discourage adoption of IPv6.

      When the ISPs start putting everyone behind NATs, it sure makes P2P a lot harder. It makes the internet start to look like a typical Big Media broadcast network - only a few authorized talkers, and many listeners. They like that sort of world.

      In case someone asks, no you can't use stuff like uPnP, because you DON'T control the NAT device in that scenario, the ISP does.

      The other thing is there is NO WAY an IPv4 only server can talk with an IPv6 only client, unless someone provides a NAT or Proxy device.

      This will be a big problem as long as there are a lot of IPv4 only sites out there - ISP customers cannot be given just an IPv6 address. The ISP will have to either provide the customer with an IPv4 address (but they're running out of that), or force them to share one with NAT/proxying.

      So, in the real world you are going to need to do NAT, since the odds of everyone switching to IPv6 for your convenience = zero.

      Between paying for untested IPv6 proxy/nat/translation devices, and well tested IPv4 stuff, it's going to be easier to go IPv4 NAT.

      --
    37. Re:Ever? by Denis+Lemire · · Score: 1

      The double colon syntax for addresses with contiguous zeros makes this a lot simpler... ie) My home gateway is 2610:78:ad:1::1

      Not too hard to memorize at all.

    38. Re:Ever? by Darkk · · Score: 1

      Weak digital signals are temporary. Once the transition is complete on June 22 they'll go full power.
       

    39. Re:Ever? by igjeff · · Score: 1

      There are technical benefits to IPv6. But we don't need them yet, or for at least 10 years more. Effective NAT, and better handling of non /8, /16, and /24 network spaces has heavily reduced and nearly eliminated the need for them for the next decade.

      Uhm...try about 5 years...if we're able to *really* stretch things.

      Current trends show us running out of IPv4 space in 2011 at the global level. The regional registries keep about 6 months "inventory" on hand, so tack on a half year to that. At that point, the IPv4 addresses your organization has is all you're going to get unless a "gray market" of IPv4 address trading gets going, and there's plenty of ugly that goes along with that.

      A decade? No way.

    40. Re:Ever? by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 1

      I'm afraid that what's been running short, in IPv4, is the evenly /8, /16, and /24 address spaces. And those divisions aren't necessary. Most /24 users only tie up a small fraction of their address space with machines that need external exposure. (The last 3 /24 spaces I've seen, each had only a dozen addresses that actually needed exposure, and could have been funneled down to 4 with intellegent setups, proper use of NAT, and a proper DMZ.)

      The gray market is a problem. ICANN has been awful about registration, unwilling to actually enforce their existing policies and unwilling to make new, saner policies. And t here are commercial reasons for th em to ignore the realities, such as the need for a more free market for DNS and domain management, rather than the truly awful current practices. But the existing hands-off policies, and the gray markets, will easily preserve the useful life of IPv4 out to 2020.

    41. Re:Ever? by AaronW · · Score: 1

      Your comments are utter nonsense, speaking as someone who has implemented equipment with IPv6 support in a device with a relatively low-end CPU. The CPU overhead is not significantly different than IPv4, even on low-end processors. In fact, I measured slightly higher performance with one computer, a 333MHz Pentium II running Linux 2.4.21 and saw virtually no difference on the embedded device using a 400MHz Freescale 8270. As far as routers go, most high-end routers have decent CPUs, but more than that, they have dedicated hardware for doing the packet forwarding. Things like the IP header checksum consume negligible CPU overhead. Gigabit routers usually use hardware designed with IPv6 support built-in. Most high-end routers use dedicated ASICs or network processors which have no problem handling IPv6. BTW, IPv6 does not use ARP but neighbor discovery via multicast. The additional overhead of 20 extra bytes per packet is also negligible in all but the slowest connections. Now home routers typically don't have IPv6 support, but it's not too difficult to add (at least the ones using Linux internally). IPv6 is already being deployed by some ISPs. For example, Comcast is migrating the control side of managing cable modems over to IPv6 due to the increased address space. As for meta data, it's a very low percentage of the traffic and there's really no difference between IPv4 and IPv6.

      --
      This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
    42. Re:Ever? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I consistently have to tune to an analog station because my signal is weak. Digital signals just "Don't work" whereas analog signals are just snowy. Just because it is better for you, doesn't mean it is better for all.

    43. Re:Ever? by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      Of course mass media also has a business case for IPv6, every device that connects to the internet can have a prefixed address or all individuals can be allocated a specific range of defined IP addresses much like a phone number.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    44. Re:Ever? by Cajal · · Score: 1

      There is no proper use of NAT.

    45. Re:Ever? by Melkman · · Score: 1

      Agreed, the volume of traffic roughly doubles every year at AMS-IX. But still the volume percentage of IPv6 went from 0,04% to 0,2%. So the increase is significant.

    46. Re:Ever? by jgrahn · · Score: 1

      Your post demonstrates my point perfectly: the colon-separated hex notion screws up URL parsing, requiring algorithm changes for everyone, and as you see, lots of people still haven't gotten it right. Dotted-quad notation wouldn't have required nearly as much effort. The new notation was an unnecessary barrier to adoption.

      "Was" is the key word here: it's done, live with it. The bug is in Slashdot, not IPv6.

      We're talking about Joe Sysop and Joe Programmer, whose opinions regarding IPv6 are far more important than Joe Plumber's. These people see IPv6 as something exotic and frightening, and try to avoid it as long as they can.

      Administrators will need to learn, but programmers ... come on! Stevens showed how easy it is to make applications IPv4/v6-agnostic in his network programming books, more than ten years ago.

  2. How about governments? by Jerry+Smith · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I for one would not be surprised to see China and the likes implement IPv6.

    --
    All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
    1. Re:How about governments? by Sir_Lewk · · Score: 2, Informative

      Doesn't the Chinese govermnet have a total hardon for NAT?

      --
      "linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
    2. Re:How about governments? by weeeeed · · Score: 1, Flamebait
    3. Re:How about governments? by sjames · · Score: 1

      It's already happening. China has a higher than usual density of servers only reachable by IPv6.

    4. Re:How about governments? by symbolset · · Score: 1

      Black hole routing IPv4 plays hob with their infosec engagements. A lot of people black hole huge swaths of the IPv4 space for security reasons. IPv6 opens up a bunch of doors that were closed before. Same with eastern Europe.

      --
      Help stamp out iliturcy.
    5. Re:How about governments? by mellon · · Score: 1

      No, they hate NAT. They use it because they have no choice - they got a tiny allocation of IPv4 addresses. And they are pushing IPv6 really hard - e.g., you could do all your olympic net.tourism over IPv6 for the Beijing olympics.

      This is another good reason to implement IPv6 - there is lots of really good economic value in interoperating with China, and lots of risk in not doing so.

    6. Re:How about governments? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Doesn't the Chinese govermnet have a total hardon for NAT?

      I refer you to your sig.

  3. Well, by TinBromide · · Score: 4, Insightful

    In a world without sharp objects, knives, or sidewalks, there would be no business case for bandaids. IPV6 is a solution to a problem that hasn't asserted itself. How often do you buy cough medicine when you haven't been sick in a while? This goes the same for ipv6. Until ISP's start charging more for ipv4 addresses due to scarcity, nobody is going to switch beyond digital survivalists and people who like to tinker with new technology.

    --
    Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
    1. Re:Well, by mellon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I guess you don't care about end-to-end connectivity. P2P, VoIP, skype, stuff like that? Obviously not something you want.

      As we run out of IP addresses, we will have more NATting of IPv4 networks. This will mean that instead of having a single global IP address with your ISP, you will have an RFC1918 address. The people who have global addresses will be fewer, and so Skype's nat traversal will depend more heavily on them, which they will notice and which will decrease Skype's popularity. Same with p2p.

      Consequently, at some point it will be the case that the only applications that are well-supported on the Internet are walled-garden apps run by commercial sites. Innovation will drop off.

      It's not a pretty scenario. To me, the main selling point of IPv6 is *not* that we are running out of IP addresses and need more. It's that end-to-end is getting less and less available as the internet grows. Deploy IPv6, and end-to-end comes back. That's why we need IPv6.

    2. Re:Well, by TinBromide · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Correct, hence the digital survivalists comment. Society isn't falling apart yet, but people are preparing for any real life disaster that can come their way. The problems you stated above aren't happening yet, but the digital survivalists are preparing for any of the above "disasters" to come their way.

      --
      Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
    3. Re:Well, by mellon · · Score: 1

      Digital survivalists? Oy weh, has it really come to this, that planning for the near future is considered "survivalism?" Personally, I call it "pragmatism," but I guess I'm out of step with the mainstream.

    4. Re:Well, by bytesex · · Score: 1

      I know the IETF guys aren't very big on NAT, but it does have one (albeit collateral) advantage - security. I'm not saying that people should run services from behind NAT, nor that they should be connected to by Skype through NAT (or ftp, whose problem is more original and older); but there are solutions for this: services can still run on borders - there aren't going to be 4 billion service machines for quite a while yet, while the other problems (inbound connectivity to end-user machines) can be solved by polling or proxies. The security is a good thing, and so is deep-packet inspection on a point that you trust.

      --
      Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
    5. Re:Well, by growse · · Score: 2, Informative

      NAT doesn't give you anything over a well-configured firewall. And if you run NAT instead of a well-configured firewall, then you're not taking 'security' very seriously.

      --
      There is nothing interesting going on at my blog
    6. Re:Well, by TinBromide · · Score: 1

      There's a difference between having enough canned foods to last you a week and having a bug out vehicle fully stocked and ready to take you to safety and support you along the way.

      --
      Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
    7. Re:Well, by QuoteMstr · · Score: 1

      NAT doesn't give you anything over a well-configured firewall.

      It has psychological benefits. It gives network administrators (especially incompetent ones) a sense of security and safety.

    8. Re:Well, by growse · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Well, I'd argue that we want actual well-managed security, instead of just a sense of one. Show me a network admin that's relying on NAT for security, and I'll show you an incompetent network admin.

      --
      There is nothing interesting going on at my blog
    9. Re:Well, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't know what you are talking about. All these applications work fine now with IPv4. And that is all the GP said: If everything works now there is no problem. If there is no problem noone will buy into a solution.

      If your point was that at some point in the future these things will stop working well, then you totally missed the point of the GP.

    10. Re:Well, by QuoteMstr · · Score: 1

      Suit yourself, but I think it's important to get everyone on IPv6 now, and to wean them off NAT later.

    11. Re:Well, by ephex · · Score: 1

      Or you're running Windows. I've set up an internet connection for a family friend where only one computer was connected to the DSL modem but I configured it to use NAT anyway. This wasn't something I particularly liked, but I'm sure he's never experienced any drawbacks from it and no matter what he does with Windows, there's always going to be a little extra layer of protection.

    12. Re:Well, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      there aren't going to be 4 billion service machines for quite a while yet, while the other problems (inbound connectivity to end-user machines) can be solved by polling or proxies.

      You have it backwards: there aren't 4 billion "service machines" because normal end-users cannot run servers due to NAT.

    13. Re:Well, by pla · · Score: 1

      It's that end-to-end is getting less and less available as the internet grows

      I don't think that has so much to do with NAT, as with the simple fact that firewalling your home PC (on a LAN or not) no longer counts as "optional". Whether or not my firewall happens to use fictional (from the perspective of the "real" internet) IP addresses for my LAN-side machines really makes no difference to most people.

    14. Re:Well, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You mean, they work despite being stuck on IPv4 with NATs. People are astounded by what I can do with a simple SSH (and X) connection, which just requires the knowledge of how to open a port. Similar connections (obviously Windows client does not come with an SSH server) would be commonplace if it were not for NAT.

    15. Re:Well, by sneilan · · Score: 1

      People will have their P2P & Skype no matter what. If these services start to not work as well on IPv4, people will do something about it and it will probably mean switching to IPv6.

      --
      "I like it when the red water comes out.."
    16. Re:Well, by mellon · · Score: 1

      It turns out that it's pretty easy to punch through a NAT. So it gets you less security than you imagine. If you really want to block incoming ports, a firewall is the only rational choice. And if you have one, then you don't need the NAT for security.

    17. Re:Well, by ion.simon.c · · Score: 1

      "End-to-end" means that for each machine on the network, it has one or more globally-reachable addresses. AIUI, A machine's firewall configuration doesn't have anything to do with how it hangs off of the network. :)

    18. Re:Well, by hitmark · · Score: 1

      sadly, p2p aand voip is something the isp's would love to either see go away, or limit to their controlled setup.

      in the end, its about the economics of sarcity. as long as addresses are hard to get, it will be a sellers market, with ever rising prices.

      but ip6 is like factory diamonds, it basically floods the market with the digital equivalent of prosessed carbon...

      --
      comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
    19. Re:Well, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The people who have global addresses will be fewer, and so Skype's nat traversal will depend more heavily on them, which they will notice and which will decrease Skype's popularity. [...] Deploy IPv6, and end-to-end comes back.

      Skype doesn't even support IPv6. It would surely help if end-to-end app developers were more aware.

    20. Re:Well, by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      Please stop spreading this nonsense. NAT has no security advantages. A NAT is usually combined with a firewall, although not always. Often a single machine behind a NAT will be designated as default route for incoming packets and so, for this machine, NAT provides no security advantages. In most setups, NAT is dynamically forwarding ports, which means that if a connection is uncleanly terminated the port mapping will be retained. This is more of a problem with NAT than with stateful firewalling, because the same IP/port combination can never be pointing to two machines. Programs like Skype show how easy it is to bypass the 'security' of NAT.

      Any cheap router without NAT will do stateful firewalling, and without the need to reassign ports it is more secure.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    21. Re:Well, by pla · · Score: 1

      A machine's firewall configuration doesn't have anything to do with how it hangs off of the network.

      Technically true, but then, neither does IPv6 vs IPv4. You can stick a naked machine on the internet with a real live IPv4 address; and at least historically, NAT didn't address a shortage of addresses but rather the fact that ISPs have always charged extra for them.

      Anyway, the reason I mentioned firewalls - Yes, you allow or disallow whatever you want, and each machine can appear on both sides of the wall however you like. In practice, however, no one uses them like that... Typically you would have a DMZ containing the handful of servers you want publicly visible, and everything else totally unreachable from the outside world. Further, you'd almost never give your DMZ machines "real" external addresses, you just redirect ports on the firewall to the appropriate DMZ machine. And unless you need to have a dozen externally visible web servers or the like, none of that requires more than one externally visible IPv4 address.

      So to reiterate - You can say what you want about address scarcity and "end-to-end" reachability, but it all amounts to trying to sell shiny glass beads once you consider actual real-world LAN configurations.

    22. Re:Well, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I guess you don't care about end-to-end connectivity. P2P, VoIP, skype, stuff like that? Obviously not something you want.

      That is not so much something I don't want as something I already have. The PP said that people haven't bought in because they have NOT YET seen the need and you are saying that people should buy in because they WILL see the need. I would say that, when dollars are on the line, I will adopt a technology when I DO see the need. This is especially true for IPv6 where failure to adopt will result in degradation rather than catastrophic failure and where the technology is neither new nor widely accepted.

    23. Re:Well, by DamnStupidElf · · Score: 1

      I know the IETF guys aren't very big on NAT, but it does have one (albeit collateral) advantage - security

      Have you audited the code for your cheap NAT box to make sure it only passes packets into your local network that exactly match established TCP connections? You checked for any possible bug in the code that allows new incoming FTP connections? Do machines behind NAT get fewer drive-by installs or something?

      Basically, NAT only protects machines from attacks against specific open ports (as long as the NAT device has no flaws). That's something a software firewall on each machine would handle just as well, if not better.

  4. It will happen by Daimanta · · Score: 4, Insightful

    With the rate IPv4 adressess are running out it is only a matter of time before we will switch to ipv6. It might be 3 years from now or perhaps even more but when ipv4 becomes scarce(and it will), people and (internet)companies will try and make the switch to ipv6.

    Don't get started about the turd that is called NAT, that's a problem posing as a solution.

    --
    Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
    1. Re:It will happen by garett_spencley · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "Don't get started about the turd that is called NAT, that's a problem posing as a solution."

      True, but it will always come down to the cheapest solution. Not the most technologically superior.

      As for consumer ISPs, I think the day might come when ISPs start to NAT all of their clients, and charge a fee to get a static, external IP.

      Some businesses might implement IPV6, especially when Windows fully supports it (if Vista or 7 don't already, I'm honestly ignorant), but as long as finding ways to remain on IPv4 is cheaper and keeps costs down for customers there will never be a reason to switch. Ever.

    2. Re:It will happen by arkhan_jg · · Score: 4, Insightful

      NAT is the only reason we still have ipv4 - if we hadn't had that nasty hack, we'd have had to move to ipv6 out of necessity some time ago. I'm really looking forward to going back to having every PC with a globally routable IP address, it will make application communication work so much easier, and firewalls can stick to being allow/deny/drop firewalls instead of all this stateful masquerade hack-job stuff on top.

      The main sticking point for me is all UK ISPs are IPv4 only. There's not much point running IPv6 internally if you're only going to have to tunnel it or 6to4 it once it leaves your network, though I'm thinking of converting a VLAN or two internally to IPv6 for a systems and applications trial.

      --
      Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
    3. Re:It will happen by Florian+Weimer · · Score: 1

      Don't get started about the turd that is called NAT, that's a problem posing as a solution.

      The odd thing is that those who use NAT and especially proxies today won't have much trouble switching to IPv6 tomorrow. You just have to make your gateway IPv6-capable, and off you go. IPv6 is a non-issue for many (most?) businesses.

    4. Re:It will happen by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 1

      Don't get started about the turd that is called NAT, that's a problem posing as a solution.

      Then it's doing an amazing impersonation, as there doesn't seem to be any movement by the people using it to get IPv6 instead.

    5. Re:It will happen by MichaelSmith · · Score: 1

      Lately while advocating decentralised version control at my workplace I discovered that management love to have control of their assets. Thats why you have to come into the building through one RFID controlled door past a video camera. I think our PHBs will be fine with NAT for a long time to come.

    6. Re:It will happen by QuoteMstr · · Score: 1

      You're aware that any decent firewall can filter packets without NATing them, right? The big problem with public IPs for everyone isn't access control, but network renumbering.

    7. Re:It will happen by Nick+Ives · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Windows has supported IPv6 since XP.

      As for ISPs NATing all their customers, I'm not sure if that'd be most cost effective than simply using IPv6. Isn't it the case with NAT that you're limited to a maximum of 65535 concurrent TCP or UDP connections? Someone would have to invent some sort of NAT load balancing system which could break all sorts of stuff.

      --
      Nick
    8. Re:It will happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Instead you have products like Skype becoming ridiculously popular because they were the first to get UDP hole punching working with VoIP. Before Skype, all the (mainstream) IM clients supported voice chat, just none of them handled NATs.

    9. Re:It will happen by petermgreen · · Score: 2, Interesting

      IMO there is no question that when IPV4 addresses become scarce ISPs WILL push home users behind nat (with maybe an option to get a public IP address at a price high enough that only geeks pay it) to free up IP addresses for more lucrative customers.

      I don't particularlly like NAT either but that doesn't mean it won't win out as the "soloution" to the IPV4 address shortage.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
    10. Re:It will happen by anss123 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Speaking of NAT, how many wireless routers out there support ipv6? That might be the biggest hurdle.

    11. Re:It will happen by MichaelSmith · · Score: 1

      You're aware that any decent firewall can filter packets without NATing them, right? The big problem with public IPs for everyone isn't access control, but network renumbering.

      Yes but you and I aren't making the decisions here. The people who do make the decisions know that the people they hire are unable to reliably configure a firewall. NAT is more fail safe because it is more like to fail to a not working (ie closed) state. I an not saying it is smart. Just the way things seem to be done where I work.

    12. Re:It will happen by grumbel · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It might be 3 years from now or perhaps even more but when ipv4 becomes scarce(and it will),

      IPv4 addresses have been scare for a decade or so, the answer so far was to cripple the net with NAT or simply to raise prices when you want a real static IPv4 address instead of a dynamic one. I don't see that changing anytime soon. The problem is simply that IPv6 doesn't really provide any instant advantage, since hardly anything is available on IPv6 that isn't on IPv4. And the whole 'it will make networking simpler' isn't something the average user will grasp anytime soon, even worse, addding an IPv6 record to a webpage these days will break it for many people, because IPv6 routing is rather broken (i.e. you can get it easily via 6to4, but half the IPv6 webpages will not work with it).

      Unless the government steps in and actually requires IPv6 for certain services I don't see anything changing. The most likely cause these days seems to be that China and other emerging markets go IPv6, while western world stays IPv4 for a while to come and then maybe slowly switch over to not end up disconnected to China and Co.

    13. Re:It will happen by shentino · · Score: 1

      I think you nailed it on the head.

      IPv4 addresses are going to be today what water supplies were in the wild wild west.

      Companies that have hoarded their 16 million class A's from the stone age stand to make a windfall from their IPv4 holdings.

      The only reason v4 is doomed is because of a false sense of abundance back when they were dished out, and now that they are scarce the companies who are in a position to help out will instead have every incentive to hog it all and milk it for all it's worth. NAT is nothing but a cash cow.

      Yes, I will even be so bold as to say that if IPv4 addresses were managed properly from their inception then we wouldn't be in the current quagmire.

      Once again the entitlement mentality has fucked us over economically.

    14. Re:It will happen by mellon · · Score: 1

      XP is missing DHCPv6, which means you can't get an IP address for your DNS servers. Other than that, though, you're right, it does work. However, it definitely works better in Vista. If you are running Vista, there's a decent chance that you're using it without being aware of it.

    15. Re:It will happen by kasperd · · Score: 3, Informative

      Isn't it the case with NAT that you're limited to a maximum of 65535 concurrent TCP or UDP connections?

      No. You can do a lot more connections than that. First of all a TCP connection is identified by two endpoints. If you connect to two different remote addresses, the connections can actually come from the same local port number. That trick only works for TCP. For UDP there could be more than two parties involved, and such tricks would break. Also, you are not limited to a single external IP. An ISP could setup a separate NAT box for every n customers. But customers are going to get a worse internet experience, even if ISPs do spend more money on it. So before ISPs start doing such tricks, they will probably start offering IPv6 addresses in the hope that some users will no longer use IPv4 addresses. But I don't think many systems will refrain from requesting an IPv4 address over DHCP just because they were able to get an IPv6 address. However if ISPs do start deploying NAT boxes on a large scale, they'd better start offering native IPv6 at the same time, because that certainly can offload some of the connections from the NAT boxes. Even though a system may get both an IPv4 and IPv6 address, it isn't necessarily going to use them. Some systems will try IPv6 first, as long as the name resolves.

      --

      Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
    16. Re:It will happen by QuoteMstr · · Score: 1

      It's perfectly reasonable to configure a firewall to block everything by default and open small holes, just as you do with NAT. If you're relying on NAT to keep your network safe from incompetent network administrators, you have far bigger problems.

    17. Re:It will happen by timmarhy · · Score: 1
      rubbish. i've been hearing people spouting the line "at the rate IPv4 addresses are running out" for almost a decade now but no one ever actually has any hard facts to back that we are running out at some kind of rapid rate.

      There are VAST numbers of IP's that are unused in IPv4. And what exactly is wrong with NAT? 10's of millions use it without issue.

      I say IPv6 is a solution looking for a problem.

      --
      If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
    18. Re:It will happen by kasperd · · Score: 1

      how many wireless routers out there support ipv6?

      I don't know about native IPv6 support. But Apple Airport Extreme supports 6to4 out of the box, and is thought to account for half the machines currently on IPv6. According to Wikipedia there are a few more routers with 6to4 support. But they are a minority.

      --

      Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
    19. Re:It will happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Speaking of NAT, how many wireless routers out there support ipv6? That might be the biggest hurdle.

      Thank you!!
      I purchased about 4 home wireless routers in the past 2 years from Belkin, Linksys and Dlink. They only show "A/B/G/Draft N support! Speedboost! MIMO!" but not a single one in stores sports ipv6 support.

      Like wireless A and wireless N support, ipv6 is looking Dead On Arrival. It just won't be required because it's just optional.

      It's kinda like buying an HDTV to find you can only watch old VHS tapes, plain DVD's and standard resolution channels --without even talking about support outside the United States, where there's no forced year 2012 upgrade.

    20. Re:It will happen by arkhan_jg · · Score: 1

      NAT != firewall.

      You'll still have a firewall/router at your network edges, deciding what connections are allowed to come in and out of your network as currently.

      The difference is, instead of your routers pretending to the rest of the world that they're the one that wants to say, connect to a video conference or a website, and then munges the packet headers in and out so they end up at the right box internally, while fooling everybody else, your pcs will send packets out and get them back using a real address, and your firewall just has to decide whether to allow that or not. It can force the pcs to go through a proxy, just like currently, if that's what you want.

      The network admin, and his managers, has exactly the same amount of control as they do using NAT, but reliability and simply using the internet will get a lot simpler. Multicast will get a lot, lot simpler.

      --
      Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
    21. Re:It will happen by QuoteMstr · · Score: 2, Insightful

      NAT != firewall

      You know this. I know this. But plenty of people don't, and the fact that we're even having an argument about this fact highlights the IETF's profound lack of pragmatism. People want their safety blankets, and ff the IETF hadn't opposed NAT and private networks in IPv6, we'd see much better adoption by now.

      We could have tackled the NAT issue at a later time. One of the universal and timeless principles of change is to pick your battles. The IETF decided to fight for adopting IPv6 and eliminating NATs at the same time, and until they gave up on the latter, were badly losing both fights.

    22. Re:It will happen by tftp · · Score: 1

      And what exactly is wrong with NAT? 10's of millions use it without issue.

      NAT does present a problem, for example in VoIP telecommunications. You can't generally just plug a SIP phone into your office network and call someone overseas who has a similar phone plugged into his office network if at least one of those offices uses NAT. There are workarounds, but they are quite bad. Most video and audio streams are UDP, sent unsolicited from and to weird ports of phones (weird unless you also spy on SIP...)

      A properly implemented IPv6 office would be better connected than IPv4+NAT. But many managers and company owners *do not want that* - specifically and aggressively. They do not want their workers to use multimedia and IP phones and such. Such expanded connectivity will require higher level of traffic monitoring and AUP enforcement, and HR problems, and annoyed people... instead you can just configure the system so that only permitted activities are technically possible, and there is nothing for employees to complain about.

      Managers also do not want every box on the LAN to have a unique, globally addressable identifier either - simply because there is so little need to do so. NAT, as other people indicated, if fails, defaults to a safe (broken) configuration, and that is a good thing - not something to depend upon, but a little incremental protection, like the safety on a gun.

      IPv6 could be a great technology for home, where you really may want to have tens of devices that you need to access from afar - your security cameras, your fridge, your home automation, your mail server, your Web server, etc. And most home users would want every multimedia connectivity that there is. But home users do not drive technology, businesses do - and businesses have *negative* need to move from NAT to IPv6.

    23. Re:It will happen by blind+biker · · Score: 1

      With the rate IPv4 adressess are running out

      I used to hear this a lot (not so often nowadays), but what is this rate, actually? Do you know? Do you have an idea at least of the order of magnitude of this rate? I'll admit, I don't know the answer, but I don't spout bullshit I know fuck-all about, publicly.

      Just sayin'

      --
      "The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
    24. Re:It will happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Unfortunately, NAT is a fact of life:

      No company wants their inner network visible to the outside world (which IPv6 requires unless one uses kludges.)
      No company wants to use a protocol with zero real world support for encryption unless you go to a higher layer, or tunnel over IPv4.
      No company wants to change their entire IP address range because they change ISPs. Yes, with IPv6 your IP pool is dependent on your ISP, with no reserved IPs. So, you keep the ISP you have forever, or re-ip every single box on your network if you change. Some boxes have an infinite DHCP lease? better ifconfig the adapters down or up, or ipconfig /release and ipconfig /renew on every one of those.

      Businesses know that IPv6 is broken, untested, and unstable in production environments, with hastily written standards that factor little in the way of security. If IPv6 went live, all it would mean is another network stack to have issues. Remember land, teardrop, smurf, ping of death, and SYN flooding? Similar holes lie in wait unknown but out there in the IPv6 stacks. This time around, it won't be hackers and prankers who exploit them (like when IPv4 attacks were mainstream), it will be criminal organizations who are well funded and will be using any holes they find to lodge very well written rootkits in anything they find, be it a router, server, SCADA system, or embedded appliance that has a bug in it. They will be using holes that crash the stack as routes to commit extortion and do low bandwidth, untraceable DoS attacks.

      Unfortunately, IPv6 is here, but for any business that values its data, at best it's an edge routing protocol, to get your packets onto the Internet. You won't ever want it in your business's core because it will add another attack surface for someone to get at your internal machines.

    25. Re:It will happen by Kaboom13 · · Score: 1

      Every serious firewall I've seen defaults to deny unless the traffic matches a rule allowing it. Sure you can mis-configure the firewall and allow all traffic through, but thats true of all security equipment. I don't know many admins that wouldn't trade having to doublecheck their firewall configs to be rid of the headaches of NAT forever.

    26. Re:It will happen by QuoteMstr · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You've hit the nail on the head. NAT dovetails very nicely with the "castle mentality" many network administrators have: this is mine, and you can't touch it. It's about control, and there are fewer more tangible symbols of control than your own network numbering scheme. Nobody wants to give up that sense of control by moving to IPv6.

      But since 2005, you don't have to: IPv6 now has private address ranges just like IPv4's. Also, NAT has always worked with IPv6.

      Since 2005, all four combinations of address spaces can work in principle: IPv4 inside, IPv4 outside, IPv6 outside; IPv4 inside; IPv6 outside, IPv4 inside (with DNS proxying), and obviously, IPv6 inside with IPv6 outside.

      Whether this "castle mentality" is appropriate is a different debate. Moving to IPv6 for the public internet is too important to get bogged down in talking about NAT.

    27. Re:It will happen by QuoteMstr · · Score: 1

      Part of the reason some people feel more secure with NAT is that it's not possible to implement an "allow all" button. The closest thing would be a DMZ facility, but even that requires proactively designating a machine behind the NAT to receive the traffic. Some people feel more secure knowing that even if the firewall wanted to, it couldn't "just allow" all traffic through, but would require some active configuration to create a danger.

      This attitude is a shortsighted and dangerous, but it's one reason NAT has so many fans.

    28. Re:It will happen by Yaztromo · · Score: 1

      All of Apple's current generation of AirPort based routers (including the Time Capsule units) are IPv6 ready for both wired and wireless clients, using either a 6to4 tunnel, or honest-to-goodness incoming IPv6 connections.

      It's worth noting that Apple's routers are naturally OS independent, although the configuration client requires a Mac or Windows box (I don't know if the Windows version runs under Wine on Linux or not). So even if you're in an all-Windows environment, the Apple Airport Extreme is (IMO) still pretty much the best home router you can buy. I run one myself, and beyond having LAN and incoming and outgoing WAN IPv6 support (which my Macs, Linux server, and even my Windows Vista VM can all automatically make use of), I also have draft 802.11n support (including 5Ghz support), Gigabit Ethernet (which I do make use of), and the latest models even have dual radios for independent 802.11b/g in the 2.4Ghz range, and 802.11n in the 5Ghz range. They're about as advanced and as future-proof as you can get right now for a home routing device, and as such I highly recommend them to my Mac and Windows and *nix using friends (with the caveat that on *nix you will need a Mac or Windows system or VM to run the config software -- about the only downside to the AirPorts, although personally I like the software better than going through a web interface ala virtually all other home routers. I just wish they also had a Linux client, or perhaps even just a Java client for non-Mac/Windows OS based configuration).

      Yaz.

    29. Re:It will happen by oojah · · Score: 2, Informative

      Take a read of http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4/index.html to see the rate at which ipv4 addresses are being allocated, along with their predictions for the future. There's a lot there, but it's worth reading at least a bit of it :)

      A while back, I wondered how their prediction changed over time so started logging it. The results of that are at http://atchoo.org/ipv4/

      --
      Do you have any better hostages?
    30. Re:It will happen by Daimanta · · Score: 1

      "As of March 16, 2009, Geoff Huston of APNIC predicts with detailed daily simulations an exhaustion of the unallocated IANA pool in April 2011"

      "On May 21, 2007, the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN), the North American RIR, advised the Internet community that due to the expected exhaustion in 2010"

      "On June 20, 2007, the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry (LACNIC), the South American RIR, advised "preparing its regional networks for IPv6" by January 1, 2011 for the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses "in three years time".[4]"

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4_address_exhaustion

      Projected IANA Unallocated Address Pool Exhaustion: 11-May-2011

      Projected RIR Unallocated Address Pool Exhaustion: 07-Sep-2012

      http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4/index.html

      It seems that my 3 year estimate was close to the estimates of the people who should know.

      --
      Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
    31. Re:It will happen by anss123 · · Score: 1

      Neat.

      I got a 5 year old wireless router that has been trouble free. It's not as fast as your N router but for surfing the internet does that make a difference? IPv6 alone is not a big enough draw for me to replace my router.

      That's the problem. People like me, happy with what I got, are going to be a big barrier for wide scale IPv6 adoption. It's no longer just enough that Windows and ISPs support IPv6, we users have to replace perfectly working gear for seemingly no benefit too.

      Mind you, that Apple router got more than just IPv6 and speed. It also got a USB printer port. That is a feature I might buy a new router for.

    32. Re:It will happen by sjames · · Score: 1

      Windows has supported IPv6 since XP. In XP, it's an add-on protocol that you must specifically install though it's on the install disk. In Vista, it's installed and enabled by default. If you don't have native v6 on your LAN, it'll use Teredo instead.

    33. Re:It will happen by Vancorps · · Score: 1

      An honest question, how many companies are having troubles with NAT? With my network I manage I have absolutely no issues company wide across all sites. It's simply not an issue.

      Compare that with the fact that the vast majority of my network printers don't support IPv6 along with having to compile my own DHCPv6 client for XP and I have very little reason to deploy since I'll have to maintain IPv4 functionality anyways it doesn't make sense to have to maintain routing for both protocols when one works just fine on its own.

      I don't use NAT for security, I use it for convenience, if I suddenly have a surge in demand I can just create a new subnet on a new VLAN and continue on with little or no effort. This happened to me recently at an event when I exceeded the addressable space of a class C subnet so I had to expand. Took me all of five minutes to do and everyone can use their VPN clients or do whatever they want.

      I have nothing against IPv6 but I see no compelling reason in even the near term that will make me move. When ISPs suddenly jack up rates for service that I already have then that will pave the way for transition.

    34. Re:It will happen by symbolset · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Businesses know that IPv6 is broken, untested, and unstable in production environments, with hastily written standards that factor little in the way of security.

      Which makes it so unlike the rest of the Internet.

      Look, if you're looking at IPv4 or IPv6 to provide some security you're doing it wrong.

      --
      Help stamp out iliturcy.
    35. Re:It will happen by blind+biker · · Score: 1

      It seems that my 3 year estimate was close to the estimates of the people who should know.

      That was a damn good guess, I have to admit.

      Also, I'm surprised it's actually this close. My guess (if someone had forced me at gunpoint to make one) would have been about a decade from now.

      --
      "The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
    36. Re:It will happen by mellon · · Score: 1

      We aren't? You want Big Brother to make your decisions for you? You can use IPv6 right now if you want to - you don't have to wait for permission. Granted, you'll still have to use IPv4 for surfing to most sites, but you can already do Azureus and uTorrent over IPv6.

    37. Re:It will happen by sjames · · Score: 1

      I can well understand how we got to where we are w/ v4 and why v4 addresses were handed out like candy.

      The problem with the v6 transition is that the cutover is too nebulous. 'Sometime' in the 'near future' v4 addresses will be 'scarce'. Predictably, 90% of the world will wait till a bit after the last minute, then panic.

      Something more specific might be in order. Something like a statement from the IETF and ICANN that "on April 1st 2011, ipv4 will cease to exist. Your packets won't route.".

      Alternatively, an incentive from ARIN, RIPE and co. Fees are tripled (or more) unless you run v6 alongside your v4 allocation.

    38. Re:It will happen by sjames · · Score: 1

      If your firewall rules default to deny, you have EXACTLY the same safety and semantics as NAT. In Linux that would be "ip6tables -P FORWARD DROP".

      With that, just like nat, if you don't have a rule to explicitly permit the traffic, it's denied.

      If the people running your net can't manage to get that right, it's probably Swiss cheese anyway.

    39. Re:It will happen by paul248 · · Score: 1

      Speaking of NAT, how many wireless routers out there support ipv6?

      Not many, but that doesn't really matter. In the future, people who just want to surf the web can keep their old equipment and put up with their ISP's NAT. Anyone who has a use for end-to-end will upgrade to IPv6-compatible equipment. Businesses who want to stay in business will p to be dual stack.

    40. Re:It will happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My ISP, Andrews & Arnold, support IPv6.

      I don't use it, though. I have enough IPv4 addresses for my boxes here. Very few routers which can handle IPv6 can handle ADSL2+ well. 21CN is not architected for IPV6, either; they're trying to make it work, but BT aren't making it easy.

    41. Re:It will happen by Cyberax · · Score: 1

      Routers cost about $30 in bulk. Your provider might give you one free when they start deploying IPv6.

      Or your router might simply die of old age - the half-life for home routers is about 5 years

    42. Re:It will happen by marcosdumay · · Score: 1

      We got that same moronic attitude every time somebody sugest that we must solve a problem before it causes a crisis, not after. Guess what, people are saying for 10 years that the IPv4 addresses are running out because they were planning 30 years on advance (that ended up being just 20, mind you). Up to now, the epected exaustion of IPv4 addresses moved from somewhen near 2020 to middle 2012.

    43. Re:It will happen by MichaelSmith · · Score: 1

      One difference I can see is that people external to your network can see how many nodes you have. So if you expect more work and buy more workstations it is possible for a competitor to know in advance that you plan to expand.

    44. Re:It will happen by Jeremy+Visser · · Score: 1

      In XP, it's an add-on protocol that you must specifically install though it's on the install disk.

      Not that it really matters, but I should point out that you don't need the install disc to enable IPv6. It just needs enabling.

      The fact that it's not enabled by default doesn't really matter. If a consumer ISP today wanted to offer a residential DSL plan with IPv6, they'd make enabling IPv6 part of the "setup process" (along with anti-virus trialware crap) on the install disc that ISPs tend to give out these days.

    45. Re:It will happen by sjames · · Score: 1

      Unless I have all of my employees regularly visiting my competitor's servers, they have no idea.

      If you believe someone IS able (and trying) to gather such information, you can rotate address assignments and make yourself look HUGE.

    46. Re:It will happen by r7 · · Score: 1

      NAT is the only reason we still have ipv4

      It's also the reason we haven't transitioned to IPv6.

      IPv6 won't happen until it has standardized IPv6 NAT and NAPT (v6-v6 and v4-v6). Unfortunately, telcos are giddy about owning all of our internal address space and a few protocol developers are tired of having to poke holes in NAT (and dismissive of the security implications).

      Be that as it may the business case for NAT long predates address space limitations (and RFC1918). Businesses require private and non-routable addresses for their internal networks. This isn't going to change. Globally routable IP address are fine for gateways, but unrealistic for the devices behind those gateways. Looked at from a different perspective, what if your city decided to switch to 8 digit street addresses and demanded that you assign an address to every room in your house. Of course it'll never happen, nor will IPv6 without NAT and NAPT.

      The elephant in the room is all the organizations who still "own" large blocks (/16s and /8s, 65,536 and 16,777,216 IPs respectively) and don't use or need a fraction of the IPs they have allocated. ARIN does nothing about these large blocks (other than bill for them, sound familiar?), even as they hand out the last remaining /16s (to ILECs like Verizon and ATT, no surprise there).

      IPv6 illustrates the dysfunction of ARIN in the same way the proposal to unregulate domain names illustrates the dysfunction of ICANN, and OOXML illustrates the dysfunction of ISO. Dysfunction and corruption, largely due to lobbying and technically undereducated legislators, with no resolution in sight. How long will we continue sit on our hands while another Enron's energy crisis and another Lehman Brother's mortgage crisis spreads to the Internet?

    47. Re:It will happen by tlhIngan · · Score: 2, Interesting

      NAT is the only reason we still have ipv4 - if we hadn't had that nasty hack, we'd have had to move to ipv6 out of necessity some time ago. I'm really looking forward to going back to having every PC with a globally routable IP address, it will make application communication work so much easier, and firewalls can stick to being allow/deny/drop firewalls instead of all this stateful masquerade hack-job stuff on top.

      A nice pipe dream.

      People are used to having 1 or 2 IP addresses handed to them. Most probably only use one - they stick their cablemodem into their NAT router and be done with that. ISPs know this, and you can bet good money that when residential people get IPv6, they may give them a large range of valid IPs, but really, only route 1 or 2 to them, because they know users will only use 1 or 2. And pay for more, if they need it. And the majority of users will do that - they'll take their IPv6 pipe, and stick on a router, and probably do IPv6 NAT.

      No, the era of direct-connected machines is long gone - even if the user had a regular normal firewall and a 1:1 mapping of devices to IPs, you're going to have to tell them how to open a port on it so they can play their game again. And it'll probably be more confusing, since they want only one machine to get that traffic.

      And yes, going around NAT is annoying, and breaks some applications. However, the interesting thing is how many applications aren't broken. Or have implemented functionality to work around firewalls and NAT. If you go back to just over a decade ago, playing an online game may easily require 10-15 ports open (TCP/UDP) on your firewall. Nowadays, it's down to one, or in some cases, do nothing. The ports I opened on my NAT router were for HTTP, ssh, and BitTorrent, and I still do online gaming (Xbox Live, Playstation Network) fine without UPnP (disabled on router). And yes, people invented STUN to help get through NAT, as well.

      About the real benefit of IPv6 is to make viruses and trojans spread slower as they now have to send packets to more hosts, and there will be more holes in the address space, so chances of success will be limited. But the chance of two people plugging in 2 VoIP phones into a random network and have them work always is gone (unless they're Skype phones, which use STUN and a bunch of dirty tricks to get around NAT and firewalls...).

    48. Re:It will happen by r7 · · Score: 1

      NAT does present a problem, for example in VoIP

      Is that really a NAT problem or is it a SIP (VOIP) problem? SIP certainly could have been designed better IMO. Wonder who first conceived of embedding the IP address, normally only a part of the IP header, in the application data, as a security measure no less!
      This is not only ineffective security it also ignores the ISO seven layer stack. That's why SIP doesn't play well with NAT. Has nothing to do with NAT itself, IMO.

    49. Re:It will happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ya know what? I plug my VoIP phone (and VoIP-enabled cell phone via wifi) into my NAT network at home, my NAT network at work, and my friends' and parents' NAT networks and it works just fine. Sure, I know the issues that are possible with NAT. But you're just wrong. I do exactly what you said generally doesn't work, with generic VoIP providers and our VoIP work network, and honestly, I've never had one problem. I can make my phone calls just fine, NAT or not. I use callcentric as my personal VoIP provider. I'm not sure if they do anything special to get around NAT or not, but I just plug in the SIP info into my phone, and it works just great...

    50. Re:It will happen by colinrichardday · · Score: 1

      If they NAT through the 10.*.*.* address space, wouldn't it be closer to 2^24 or approximately 16 million?

    51. Re:It will happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not ALL UK ISPs:

      http://www.aaisp.net.uk/kb-broadband-ipv6.html

    52. Re:It will happen by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      Not sure if it's still true, but the older Airports used SNMP for configuration. Before they released official Windows software, a few machines on my network were using a (free) third-party tool to configure port forwarding.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    53. Re:It will happen by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      In XP, it's an add-on protocol that you must specifically install though it's on the install disk

      In Windows 9x, this was also true of IPv4. No networking support was installed by default, you needed to add support for IPv4 explicitly. I don't think it stopped many people from connecting to the Internet. The problem with IPv6 adoption is the lack of 6-only services. If you want to help IPv6 adoption, start adding features that only work with IPv6 to your software.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    54. Re:It will happen by growse · · Score: 1

      My company. Huge problem.

      We went through a big merger about a year ago, and we're now in the situation where we need to get 2 large internal networks talking to each other. Problem is, they're both in the 10.0.0.0/8 IP address range, so there's zero chance of getting end-to-end routability for everything (everything overlaps with everything else). If someone in ex-company-A wants to talk to a box in ex-company-B's network, it's a 5 day turnaround to get the network guys figure out, assign and implement a static NAT so that they can talk to each other.
      It's a great big clusterfuck and wouldn't cost the company as much money if everything could just route to everything else. Seriously, if you're using NAT as anything other than a completely broken fudge, you're doing it wrong.

      --
      There is nothing interesting going on at my blog
    55. Re:It will happen by FireFury03 · · Score: 1

      Unless I have all of my employees regularly visiting my competitor's servers, they have no idea.

      And in this case, the competitor can use cookies and traffic fingerprinting to track the individual clients. Ok, so you can block cookies, etc, but what are the chances that you've closed every possible vector?

    56. Re:It will happen by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 1

      Why? My provider can use a 10.* address space behind a NAT gateway of their own. I can use a 192.168.* address space behind my household cable modem, or even my FIOS. Unless they're selling externally exposed devices as a service, they have _every reason_ not to provide externally exposed IP addresses, because it helps reduce the ease of household fileservices and P2P services to the Internet without in any way running complex firewalls or deliberate bandwidth limiting. It just makes households serving as Bittorrent servers much more difficult, since people outside your household network can't reach into your household IPv4 addresses.

      This is, in fact, desireable for most ISP's.

    57. Re:It will happen by FireFury03 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      No company wants their inner network visible to the outside world (which IPv6 requires unless one uses kludges.)

      This very much depends on what you consider to be "visible". You can (and should) firewall incoming traffic, which means someone can't actively scan you. Once you've done that, someone can only gain information about your internal network by looking at the traffic generated by your network. If you think NAT protects you from this then you're sorely mistaken - NAT will only hide the source IP address, you can still gain a lot of information by traffic fingerprinting and other methods.

      No company wants to use a protocol with zero real world support for encryption unless you go to a higher layer, or tunnel over IPv4.

      I'm not sure what you mean by this. Under IPv4, most encryption is done using SSL - IPv6 doesn't change this, SSL still works and is still used. IPv6 also adds IPSEC support (which has since been backported to IPv4, but it originated on IPv6 and works very well there). So in what way does IPv6 have "zero real world support for encryption"? If anything, it has better support than IPv4 because encryption was written into the spec from the start.

      No company wants to change their entire IP address range because they change ISPs.

      This really shouldn't be a major problem - if you're using autoconfiguration and DNS then the amount of work required to renumber a network is minimal. You can also do a soft migration, so you can keep your old IP addresses in service for a while after your new IP addresses are put into service.

      Some boxes have an infinite DHCP lease?

      If that's your setup, you need to get a network manager who has a clue.

      Businesses know that IPv6 is broken, untested, and unstable in production environments, with hastily written standards that factor little in the way of security.

      You post indicates that people *think* they know that IPv6 is broken, untested, unstable and insecure. In reality, these people are grossly misinformed.

    58. Re:It will happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "I'm really looking forward to going back to having every PC with a globally routable IP address"

      Botnet operators are too.

    59. Re:It will happen by FireFury03 · · Score: 1

      And pay for more, if they need it. And the majority of users will do that

      Pay for IP addresses? Are you serious? No ISP I've ever dealt with have charged for a small IPv4 subnet. I've got a /28 at the moment, but most ISPs in the UK will hand you a /27 or /26 for free if you ask for it (you have to fill in a RIPE form justifying your need for the addresses).

      And yes, people invented STUN to help get through NAT, as well.

      STUN is unreliable at best (even the RFC admits that NAT traversal *CAN'T* be done reliably. If you're doing peer to peer stuff, IPv6 will help you a lot.

      But the chance of two people plugging in 2 VoIP phones into a random network and have them work always is gone (unless they're Skype phones, which use STUN and a bunch of dirty tricks to get around NAT and firewalls...).

      Nope, SIP over IPv6 works just fine - you can take 2 VoIP phones and plug them into random IPv6 networks, and so long as the stateful firewalls on both networks allow outbound SIP (to the registration server) and RTP (to anywhere), you'll be able to place calls between them with a direct media path.

      On the other hand, if either phone is behind a NAT then you've got a good chance of issues like one-way audio (even though you're using STUN).

      Skype, on the other hand, does crazy stuff like falling back to TCP (proxied through an unsuspecting unfirewalled Skype user's machine) - yes, you can place a call from pretty much any network, but tunnelling calls over TCP and via random end-user machines may make the call quality unusable. Also, the number of proxies available is only going to decline as more people get a clue about security.

    60. Re:It will happen by FireFury03 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Is that really a NAT problem or is it a SIP (VOIP) problem?

      It is a general peer-to-peer problem. NAT breaks peer-to-peer communications - there are workarounds (such as STUN) but they are not, and cannot be, reliable. The only solution is to remove NAT from the equation.

      SIP certainly could have been designed better IMO. Wonder who first conceived of embedding the IP address, normally only a part of the IP header, in the application data, as a security measure no less!

      It's actually a pretty sensible idea: Your phone registers with a SIP registration server so that other users can find it - lets say your ISP runs the registration server, so people know to place calls to r7@yourisp.com if they want to phone you (very similar to email). So I phone r7@yourisp.com, my phone talks to your registration server and says "hey, I want to call 'r7'". Your registration server then talks to your phone and says "there's a call for you", your phone sends back a message to the registration server saying "answer it" and that gets forwarded on to my phone.

      Now the clever bit (which requires the IP addresses to be embedded) - the 2 phones negotiate (via the registration server) for the IP addresses and ports that will be used to carry the voice data. This means that the registration server is not involved with passing the voice data - this is a Good Thing for 2 reasons: 1. the server doesn't need as much CPU, memory, bandwidth, etc. 2. Most importantly, the route that the voice data is going over is as direct as possible, so you should get a nice low latency.

      It gets more important to do this if you start doing stuff like transferring calls - if I'm talking to you, and you want to transfer my call to someone else, your phone will issue a "reinvite" message to my phone, telling it where to direct the voice stream. This means that once the call transfer is completed, your phone is nolonger involved in the communication at all.

      If your phone is behind a NAT, it won't know what IP address and port its voice traffic will be transmitted on once it is NATted. You can try and work around this by using STUN, but it isn't entirely reliable since this requires your phone to make some educated guesses about what your NAT is going to do with the traffic - sometimes it'll be right, sometimes it'll be wrong.

      This is not only ineffective security it also ignores the ISO seven layer stack.

      IP itself isn't an ISO sever layer protocol - never has been, never will be. What you probably mean is that it ignores protocol encapsulation boundaries. And you're right - it does.

      But sometimes you have to do that to get the results you want - any other peer to peer protocol is going to do the same thing (e.g. bittorrent) because it has to tell the peers where to connect to.

      That's why SIP doesn't play well with NAT. Has nothing to do with NAT itself, IMO.

      *NO* peer to peer protocol can play well with NAT. this isn't a flaw in the protocol, it is a simple fact of life. NAT breaks the end-to-end nature of the network, peer-to-peer requires an end-to-end network, ergo they are incompatible technologies.

      The "solution" to doing VoIP without an end-to-end network is to use different protocols for the client-server and server-server parts of the system - make the server-server part a peer-to-peer protocol (such as SIP) and the client-server part a client-server protocol. This means that the media path is going to be longer and the servers are always going to have to route the media path meaning a higher cost and a lower quality of service.

    61. Re:It will happen by igjeff · · Score: 1

      You have a lot of ignorance about IPv6 display in your post, but I wanted to pick on this one as just the most egregious.

      >Yes, with IPv6 your IP pool is dependent on your ISP, with no reserved IPs. So, you keep the ISP you have forever, or re-ip every single box on your network if you change.

      That is patently untrue. You can get provider independent IPv6 addresses from virtually all routing registries these days.

      Yes, IPv6 was originally envisioned as completely using provider assigned addresses, but that concept has been reversed and provider independent IPv6 address are readily available today.

    62. Re:It will happen by Nick+Ives · · Score: 1

      For these purposes a NAT is a very complex firewall. NAT is a PITA and breaks lots of stuff, application writers hate it. Read kasperd's post below for some of the tricks ISPs would have to use to NAT all their customers.

      In fact double NAT like you propose breaks just about everything except web browsing!

      --
      Nick
    63. Re:It will happen by OneMadMuppet · · Score: 1

      The main sticking point for me is all UK ISPs are IPv4 only.

      Wrong. Andrews & Arnold, Bogons, Claranet, Entanet, Goscomb and IDNet all do IP6 in the UK. There are also 22 IP6 transit providers in the UK.

    64. Re:It will happen by Nick+Ives · · Score: 1

      But those are still private addresses. The point with NAT is that there are limits to how many connections you can handle because both TCP and UDP have a 16bit port number field. Kasperd highlighted above that it's possible to use some tricks to increase the number of concurrent TCP connections beyond what should be the 16bit limit but it sounds like it'd be just as much trouble as bothering to implement IPv6

      When IPv6 becomes necessary ISPs will just send their customers IPv6 aware routers.

      --
      Nick
    65. Re:It will happen by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 1

      I find your statement confusing. A NAT provides a very _simple_ firewall effect: it interferes profoundly with amazingly stupid protocols like FTP, which typically uses one channel for data and another for commands, but for the sort of "reach out in a simple way, do your business, and disconnect" such as email and HTTP access, it's just fine.

      It's when a designer tries to get clever and says "oh, I'll use this channel for this information, and reach back on another channel to establish some other connection" that it gets fairly insane. And because of that, it badly screws up a lot of P2P and online chat applications. And it should break those: in the NAT approach, such services should live on a local server that _can_ be managed and configured properly, rather than a highly distributed cloud of confusing and security hazardous protocols. Disabling everything but HTTP/HTTPS to the outside world seems a reasonable model for most ISP's. I've certainly encouraged that approach at work, simply to ease the security headaches.

    66. Re:It will happen by Cyberax · · Score: 1

      "Disabling everything but HTTP/HTTPS to the outside world seems a reasonable model for most ISP's. I've certainly encouraged that approach at work, simply to ease the security headaches."

      I hope you never work at ISP...

      First, a lot of good legitimate applications need incoming connections on a separate channel. The main example: VoIP.

      Second, you'll also need a lot of non-HTTP protocols like the network protocol of WoW.

      Third, NATing on ISP scale is not very easy.

    67. Re:It will happen by danomac · · Score: 1

      As for consumer ISPs, I think the day might come when ISPs start to NAT all of their clients, and charge a fee to get a static, external IP.

      If other ISPs are like mine, they give you two IP addresses on a residential connection, and up to five on a server-class connection. I personally don't know anyone at home that uses more than one IP address at any given time--I used to, but I also ran a server for me to log into remotely that was segregated from my main LAN. I'd imagine plans would all drop to one IP and they'd recuperate thousands of unused IP addresses in their pool.

      After that, then the may consider charging for an address. Most are dhcp around here anyway, and you will pay more for a static IP, but it's actually reserved-dhcp, not a true static. It's been like that ever since I've been on the service (10+ years now.) There's so many addresses in my province that are unused right now.

    68. Re:It will happen by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 1

      I have done so, but admittedly not for a few years. Too many of the employees try to use their coporate networks as ISP's. It's a security and a resource problem of major proportions, because we in the IT world have not been able to get the budget to fund the bandwidth, or the security requirements, for such services.

      And no, VoIP does not require separate _external_ channels. It can use reliable internal VoIP services which many ISP's are happy to provide, or an end-to-end service with man-in-the-middle operations that make sense, such as Skype (which continues to work well behind doubled NAT's just as I've described them). The average random VoIP application written on a napkin during lunch, with a similar martini-fueled business plan, will not, especially when they're IPv6 based to escape the networking requirements for IPv4 and normal ISP resource allocations such as DNS services. I lived through the dotcom and the dotbomb, and it's fairly sad to see the same EXCITING! IDEAS! CHANGE YOUR INFRASTRUCTURE SO I'LL MAKE MONEY, AND YOU'LL GET NOTHING!!!! technologies and business plans still being sold.

      The random Sourceforge VoIP project won't cut it, and isn't worth my time or an ISP's time to evaluate.

    69. Re:It will happen by Cyberax · · Score: 1

      "The random Sourceforge VoIP project won't cut it, and isn't worth my time or an ISP's time to evaluate."

      So, you want (as ISP) to decide what your users should use? You fail, then.

    70. Re:It will happen by arkhan_jg · · Score: 1

      I'm with entanet. They only do IPv6 as part of a trial, which is currently shut due to the 21CN upgrade, and they only support a tiny handful of cisco routers. After previous dealings with claranet, I wouldn't trust them to give internet connectivity to my toilet, let alone my work network.

      Thanks for the heads up on the others though, I'll look into them.

      --
      Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
    71. Re:It will happen by Vancorps · · Score: 1

      To me it seems like it would be relatively simple to just change one company's address scheme to something that doesn't conflict.

      I guess I just have it easy where I am so that's something to be thankful for although I don't understand why company A users would have to talk to company B servers or boxes. I set it up so that I just use a simple proxy since all our apps are web-based for the most part. Everything else is handled through back-end site replication so the users don't even know they are connecting to machines several thousands of miles away.

    72. Re:It will happen by growse · · Score: 1

      Changing the IP addresses of potentially thousands of nodes on a network, as well as re-writing routing information on the routers isn't a particularly trivial task.

      And, no offense, but just because you don't understand why ex-company A would ever want to talk to ex-company B, doesn't mean that the requirement doesn't exist :) Think things like shared continuous build environments that dev groups in both networks would like to access. Or document repositories and databases containing information that needs to be shared across both companies. There's plenty more examples.

      --
      There is nothing interesting going on at my blog
    73. Re:It will happen by Nick+Ives · · Score: 1

      I find your statement confusing. A NAT provides a very _simple_ firewall effect

      But it's a lot more difficult to administer than a simple firewall. If you want to disallow everything except HTTP then you can do that very easily using a simple firewall rule: DROP or DENY everything except outbound traffic on port 80.

      The point is that IPv6 gets rid of the headaches associated with NAT, using NAT because of its firewall side-effects is dumb. It's already possible for certain clever applications to punch their way through a NAT, if double NAT became the norm then they'd figure out a way to do that too.

      NAT is a hack, firewalls are for policy.

      --
      Nick
    74. Re:It will happen by quarkoid · · Score: 1

      The main sticking point for me is all UK ISPs are IPv4 only.

      You haven't been looking hard enough. AAISP (http://www.aaisp.net.uk/) support both IPv6 and IPv4. I know because they've given me 1208925819614629174706176 addresses!

      Nick.

    75. Re:It will happen by wertigon · · Score: 1

      "Be that as it may the business case for NAT long predates address space limitations (and RFC1918). Businesses require private and non-routable addresses for their internal networks."

      Bullshit. You can achieve the exact same thing with a firewall and a few decent rules. In fact, you only need these three to achieve the same layer of security as NAT:ed firewalls (excuse my SQL-ish syntax, been messing around with databases too much recently):

      ALLOW EVERYTHING FROM $internal TO $external WHERE SOURCE PORT IS HIGH AND DESTINATION PORT IS LOW;
      DENY EVERYTHING FROM $external TO $internal WHERE SOURCE PORT IS HIGH AND DESTINATION PORT IS LOW;
      DENY EVERYTHING EXCEPT SSH FROM $internal TO $local;

      That last is only there if you want to be able to remote-admin the firewall. NAT is entirerly superfluous from a business and security perspective, and until you can give actual real-world cases where it isn't... Then please, stop talking about things you have no clue about.

      --
      systemd is not an init system. It's a GNU replacement.
    76. Re:It will happen by Eskarel · · Score: 1

      The transition to IPv6 will happen, but it won't happen until there is a business driver for it.

      Right now, NAT works. It's not great, but it hasn't reached the levels where most people are inconvenienced dramatically yet. NAT can be configured to allow direct access where necessary, and for the most part that works just fine at the moment.

      Eventually there will be a motivation for an ISP to provide something they can provide more easily, more cheaply, or just actually provide in general, which will give them a competitive advantage over other ISPs, and they'll do it. Until then, they won't.

    77. Re:It will happen by oojah · · Score: 1

      http://blog.icann.org/2008/02/recovering-ipv4-address-space/

      ARIN recovered a /8 in 2007. It's unlikely they'll get any more back. I know that doesn't sound much, but the amount of effort involved in getting address space back means that it is probably not worth it. Who pays for getting the company to move their addresses? How long will it take? I wouldn't be surprised if the legal wrangling took a long time to sort things out. Given that we're using about one /8 per month, it won't help that much even if we could get a few blocks back.

      --
      Do you have any better hostages?
    78. Re:It will happen by FireFury03 · · Score: 1

      I'm with entanet. They only do IPv6 as part of a trial, which is currently shut due to the 21CN upgrade

      I'm also with Enta and I've been chasing them about the ipv6 trial for the past couple of weeks. They claim the trial is still running and that they've received my email, but they haven't actually done anything with it yet.

  5. IPv6 will eventually be a cost reduction measure by OdinOdin_ · · Score: 1

    There will be once you run out of IPv4, as with most created problems they only get fixed after the suffering starts (climate change, fossil fuel supply and IPv4).

    Everyone has understood for a long time it will cost money to setup IPv6 with zero gain today. Once the suffering starts that suffering will have a cost to a business and the decision markers (PHBs) can finally see IPv6 as a cost reduction and do something about it.

    We donhttp://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/21/2033211#'t have long now folks (recessions excluded) until that time. Just be patient and flame any crack pot technical measure to extend Network Address Translation it has its uses but not to fix the problem IPv6 can already fix much better. To all the technical people in the world the time to start singing the IPv6 mantra it NOW!

  6. Internet 2 by Anenome · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    We can only hope that the transition to Internet 2 occurs in our lifetime, that will be a chance to revolutionize very many static technologies that are hard to remove from our lives.

    --
    "I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
    1. Re:Internet 2 by Lennie · · Score: 1

      It's like the spoon, their is no internet 2, things only change on the internet with evolution, not revolution.

      --
      New things are always on the horizon
  7. Last post! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    As this is a slow day I'm calling last post.

    Last post at the bar gentlemen, please!

  8. Fastest dup ever? by dgatwood · · Score: 3, Funny

    I'm seeing two copies of this story posted on the front page, both posted in the same minute. That has to be some kind of Slashdot record. Even normal user comments can't be duped by the same person less than two minutes apart....

    --

    Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    1. Re:Fastest dup ever? by MichaelSmith · · Score: 2, Funny

      They just want to be sure we get the message.

    2. Re:Fastest dup ever? by jackb_guppy · · Score: 1

      Yes it did and I got first post on that one! ;-)

    3. Re:Fastest dup ever? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      one was submitted over IPv4 and other over v6.

  9. Post in one thread, mod in another SWEET by grondak · · Score: 2, Funny

    Oh yes, finally. It has occurred! A story duped right next to each itself. Timothy FTW!

    --
    [Error 407: No signature found]
    1. Re:Post in one thread, mod in another SWEET by MichaelSmith · · Score: 1

      Its a keybounce problem.

    2. Re:Post in one thread, mod in another SWEET by Nick+Ives · · Score: 1

      You do realise that anyone who gets modded down in the other thread is gonna blame you now, right?

      --
      Nick
  10. Whoa... Deja Vu, man! by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

    "This article went by... and then another one..."

    "Was it the same article? Or a different one? THINK!"

    1. Re:Whoa... Deja Vu, man! by BobReturns · · Score: 1

      Uh oh, they've changed something.

  11. Aside from the obvious "business driver." by palegray.net · · Score: 4, Funny

    As a developer and network security professional, I frankly can't wait until everything under the sun is addressable. I really do want my car to be able to talk to my electric razor.

    1. Re:Aside from the obvious "business driver." by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 1

      I really do want my car to be able to talk to my electric razor.

      The parlor trick of 2025 will be to hack a car so when someone revs it, its signal will be rerouted to a neighbor's razor to suck their face off.

    2. Re:Aside from the obvious "business driver." by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      hack a car so when someone revs it, its signal will be rerouted to a neighbor's razor to suck their face off.

      Or the neighbour's fleshlight.

    3. Re:Aside from the obvious "business driver." by QuoteMstr · · Score: 1

      You jest, but I'd love more integration. Why shouldn't I be able to connect to my cold, frozen car with a web browser and adjust the climate controls?

      Why shouldn't I be able to wirelessly check how much milk I have in the refrigerator and pick some more up on the way home? (Or more likely to me, the refrigerator could tell me "you let your milk expire again, you idiot").

    4. Re:Aside from the obvious "business driver." by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 1

      Why shouldn't I be able to connect to my neighbor's car with a web browser and turn off the alarm siren when I get sick of it going off in the night?

      There, fixed that for ya.

    5. Re:Aside from the obvious "business driver." by tftp · · Score: 1

      You can do that and more already, with IPv4 and a NAT. What are you waiting for?

    6. Re:Aside from the obvious "business driver." by palegray.net · · Score: 1

      I'm waiting for NAT traversal to fail to suck in many cases :).

    7. Re:Aside from the obvious "business driver." by Lord+Ender · · Score: 1

      If you get your firewalling right, then why not? NATing to everything makes it hard to track down security incidents. With global addressing, I can see exactly what's going down.

      I'm also a network security professional. And I'm pushing for IPv6 deployment in my company.

      --
      A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
    8. Re:Aside from the obvious "business driver." by jonaskoelker · · Score: 1

      Always mount a scratch monkey!

    9. Re:Aside from the obvious "business driver." by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hopefully your car says, "He's driving right now and he can't shave."

  12. I demand it. by YesIAmAScript · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I demand it because I'm tired of NAT. As I have more devices at home that I might want to access remotely, or that need full inbound and outbound access for full functionality (as jump-in, jump-out games often do), I get more and more tired of dealing with NAT.

    And it's not just me. When I'm trying to help my dad with his machine, I can't connect to it remotely to access it.

    Even my DirectTV satellite receiver uses IP access now, and due to NAT, they can't count on being able to contact your receiver from their end. So, any centralized service like remote booking has to take special measures to work.

    IPv6 makes all this a lot easier, for example if you "request assistance" on Windows Vista/7, the first thing it does is create a Teredo tunnel so that your machine can be accessed remotely to diagnose and fix it.

    --
    http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
    1. Re:I demand it. by dasmoo · · Score: 1

      This can be solved with current technologies:
      Have bonjour/zeroconf on the router looking for available services and hostnames.
      Give the router a domain name (example.com in this example).
      since the domain does nothing other than looking after your home network, it can be the DNS server. Sure you can add secondaries, but you don't need to (since if it's down, you can't connect to that shit anyway).
      Based on the name of the machine (we'll call it dad) you create a dns TXT record for the subdomain (dad.example.com) which states the services and the ports that those services are available on. (dad.example.com. 86400 IN TXT "RDC:34542,HTTP:6253")
      You then build into the connectivity tools the tools for looking this information up (ie, build it into firefox, build it into remote desktop connection) then it's seamless.

      You don't need to change the internet to get this shit done. NAT is fine, you're trying to break shit that works to do something that is possible today.

    2. Re:I demand it. by wertigon · · Score: 1

      Ah yes, NAT is indeed fine.

      Except it spawned tens of thousands of horrible hacks that may or may not work, depending on the day, time and your network admin's mood. Oh, and don't forget the rings of saturn, they also play a big part in this. The fact that NAT has been around for *atleast two decades* and there *still* isn't a foolproof way to establish a decent P2P connection between two NAT networks proves just how much of an ugly hack NAT is.

      Describing NAT as working and being just fine is like saying walking corpses are healthy, living humans and nothing is wrong with them.

      --
      systemd is not an init system. It's a GNU replacement.
  13. Customer demand should be the business case. by mellon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't mean customers should want IPv6. I mean that that's what should drive IPv6 deployment. Address depletion is a problem, but it's a problem that has workarounds, and to the extent that customers aren't bothered by the workarounds, there will be no IPv6 deployment.

    The main impact of the workarounds is twofold. First, your outward-facing global IPv4 address will go away. Right now, your ISP has probably assigned you a real IPv4 address, not an RFC1918 address. So people can get packets to your gateway directly. That will go away.

    The second impact is that we will have more and more layering of NATs. This will make peer-to-peer applications harder and harder. Also, as more users are piled up on single IP addresses, we will start to see port starvation. What this looks like is that iTunes will start acting funny - displaying some things, showing error messages for others. DNS lookups will fail, and you'll have to retry. Google maps tiles won't show up, so you'll see a partial map, and have to reload (possibly to see different tiles not show up).

    So yeah, things will keep chugging along. But it will work less and less well as time goes on.

    And I think that is what can, and should, be driving demand. If you don't want that, you might want to start fantasizing about how to get IPv6 into your own home. I have it in mine, it works a treat. I think it's too hard for the average person to do right now if their ISP doesn't support it, but that's a problem that we ought to try to solve if we want the internet to keep being a place where peer-to-peer is possible, and where innovation is possible.

    Running out of address won't kill the internet. But it will suck the life out of it.

    1. Re:Customer demand should be the business case. by WillKemp · · Score: 1

      Considering probably considerably less than 1% of internet users have ever even heard of IPv6, i wouldn't hold your breath waiting for them to start demanding it.

    2. Re:Customer demand should be the business case. by mellon · · Score: 1

      They will never ask for it by name. What they will ask for is for Google Maps to work, for Skype to work, for Bittorrent to work. Right now, if you live in the U.S., you aren't seeing problems with these services yet. Yes, if you have a global IPv4 address, you are passing a lot of traffic for other people without realizing it, but aside from that it's not a problem. Yet.

    3. Re:Customer demand should be the business case. by QuoteMstr · · Score: 1

      People are always willing to put up with a certain level of mediocrity as long as they don't have to think. We see it all the time with people using computers chock-full of spyware. Google Maps reloading won't be a problem for people until it actually takes less time to look up a route on paper.

      Changing to IPv6 is hard. If there's any amount of incompatibility, we'll see something like the Digital TV debacle --- just think about the hoopla around that one and consider:

      1. Most people have cable or satellite and aren't affected by the change
      2. The government is subsidizing converter boxes for everyone else

      Any change to IPv6 is going to be far worse --- and unlike in the Digital TV case, there's no spectrum freed up by the switch, which means no large moneyed interests pushing for the change.

      Thus, the change to IPv6 must be automatic and transparent. Here are a few preconditions:

      Existing "routers" must keep working: if an IPv4 customer plugs his IPv4-only NAT "router" into his IPv6 network, that device must keep working, or customers will complain. Most likely, some sort of proxying or tunneling will be required, and customers will get RFC1918 addresses.

      IPv4 computers attached to IPv6 routers must keep working: that means that if a home NAT box connects to an ISP and gets an IPv6 address, it'll still have to hand out an RFC1918 IPv4 addresses to any connected host that asks for one. It'll have to do some tunneling or proxying so that the IPv4 machine "keeps working". People will return "routers" that break their Windows 98 machines.

      IPv6 must be pitched as a beneficial feature: "routers" should have light-up "IPv6" logos so customers get a fuzzy, good feeling. Only later can certain sites risk being IPv6-only, and only much later can IPv6-only devices be marketable.

      Taking advantage of IPv6, when present, must be automatic: if operating systems require any configuration beyond what you need for IPv4, people will just choose IPv4. IPv6 must be detected and used automatically.

      A good model is the adoption of new mobile phone protocols. Old phones just kept working, and new ones transparently used either the old or the new protocol, but prominently showed the user which one he was using. Only recently was the old AMPS system turned off; we'll be stuck with GSM for a while longer. But these old systems don't cause much harm to the newer ones, so keeping them around is an acceptable price for progress.

    4. Re:Customer demand should be the business case. by mellon · · Score: 1

      If you were to actually try using IPv6, you might be surprised at how many of the things you've mentioned here are non-issues. I am not arguing that it's time right now for the end-user to switch to v6-only, but it is reasonable for early adopters to start playing with it now, even if they don't yet have real IPv6 connectivity. You can use 6to4 or set up tunnels. My home network is dual-homed; this took about a day of fiddling around. Obviously not something Grandma is going to do, unless she's an enthusiast, but based on the statements you're making, you probably are already sufficiently tech-savvy to do it.

    5. Re:Customer demand should be the business case. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You sure as hell didn't read that post, nor do you understand the concept of demand properly. I can't name the specific parts in my car, but I know I'd like it to use less gas. Does this mean I won't "demand" those parts I can't name that make this goal happen?

    6. Re:Customer demand should be the business case. by R3d+Jack · · Score: 1

      ISP's are the only one's with a real need for IPV6. They have to dole out large numbers of IP addresses to their customers. When the lack of IPV4 addresses really starts to affect them and their customer service, they'll lead the charge. If one block of ISP's changes over, others will have to find a way to interact. Switching to IPV6 will likely be the most sensible option. The change will probably start somewhere like China, where the government can issue a mandate. Once they start using IPV6, it will slowly pressure businesses to comply, although NAT between an internal IPV4 network and an IPV6 Internet will remain a compelling option for years.

    7. Re:Customer demand should be the business case. by marcosdumay · · Score: 1

      "Only later can certain sites risk being IPv6-only, and only much later can IPv6-only devices be marketable."

      Too late. VoIP is already IPv6 only if you want it to really work. Remote administration could be a nice service throug the net, but it is IPv6 only, so it doesn't exist (except for a few companies, that route the trafic through them)... There are plenty of thing that can only exist on a IPv6 network, so there will be plenty of sites that will be IPv6 only when the time comes.

    8. Re:Customer demand should be the business case. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      VoIP is IPv6 only? Tell that to my VoIP provider. And my SIP phone. And my NAT router. It "really works" just fine. Stop spreading FUD.

    9. Re:Customer demand should be the business case. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I wonder if the guys who did this study, using the same criteria, would have found a "business case" for, say, the computer mouse in 1983.

      I can't count the number of technologies we have here today that nobody saw a business case for. You don't even have to go very far back: look how many people predicted doom and gloom for the iPod, then the iTunes Music Store, and then the iPhone.

      Saying there's no business case for something now tells me nothing about whether it'll come to pass. Analysts have a horrible track record at technology predictions. What's the ISOC's track record? Why would anybody listen to them?

    10. Re:Customer demand should be the business case. by WillKemp · · Score: 1

      Read the post before replying to it???

      No. Of course i didn't. What would be the fun in that?

    11. Re:Customer demand should be the business case. by Yaztromo · · Score: 1

      Much of what you suggest is necessary already possible and is not a significant problem, however I feel you've missed the more significant issues that truly need to be dealt with.

      Existing "routers" must keep working: if an IPv4 customer plugs his IPv4-only NAT "router" into his IPv6 network, that device must keep working, or customers will complain. Most likely, some sort of proxying or tunneling will be required, and customers will get RFC1918 addresses.

      Or, more likely for quite some time ISPs will simply permit both IPv4 and IPv6 packets on their networks. There is no reason why this can't be done, and AFAIK every modern operating system already supports dual stack IP. The layer(s) below IP will still frame the packets in the same manner, and as the packets are versioned, devices that don't understand IPv6 will already drop the packets. This can be done for several years until the transition is complete.

      IPv4 computers attached to IPv6 routers must keep working: that means that if a home NAT box connects to an ISP and gets an IPv6 address, it'll still have to hand out an RFC1918 IPv4 addresses to any connected host that asks for one. It'll have to do some tunneling or proxying so that the IPv4 machine "keeps working". People will return "routers" that break their Windows 98 machines.

      Again, a dual stack solution solves this problem nicely.

      IPv6 must be pitched as a beneficial feature: "routers" should have light-up "IPv6" logos so customers get a fuzzy, good feeling. Only later can certain sites risk being IPv6-only, and only much later can IPv6-only devices be marketable.

      If we were to go with a dual stack solution, as IPv4 addresses run out and ISPs are forced to NAT them together, the benefits of IPv6 will eventually become obvious. One just has to wait for the "killer application", or for existing peer to peer applications (such as Skype) to break down (and that "killer application" for most people will probably be a new version of a media delivery system, or VoIP style application that won't work well under a multi-layer NAT).

      Taking advantage of IPv6, when present, must be automatic: if operating systems require any configuration beyond what you need for IPv4, people will just choose IPv4. IPv6 must be detected and used automatically.

      This is already true in the present day. Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows XP and Vista (and eventually 7) are all IPv6 enabled by default. IPv6 address autoconfiguration and routing is significantly easier to configure and run than in IPv4.

      But here's what you've missed. There is invariably going to be some sort of transition period that is going to last many years, where both protocols are going to be in use. The client is only one side of the issue -- to be useful, the client still needs to be able to connect to useful sources of information on the network. And as things currently stand, IPv6-only hosts can't talk to IPv4-only hosts, and vice-versa. This will be a problem for IPv4-only hosts as more and more services online move to IPv6. Internet-wide dual stack support would be one solution, but that would entail a huge amount of overhead. For the web, proxies could come into play. I'm not sure if ISPs would be a fan of either solution. In a sense, the partitioning has already begun -- IPv4 hosts can't get to http://ipv6.google.com, for example, and the only reason why it isn't a problem is because Google is still available in IPv4 form (just without the added animation).

      I'm already running a dual stack solution at home. I have a variety of IPv4 based devices (VoIP devices, a TiVo, my PlayStation 2) that continue to function, while my MacBook, PowerBook, and Debian server can do either IPv4 or IPv6 simultaneously. It's completely seamless and invisible, but primarily works because the I

    12. Re:Customer demand should be the business case. by oiron · · Score: 1

      And maybe 5% have heard of IPv4... Your point being?

    13. Re:Customer demand should be the business case. by WillKemp · · Score: 1

      Point? No point. Just a bit of idle procrastination. Isn't that what slashdot's for?

    14. Re:Customer demand should be the business case. by marcosdumay · · Score: 1

      I'm glad you can plug your SIP phone behind a NAT without messing with network configurations. Up to now, nobody else was able to do that. Maybe you should patent its workings and get some good money at the market.

  14. Automobile, airplane by Todd+Knarr · · Score: 1

    There wasn't a business case for the automobile when it first came out, either. Nor for the airplane. But how many businesses today could operate without the overnight delivery offered by air freight and delivery vans? Not many.

    Except that there is a business case for IPv6, mentioned right in the summary. customer demand. If customers want it, there's your business case right there: if we don't offer it, our customers will leave us for competitors who do offer it. "If we don't do it we'll lose more customers than we can afford to." has to be one of the more compelling business cases out there.

    1. Re:Automobile, airplane by tftp · · Score: 1

      There wasn't a business case for the automobile when it first came out, either. Nor for the airplane.

      There was a business case for the automobile - to haul heavier loads faster, without horses being tired. A very real example of that need is in railroads and steam locomotives, so people already knew what they want, just without rails. There was a business case for the airplane - to fly people and cargo faster than in a dirigible (which predates the airplane by about 50 years.)

      Compared to all that, IPv6 does not offer *to businesses* (an important distinction) anything that they don't have already. The network utilization will grow, the hardware needs to be replaced, a migration plan needs to be drawn, techs need to be trained - and all that hard work for what? To see the same Web site of Google or Digikey? Lack of clear need is why businesses have no interest in IPv6. Businesses see the network not as a goal in itself, but just as a tool, and as long as the tool works it won't be replaced.

      The only place where IPv6 does show some demand is among ISPs who service home users. It may be that some ISPs will be offering IPv6 routers to homes, as long as IPv4 is fully and transparently supported. The end user, though, may be willingly stuck with IPv4 for a long time, due to number of devices that are IPv4 only or require a lot of effort to switch to IPv6. I have a few SIP phones that support only IPv4 and won't be ever upgraded.

    2. Re:Automobile, airplane by marcosdumay · · Score: 1

      Except that "fast" isn't a good answer to describe earlier airplanes. "Cargo" also isn't an apt word, unless you meant the pilot (and not a weigty one). Well, "around" is also pushing, "a few metters" would fit better.

      Face it, the airplane was created because people had fun doing it, there was no business case. Of course, latter, when it become able to transport the pilot for a long distance it started making business sense and then came a war...

    3. Re:Automobile, airplane by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      no. the airplane industry was subsidized by the post office and war department pretty much from the get-go.

    4. Re:Automobile, airplane by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There's *still* no business case for them: both auto and air travel are subsidized by the government today.

      Come to think of it, so was the creation of the internet.

      After all, there's no business case for the internet, either. If you could go back a few decades and ask IBM and DEC and friends if they'd foot the bill for some new "internet" thing, they would have told you there's no business case, and they would have been right.

  15. Cell phones by FranTaylor · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If cell phones turn into real computers, which has probably already happened, then we will need IPv6 if all those phone users want to surf.

    1. Re:Cell phones by MichaelSmith · · Score: 1

      They are surfing right now.

    2. Re:Cell phones by hitmark · · Score: 1

      iirc, LTE uses ip6 deep in its bowels...

      --
      comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
  16. Let's flip the question.... by mark-t · · Score: 4, Interesting

    People ask what can IPv6 offer that NAT cannot. Try running multiple servers on multiple machines behind the same NAT, where one would like them to be accessible to the outside world via default port numbers. No amount of NAT configuration can get around this limitation, so saying NAT solves all the problems that IPv6 is supposed to answer is nothing more than self-delusional. Let's flip the question now.... what can NAT do that IPv6 cannot? Especially considering the fact that even *IF* for some reason that didn't involve how many IP's you actually have available, you still wanted to utilize NAT for some reason, you still could do that with ipv6... no problem at all. So what does NAT do that IPv6 can't? The only answer that might actually exist to this is that it arguably costs less to implement. So in reality, it's not that there's no business case of IPv6, it's really the case that these businesses are just cheap.

    1. Re:Let's flip the question.... by myowntrueself · · Score: 1

      The only answer that might actually exist to this is that it arguably costs less to implement. So in reality, it's not that there's no business case of IPv6, it's really the case that these businesses are just cheap.

      I think that from the perspective of most business owners you have just defined 'business case'. Ie 'cheap'.

      --
      In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
    2. Re:Let's flip the question.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Try running multiple servers on multiple machines behind the same NAT, where one would like them to be accessible to the outside world via default port numbers."

      Sure you can.
      Transparent proxying with targets chosen by named virtual hosts.

      It's not pretty, but it works.

    3. Re:Let's flip the question.... by MeanMF · · Score: 1

      Not pretty? That's a great configuration, even if you have the IP addresses to spare. Funneling your HTTP/HTTPS traffic through a reverse proxy (or better yet a couple of clustered proxies) gives you the ability to do fun stuff like consolidated logging, SSL offload, caching, and load balancing. Plus you can move stuff around without having to worry about updating DNS records.

    4. Re:Let's flip the question.... by itpr15061 · · Score: 1

      I am not sure why everyone likes to couple IPv6 and NAT so closely. Sure, their use overlaps but as you pointed out they also each have other uses. Who knows why NAT was originally invented - overlapping IP space? Address depletion? Security/obscurity?

      For those that want IPv6 and NAT, you can do that too.

    5. Re:Let's flip the question.... by QuoteMstr · · Score: 1, Troll

      Try running multiple servers on multiple machines behind the same NAT, where one would like them to be accessible to the outside world via default port numbers.

      To be fair, you can use a reverse proxy for this.

      *IF* for some reason that didn't involve how many IP's you actually have available, you still wanted to utilize NAT for some reason, you still could do that with ipv6... no problem at all.

      You can, but people were told for ages they couldn't. That's actually a big factor opposing IPv6's adoption.

      Lots of smart, but idealistic IPv6 designers considered private networks harmful, and wanted to eliminate them from IPv6. They thought that by saying "no, there's no support for private networks, and you don't need them anyway", people would start making addresses public again.

      They were right, but saying that wasn't very smart. RFC1918-style networks are safety blankets for network administrators, and when the IPv6 people threatened to take them away, they were terrified. Instead of moving to IPv6 and making their networks publicly-numbered, administrators stayed with IPv4. It's a classic case of perfect being the enemy of good.

      Finally, in 2005, the IPv6 people realized the value of pragmatism and set aside reserved addresses with RFC4193. However, the delay and initial opposition to private networking has retarded IPv6 adoption by several years, at least.

    6. Re:Let's flip the question.... by DA-MAN · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There is more than one protocol than http. Try ftp, imap, smtp, irc and https on for size.

      --
      Can I get an eye poke?
      Dog House Forum
    7. Re:Let's flip the question.... by tftp · · Score: 1

      People ask what can IPv6 offer that NAT cannot. Try running multiple servers on multiple machines behind the same NAT

      This is a wrong answer, addressed to wrong people. Tell this to your non-IT neighbors and watch their reaction :-) Nobody but an IT specialist would be worried about multiple instances of a service behind a NAT, and those people do not need anyone's explanations about NAT and IPv6, they make their decisions based on their own plans and goals.

      A better pitch to tell your neighbor would be something about a service that he could not have on IPv4 but could easily get on IPv6. For example, his children could play online games on their consoles independently or together, with no configuration at the router needed. Or that he could buy a bunch of IPv6 SIP phones, plug them in and talk to anyone in the world instantly, no configuration required.

      But most people only need TCP for Web browsing and maybe email. Those will be happier with IPv4, at least because they don't need to change anything in their computers.

    8. Re:Let's flip the question.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      NAT lets you organize your network with perfectly memorable addresses.

    9. Re:Let's flip the question.... by mellon · · Score: 1

      Being cheap is not a bad thing. Being penny-wise and pound-foolish is. So the real question is, are they doing that?

      The answer for content providers right now is probably no. They really ought to be looking into it, but it's not costing them customers Right Now. Realistically, what's going to drive content providers to v6 is a better value proposition. That will come, and for some applications it's already here, but only specialized applications. General applicability is still a few years off.

      It's important to remember that the burden for content providers is much lower than for service providers - the content provider just has to make sure www.my-content.com is ipv6-capable. The service provider has to get a full working IPv6 stack out to the customer.

      This is really not all that hard - chances are you already have the equipment, and just need to turn it on. But you need an address plan, and turning it on is not trivial.

      This is why I think the first big push for IPv6 is going to be end-users who are tired of not getting decent end-to-end connectivity. They won't ask for IPv6. They'll just ask for their Skype and bittorrent to work.

    10. Re:Let's flip the question.... by grumpy_old_troll · · Score: 1

      "It's cheaper" is an excellent example of a business case.

      Pity that still means "NAT your IPv4". At least for another few months.

    11. Re:Let's flip the question.... by Matt+Perry · · Score: 1

      To be fair, you can use a reverse proxy for this.

      How would you reverse proxy SSH, HTTPS, etc. to multiple servers behind a NAT gateway while keeping the services for all internal servers on default ports?

      --
      Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
    12. Re:Let's flip the question.... by sjames · · Score: 1

      Of course, it's not really any cheaper either unless your hardware is too ancient to handle v6. That might be a business case to delay full deployment for now, but that old hardware will be replaced one day.

    13. Re:Let's flip the question.... by sjames · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Want a private net? Unplug the uplink and number your machines any way you want! If you prefer a protected LAN, make your firewall default to DROP, then tell it what you do want. The IETF probably proposed local IPv6 addresses because they were tired of the few holdouts drooling on their shoes when they explained that for the nth time.

    14. Re:Let's flip the question.... by mark-t · · Score: 1

      The problem isn't really the end computer so much as much as it the routers in between.

    15. Re:Let's flip the question.... by mlts · · Score: 1

      I've not messed with IOS in ages, but didn't Cisco have a router to do just exactly this? hand the router one IP, and it would happily round-robin any traffic handed to it to DMZ servers. foo.com on port 80 would go to a different machine than blarf.com, and foo.com port 443 could be configured to go to another machine as well. Even better, if one of the hosts in the round robin was unreachable, the router would automatically take that host out of the table until it was back operational.

    16. Re:Let's flip the question.... by sjames · · Score: 1

      I'm using v6 now with 6to4. My ISP may or may not have heard of IPv6, but certainly doesn't support it. That's what 6to4 is for.

    17. Re:Let's flip the question.... by Jeremy+Visser · · Score: 1

      For those that want IPv6 and NAT, you can do that too.

      Not 100% sure what you mean by that.

      You can do IPv4+NAT and IPv6 on the same network, but there is no such thing as NAT for IPv6. (Well, there might be a specification for it, but nobody's implemented it.)

    18. Re:Let's flip the question.... by iamhigh · · Score: 1

      Never had to do that with a router (thankfully i guess), but if IIS and apache can handle it, I don't see why any router couldn't handle it.

      --
      No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
    19. Re:Let's flip the question.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Let's flip the question now.... what can NAT do that IPv6 cannot?

      How about allow continuing access to IPv4-only content?

      Don't get IPv6 and depletion of the IPv4 address pool mixed up here - the time has passed for the former to be considered a viable solution for the latter, and large scale NAT for end user access is an inevitability for any provider who anticipates a growth in their resource demands past 2011.

      That's not to say that IPv6 doesn't form part of that strategy - in fact, for me NAT serves as a step towards v6 by allowing my v4-only clients to access v6-only content by way of whatever ends up replacing NAPT-PT. But for now I just plain don't see any motivation to deploy native v6 for my subscribers when there's precious little content to drive me in that direction, and a whole world of Early Adopter Pain in finding access gear (including home networking) to support it.

    20. Re:Let's flip the question.... by mark-t · · Score: 1
      Wrong. NAT uses address translation, consequently breaking a lot of protocols and creates a difficulties for developing and deploying applications. The only significant benefit it offers, which is to reduce the number of IP addresses that one requires, is not really needed with IPv6, and because of NAT's drawbacks, development in that department of IPv6 isn't of particular interest to most people. HOWEVER, there is a world of difference between something that is not needed a and something that is not possible. Truly, NAT in IPv6 is, from a technical perspective, no more difficult than it has been with IPv4. Companies are only slower to implement it with IPv6 because it isn't really needed, not because it is any more awkward or difficult than NAT already is with IPv4.

      Truth be told, however, I can see a practical purpose for NAT with ipv6 in the future.... many of one's home appliances that do not need externally visible IP addresses, such as your toaster, blender, washing machine, and others, may one day be configured with internet connectivity in the future, but it might not make sense for to have all these devices visible to the outside world. One could position them all within a firewall that denies access to them, but it is probably much easier to simply use a NAT.... which allows communication between all the devices in your own residence but the ones that the outside world doesn't need to see simply don't exist as far as anybody else can tell. Just as I said there's a difference between not being needed and not being possible, the converse applies as well... just because it's POSSIBLE that every appliance you own could have an externally visible IP, does not mean that it is necessary needed or something that people ought to do. Of course, I have to also acknowledge that some appliances having externally visible IP's could make a whole lot of sense, but I really can't see any case for all of them... at least not for everybody. But nothing says that NAT must be all or nothing anyways. My own ipv4 lan is only partially NAT'ted, for example.

    21. Re:Let's flip the question.... by Jeremy+Visser · · Score: 1

      Wrong. [...] Truly, NAT in IPv6 is, from a technical perspective, no more difficult than it has been with IPv4.

      Oh, absolutely. Not saying it can't be done, or not even that it hasn't. AFAIK there's even an RFC for IPv6 NAT. However, I don't think anybody's implemented it yet, because nobody likes it. ;)

      There may still be uses for NAT (like routing a subnet when you don't have the ability to configure routes for your upstream routers, or, as you say, your home appliances), but 99% of the case, your typical NAT'ed network can logically be replaced with an IPv6 /64 subnet.

  17. 2009 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    2009 will the Year of IPv6 to the Desktop.

    1. Re:2009 by marcosdumay · · Score: 1

      Oh, no. That's 2012.

  18. maybe it's time for IPv5, second edition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    With 64 bit addresses that people can still scribble on a scrap of paper.

    1. Re:maybe it's time for IPv5, second edition by Midnight+Thunder · · Score: 1

      With 64 bit addresses that people can still scribble on a scrap of paper.

      Get a name for your machine. If it is public try dyndns.org. You don't address you envelopes with grid coordinates, so why should the logic here be any different?

      --
      Jumpstart the tartan drive.
    2. Re:maybe it's time for IPv5, second edition by value_added · · Score: 1

      Get a name for your machine ...

      You seriously think things are that simple? Here's a tip: DNS doesn't magically create itself from nothing, and for for those who matter (the folks charged with making things work), the ability to use host names is simply a byproduct of using numbers. Hell, even Joe Average configuring his Linksys router knows he has to type in a number to connect to it, and probably has that number memorised.

      Granted, IPv6 offers other sorts of advantages with respect to day-to-day work, but I don't think anyone can make the claim that it's generally easier.

    3. Re:maybe it's time for IPv5, second edition by Midnight+Thunder · · Score: 1

      You seriously think things are that simple? Here's a tip: DNS doesn't magically create itself from nothing, and for for those who matter (the folks charged with making things work), the ability to use host names is simply a byproduct of using numbers. Hell, even Joe Average configuring his Linksys router knows he has to type in a number to connect to it, and probably has that number memorised.

      Sure at the moment, we are referencing these devices by name because people making these routers don't think the numbers is any less convenient than the name. Maybe the complexity of the IPv6 address will actually get them to have a dynamic DNS in their routers. There are other technologies such a Bonjour, zero-config and possibly even NMB.

      On that account, are there any home routers which provide dynamic DNSs for computers registered via DHCP?

      --
      Jumpstart the tartan drive.
    4. Re:maybe it's time for IPv5, second edition by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      DNS doesn't magically create itself from nothing

      I take it you missed multicast DNS then? Any device connected to a network can publish an address in the .local namespace. There's nothing stopping a home router from advertising itself as linsys.local when it's plugged in. This is a lot easier for Joe Average to remember than 192.168.0.1 or whatever.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  19. But of course... by WoollyMittens · · Score: 1

    There's more money to be made form an artificially scarce resource. That why we put our corporate benefactors in control of the Internet.

    1. Re:But of course... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      you didn't put anyone in control of anything, buddy.. they took control.

  20. Will a big Business really want to have there 1000 by Joe+The+Dragon · · Score: 1

    Will a big Business really want to have all of there 1000's of pc to each have there own public ip address?

    Will people still us nat to get of having to pay for each IP? IPS like comcast will love to make you pay per pc like how then want to per tv with there digital cable outlet fees.

    How stuff used on the Local network only that you works with ipv4?

  21. Chicken and egg by Midnight+Thunder · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Part of the problem at the moment is that because network companies are failing to provide IPv6 ready equipment, it is only the dedicated few that are moving to IPv6. Linksys, D-Link I am talking about guys like you. The there are the ISPs like Bell and Telus here in Canada who have to plans, or even anything beta.

    Now look in Africa, Asia and Europe and you will see some serious movement in that direction.

    Don't get me wrong, I have my computer enabled with Tiredo, providing me IPv6 access, but companies are going to want the easy route to IPv6 and until they are provided the support, or like my experience two days to immenent failure they aren't likey to do sod.

    I have a Linksys WRT54G v8 and there isn't even the possibility of installing a version of DD-WRT that supports IPv6 :(

    --
    Jumpstart the tartan drive.
    1. Re:Chicken and egg by Midnight+Thunder · · Score: 1

      Linksys, D-Link I am talking about guys like you.

      I meant that they are amongst the guys dragging their feet. Linksys has made it clear that they have no IPv6 plans, and my best bet is to go with corporate solutions from Cisco -- idiots.

      --
      Jumpstart the tartan drive.
    2. Re:Chicken and egg by mellon · · Score: 1

      OpenWRT. DD-WRT. Tomato.

      You bought a lame linksys - sorry, dude, but you have only yourself to blame. (I am sympathetic - I have one of those too, but I use it in bridge mode for precisely the reason you've stated).

    3. Re:Chicken and egg by arkhan_jg · · Score: 1

      Linksys is the cheapo arm of cisco, and cisco charge for IPv6 addons to IOS on their expensive routers. Draw your own conclusions as to why linksys default firmware is so limited, while DD-WRT and friends romp away and add things like voip, vpn endpoints and IPv6 for free.

      --
      Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
    4. Re:Chicken and egg by elFarto+the+2nd · · Score: 1

      My shiney new Linksys WRT610N automatically sets up a 6to4 tunnel and does auto configuration of my network. This is with the original firmware.

    5. Re:Chicken and egg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm afraid that this is more of a matter of hardware companies like Linksys skimping big-time on hardware. While this may be more of a complaint of IPv6 that it is too complicated--it is pretty hard to cram it all into a 2MB system.

    6. Re:Chicken and egg by Midnight+Thunder · · Score: 1

      Can you specify the IPv6 subnet anywhere and does it do radv? Can I use it to tunnel to a service such as sixxs.net?

      I am willing to accept that there is a huge abyss between engineering and anyone who is likely to answer the e-mails at Linksys. If you can provide me info that Linksys can't I would be interested, so this can be documented.

      --
      Jumpstart the tartan drive.
    7. Re:Chicken and egg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I switched to LinkSys from D-Link because of IPv6. I'm glad I got a device supported by OpenWRT (LinkSys WRT54GL), but I am disappointed that they now dropped the Linux support.

  22. The switch from DC to AC by amiga500 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I suspect the switch to IPv6 will take about as long as the switch from DC to AC electricity. IPv4 is so ingrained in hardware and software that it will take decades after the last IPv4 only hardware has been produced for the switch to occur. Additionally, the cost of IPv4 addresses is going to need to rise above the couple of dollars a year it currently is at. http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/14/off-goes-the-power-current-started-by-thomas-edison/

    1. Re:The switch from DC to AC by jcurran · · Score: 1

      Quite possibly longer... IPv4 is going to be around for a long, long time; certainly in use in private and/or disconnected networks.

      The important aspect of the transition to IPv6 is getting the public Internet resources using IPv6 in parallel with IPv4, as this allows continued growth of the Internet while reducing the amount of traffic that needs to accessed via NAT.

      To the extent that one is operating a public server, it's time to be exploring adding IPv6 connectivity to it over the next two years. This is not difficult, but has some non-trivial security and management aspects which means providers of public-facing Internet servers need to start on this work asap.

    2. Re:The switch from DC to AC by MichaelSmith · · Score: 1

      I have a public facing internet server. It runs netbsd which has supported IPv6 since the last millennium. If my ISP offers me an IPv6 feed, can I run v4 and v6 services in parallel? I would need to do that to transition to IPv6.

    3. Re:The switch from DC to AC by mellon · · Score: 1

      Yes, you can. The hardest part will be getting the DNS part working, because your registrar may not support IPv6, and thus you may have trouble getting IPv6 glue into your NS queries (if someone asks who the DNS server is for fugue.com, the root server had better reply with an AAAA record for my name server, or else you won't be able to send a query to it if you don't have IPv4).

    4. Re:The switch from DC to AC by Cyberax · · Score: 1

      Just use IPv4 glue for DNS servers for now.

      We're going to run mixed stacks for the foreseeable future, anyway.

  23. RE: hard facts to back that we are running out by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Updated daily: http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4/index.html

  24. No Business Case? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Some day in the future when thousands of people call their ISP wondering why they cant get to their My Space and Face Book pages there will be a Business Case for IPv6.

  25. DirectTV does not need IP access for remote bookin by Joe+The+Dragon · · Score: 1

    DirectTV does not need IP access for remote booking that is done over the sat link and VOD works under NAT as well as DIRECTV2PC(TM) and MRV (still in beta test)

  26. and the basic low cost data planes are nat'ed by Joe+The+Dragon · · Score: 3, Informative

    and the basic low cost data planes are nat'ed

    1. Re:and the basic low cost data planes are nat'ed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And it works.

    2. Re:and the basic low cost data planes are nat'ed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Nat'ed and proxied on T-Mobile UK both for mobile phones and mobile broadband. You get an RFC1918 address which you have to hope isn't the subnet you were using for your own LAN (192.168/15 range). They then recode all the images to reduce bandwidth and insert code to allow you to selectively or universally reload the real images.

      It means you see a lot of requests made to 1.2.3/24 which is the address range they've chosen to serve the mangled images from.

      It's obviously there to save them (and probably you too) some money, but it's deceitful of them not to mention it at all in their terms of service.

  27. Re:DirectTV does not need IP access for remote boo by YesIAmAScript · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yes, I know. That's what I said it had to take special measures to work as opposed to saying it doesn't work.

    There are inward-bound services that are precluded by the lack of incoming access. No, none of these are on the PVRs right now, because there is no such incoming access.

    As an example, when you remote book, why don't you get any confirmation? Why does it just make you select "record if possible" (instead of priority record) and then you just go home and hope it recorded? Why can't it contact your box with the request, get a response saying "yes, it will record" or "this won't record, which conflict would you like to cancel?" The reason is because it cannot contact your box as there is no incoming access.

    The current feature set is partially determined by what can be done under the current system. With IPv6, the feature set could be expanded.

    --
    http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
  28. Re:Will a big Business really want to have there 1 by kasperd · · Score: 1

    Will a big Business really want to have all of there 1000's of pc to each have there own public ip address?

    Yes, they will want that. That is of course assuming they understand the disadvantages of each solution.

    Will people still us nat to get of having to pay for each IP?

    I don't think so. First of all I don't think nearly as much effort has been put into implementing NAT for IPv6 as has been for IPv4. Besides, internet providers are supposed to give each customer several segments of 2^64 addresses each. Even if they only give you one segment, that is still more addresses than you have computers.

    IPS like comcast will love to make you pay per pc like how then want to per tv with there digital cable outlet fees.

    Not all providers are like that. There may be providers that want to screw you over and make you pay extra per computer. That's a fuzzy measure anyway, why not per CPU or per monitor? If it happens, you will find, that there will be other companies that will try to get a competitive advantage by giving you all the addresses you need. The reason that will happen is, that it will not cost them anything to give you that. On IPv4 it did have a cost to the provider to give you another address, with IPv6 it will have a cost to the provider to find a way not to give it to you.

    In the end what really costs something is bandwidth and reliability. The competition on bandwidth have driven prices for bandwidth so low, that providers may sacrifice on reliability, try to find other ways to charge you, and even in that case not give you all the bandwidth you payed for. For some providers restricting the number of IP addresses is just another way to make money and make you use less of the bandwidth.

    How stuff used on the Local network only that you works with ipv4?

    I have no idea what you are talking about.

    --

    Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
  29. Re:DirectTV does not need IP access for remote boo by Joe+The+Dragon · · Score: 1

    You get confirmation if it hooked up to your network / the internet. The incoming access is on the sat link as there are people with sat tv and only dial up internet with no cable or dsl at there place.

  30. Self-defeat. by numbski · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I tell this story all the time, and I'll tell it again.

    I *tried* to build up a new fiber network in downtown St. Louis using IPv6. I couldn't get the address space!

    It's insane - I could get 3x/24 blocks (non-sequential) assigned to my ASN, but in order to get an IPv6 allotment, I had to show proof that I *already* had utilized a full /24 of IPv6 addresses (which is NOT 256. It's 256*256*256!) They said to get it from my upstream provider - they said they don't do that, get it from ARIN. I go back to ARIN, ARIN says "They're full of it, get it from your upstream provider."

    Even more insane? IPv6 allotments are FREE! I had to pay per year for an IPv4 allotment, but the free stuff? Pfft...we have it, we'll never run out of it within your lifetime, but you can't have it.

    WTF?

    --

    Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).

    1. Re:Self-defeat. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Both weird AND interesting. However, anecdote is useless without upstream provider's name for others to corroborate/debunk/investigate or otherwise pressure them.

    2. Re:Self-defeat. by mellon · · Score: 4, Informative

      Instead of getting upset, get smart. ARIN is correct - you're supposed to get your allotment from your upstream provider, unless you're peering on the backbone (which it seems you aren't, since you have a provider). Your provider is probably used to the IPv4 way of doing things; the problem with that is that it produces fragmentation, which produces huge routing tables. In order to keep the routing tables small, the IPv6 allocation policy is to allocate hierarchically, so that you would get your addresses out of your provider's space.

      When your provider runs out of space, you either renumber or fragment; renumbering is obviously preferred, and in v6 it's also easy, because you can do a soft transition - deprecate the old addresses, but keep using them for a month; by that time, all existing connections will be using the new addresses, and in the meantime all the connections that used the old addresses have faded away.

      This is sufficiently different than the way things are done in IPv6 that it's not surprising that your provider doesn't understand it yet. So you need to help educate them - this isn't a situation where people are deliberately fingerpointing, but rather an opportunity for some education.

    3. Re:Self-defeat. by dasmoo · · Score: 1

      Sounds like someone hasn't done a real migration of IP addresses and is living in "theory land". The amount of domains that point to hosts I run that have DNS servers that are completely out of my control is insane. Getting those people to understand that if they don't fix it within a month their shit will break isn't possible, especially when you have to ring each one and tell them since they don't really read emails - but they sure do bitch when they can't get them. In the end you've turned off the old IPs because you're now GREing those things, paying money you don't need to pay to keep them up. Suddenly a somewhat technical person rings you, angry about not getting email. He says this is the first he's ever heard of it. You tell him the details again, he gets this sorted out about 2 weeks later because he can't find the passwords for some shitty DNS service he signed up with 4 years ago. I don't have time for this.

      Changing IP addresses sucks when you're dealing with servers. For clients, there's no real issues, but for servers it's about one of the most painful things you can do. Buying more ram for your router isn't that big an issue in comparison, and helps the economy.

    4. Re:Self-defeat. by FireFury03 · · Score: 1

      I had to show proof that I *already* had utilized a full /24 of IPv6 addresses (which is NOT 256. It's 256*256*256!)

      It's not 256*256*256 - it's 2x10^31 addresses. Why on earth would you need that many, let alone 3 blocks of them?!

      A single IPv6 network will usually be assigned a /64, which is many many more actual addresses than you'd need, but it allows stuff like automatic address assignment. You are basically asking for 3 trillion separate /64 networks - I'm not surprised they told you to go to hell.

      I suggest you learn something about IPv6 subnetting and the (publicly available) IPv6 network assignment policies before you start slinging mud every which way.

    5. Re:Self-defeat. by multi+io · · Score: 1

      I tell this story all the time, and I'll tell it again.

      I *tried* to build up a new fiber network in downtown St. Louis using IPv6. I couldn't get the address space!

      It's insane - I could get 3x/24 blocks (non-sequential) assigned to my ASN, but in order to get an IPv6 allotment, I had to show proof that I *already* had utilized a full /24 of IPv6 addresses (which is NOT 256. It's 256*256*256!)

      I don't know very much about IPv6 address assignments, but I'd have said it's 256*256*256*256*256*256*256*256*256*256*256*256*256, of which there are only 16.7 million in the whole IPv6 address space. I'm not really surprised they didn't want to give you such a thing, but maybe I misunderstand something here.

    6. Re:Self-defeat. by numbski · · Score: 2

      I said it wrong is all. :\ I meant a /32. Oi. You guys don't skip a beat, do ya?

      --

      Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).

    7. Re:Self-defeat. by numbski · · Score: 2

      Also - wasn't thinking clearly. We had two upstream providers, and WERE peering. That's why this was so infuriating. :(

      --

      Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).

    8. Re:Self-defeat. by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 1

      Even more insane? IPv6 allotments are FREE! I had to pay per year for an IPv4 allotment, but the free stuff? Pfft...we have it, we'll never run out of it within your lifetime, but you can't have it.

      Hmmmm...we can charge for IPv4, but IPv6 we have to give away. Which one will we be more interested in having people get, I wonder...

    9. Re:Self-defeat. by hasdikarlsam · · Score: 1

      helps the economy

      Broken window fallacy.

  31. Pure Bull by ColdBoot · · Score: 1

    BS - if there wasn't a business case for migrating to IPv6, then they wouldn't do it. The case is obvious, demand by their customers. If they don't provide it, their customers will go elsewhere.

  32. 18+% of IPv4 addresses unused by VGPowerlord · · Score: 0, Troll

    To quote myself from a post I made on another site:

    According to IANA, of the 256 /8 IPv4 blocks, there are 31 Unallocated blocks and 16 Reserved for Future Use. Those 47 blocks means that approximately 18.36% of the IPv4 space is currently sitting empty. That's not even counting the the 16 /8 blocks reserved for Multicast, the 127/8 block reserved for a single IP (127.0.0.1), or counting any unallocated blocks in the CIDR networks.

    Anyone who says we're running out of IPv4 addresses needs to go back and look at what is actually allocated and what isn't. Since nearly 20% of the IPv4 space is currently empty, I can't see how they can make the claim that we're running out of addresses with a straight face.

    --
    GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
    1. Re:18+% of IPv4 addresses unused by jcurran · · Score: 1

      Anyone who says we're running out of IPv4 addresses needs to go back and look at what is actually allocated and what isn't.

      Done. Note that we've been averaging between 10 and 15 /8 blocks assigned per year in total space, which using very simply math against a total of 31 means we have a short number of years. If you'd like to see the actual assignment numbers and some more advanced models, go here: http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4/index.html.

      With respect to use of the 16 Reserved-for-Future-Use blocks, please review http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-fuller-240space-02; it is not certain if this space will be made available for public use or for private reserved use.

    2. Re:18+% of IPv4 addresses unused by FireFury03 · · Score: 1

      16 Reserved for Future Use. Those 47 blocks means that approximately 18.36% of the IPv4 space is currently sitting empty. That's not even counting the the 16 /8 blocks reserved for Multicast, the 127/8 block reserved for a single IP (127.0.0.1).

      Except that the reserved, multicast and loopback networks can't be used since many (most?) IPv4 stacks just plain won't support doing global scoped unicast on those addresses. If you're going to demand that the whole world upgrades their IPv4 stacks to support the reallocation of addresses that were never intended to be public unicast addresses, you may as well demand they upgrade to IPv6 instead.

      Since nearly 20% of the IPv4 space is currently empty, I can't see how they can make the claim that we're running out of addresses with a straight face.

      People can make the claim with a straight face because they have a clue what they are talking about - something which you clearly don't.

    3. Re:18+% of IPv4 addresses unused by VGPowerlord · · Score: 1

      16 Reserved for Future Use. Those 47 blocks means that approximately 18.36% of the IPv4 space is currently sitting empty. That's not even counting the the 16 /8 blocks reserved for Multicast, the 127/8 block reserved for a single IP (127.0.0.1).

      Except that the reserved, multicast and loopback networks can't be used since many (most?) IPv4 stacks just plain won't support doing global scoped unicast on those addresses. If you're going to demand that the whole world upgrades their IPv4 stacks to support the reallocation of addresses that were never intended to be public unicast addresses, you may as well demand they upgrade to IPv6 instead.

      The problem with reserving things for future use is that, eventually, they'll be assigned to something. That's what "Reserved for Future Use" means. I'll admit, I haven't checked the source code for any modern TCP/IP stacks, but I wouldn't be surprised if they support global unicast on any of the Reserved blocks past the Multicast range.

      Since nearly 20% of the IPv4 space is currently empty, I can't see how they can make the claim that we're running out of addresses with a straight face.

      People can make the claim with a straight face because they have a clue what they are talking about - something which you clearly don't.

      You are aware that, while I counted the Reserved blocks, I didn't count the loopback or multicast blocks. Even without the Reserved blocks, that's still 31 /8 blocks (or 12.1%) of the IPv4 address space free, still not including anything in the CIDR notation blocks.

      --
      GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
    4. Re:18+% of IPv4 addresses unused by FireFury03 · · Score: 1

      I'll admit, I haven't checked the source code for any modern TCP/IP stacks, but I wouldn't be surprised if they support global unicast on any of the Reserved blocks past the Multicast range.

      I suggest you check then, because you're dead wrong.

      And that's ignoring all the misconfigured systems out there - not just end systems, but also routers and firewalls. After ECN was introduced it took many years before it was really feasible to use it over the internet because of the number of buggy routers that dropped any packet with the ECN flag set. And if you've ever had to pass traffic over a path with a lower MTU than either endpoint then you'll know just how many systems drop ICMP type 3.4 packets, leading to random TCP connection hangs on any system that employs PMTU discovery. Even after a bug has been identified and updated firmware published, it takes a long time for every affected router on the internet to be upgraded. If the problem affects home-user routers, the chances are the firmware will never get upgraded.

      These are corner-cases that people just never test and frequently the network admins responsible for setting up routers and firewalls just plain don't understand these nuances of how the protocols work (the number of times I've seen a network admin drop all ICMP traffic "for security", without any kind of realisation that this will cause stuff to break badly in certain very specific ways... and trying to convince a network admin that their network is broken can be quite hard when they only ever test anything using Windows, which isn't going to provide anywhere near full testing coverage, can be quite hard).

      In any case, if you were only interested in talking to people with a modern network stack, you'd be quite happy requiring IPv6 - but you can set up services on IPv4 addresses that a good proportion of the users can't talk to if you want...

      Even without the Reserved blocks, that's still 31 /8 blocks

      In 2006, IANA allocated 10 /8 blocks to the RIRs, 13 /8 blocks in 2007, 9 /8 blocks in 2008. Assuming that demand stays more or less the same, those 31 blocks are going to last about 3 years.

      IANA are currently expected to run out of addresses in April - July 2011, with the RIRs expected to run out about 12-18 months later.

      still not including anything in the CIDR notation blocks.

      I'm not sure what you mean by this - /8 *is* CIDR notation. If you mean the reserved blocks with prefixes longer than 8 bits, as explained above, their use isn't really feasible unless you want to exclude a lot of systems from talking to you. If you're going to tell people that they need to upgrade their IPv4 stacks, and potentially upgrade their routers too, you may as well just use IPv6.

  33. Fix that for you by hackingbear · · Score: 1

    SUPPLY and DEMAND:

    • Fixed IPv4 addresses auctioned with minimum bid of $1000/month each.
    • Fixed IPv6 addresses handed out at a cost of an atom.

    Do you see your incentive?

  34. Adding IPv6 to server [Re:The switch from DC to AC by jcurran · · Score: 1

    Yes, you can have the very same server answer IPv6 queries as well as IPv4, you just need to add IPv6 interface to the server and make sure the particular server software knows how to bind to IPv6 address.

    The particular ISOC survey document which started this thread has a fairly long list of resources at the end of it which might be helpful, but here's a few to get you started: http://www.6diss.org/, http://www.getipv6.info/ and http://www.ipv6tf.org/

  35. Bullshit (The Singularity is near) by RaymondKurzweil · · Score: 0

    The inevitability of The Singularity will bring about near instantaneous adoption of IPv6 as each sentient nanomachine will be uniquely addressable.

  36. A solution by Eravnrekaree · · Score: 1

    I have long felt that the way things have been planned, IPV6 implementation would never happen, at least not until a catastrophic shortage of IP addresses. Its just the same situation with fossil fuels, no one wants to do anything about it even though someone who does not have their head stuck in the sand can see that in 40 years we will be completely out of oil, but that is another subject. There is a chicken and egg problem with IPV6 addresses, very few clients use IPV6 so no business really needs to support it, but since no websites use IPV6, there is no incentive for users to use it. Instead of making the arrogant assumption that IPV6 conversion would happen universally and spotaneously, we should instead plan on a migration period when IPV4 and IPV6 networks must be able to communicate with each other. This can be done and I have worked out a way to do it.

    An ISPs DNS and Routers will work in concert, utilising NAT. When an IPV4 network sends a DNS request to the ISP DNS server, the DNS server may sees it is for an IPV6 address. It contacts the router and reserves a private IPv4 address. The private ipv4 address is returned to the client by the DNS server as the IP address associated wirth the DNS query, the client then sends all packets to the router with that destination ipv4 address, the router translates it using a translation table to the real IPv6 address and sends it to the real ipv6 address. This way IPv4 hosts can contact IPv6 hosts. A tld should be reserved called .ipv6. This allows ipv4 clients to access ipv6 hosts by sending a DNS request to for a DNS address in the form .ipv6, which completes the above process using a private address locally for the ipv4 client. The private address space can be reused for each client, the router using the MAC address to differentiate between packets from different clients.

    1. Re:A solution by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You've just reinvented one of several transition mechanisms that are available for IPv4 / IPv6 interoperability. Look into the Trick-or-Treat Daemon [totd], summarized here http://www.networkdictionary.com/Networking/Trick-Treat-DNS-ALG.php

    2. Re:A solution by Lennie · · Score: 1

      We will never run out of oil, it will just be to hard to extract it from the soil to be profitable.

      --
      New things are always on the horizon
  37. Minor nit - ARP cache timeout by karl.auerbach · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is a minor nit - ARP cache timeouts are normally on the order of 300 seconds, not two minutes.

    A less minor nit is this: IPv6 does not help decrease the size of routing tables as seen by major providers. Nor does IPv6 reduce the burden of sending routing updates so that routing updates are propagated faster than the underlying rate of change of usable net paths. (Enterprise subnets, whether IPv4 or IPv6, don't generally propagate into the routing announcements as seen by the big carriers.)

    The compelling argument, for me at least, is that IPv6 is really a new internet that runs along side of the existing IPv4 net - there is no direct interoperability. This means that pretty much any new expansion of the net is going to require IPv4 connectivity, and IPv4 addresses, to reach the legacy net. And that makes IPv6 redundant from the user's point of view. That sort of drains the oil out of the IPv6 crankcase.

    Of course the biggest argument of all is that IPv6 does not solve the hard issues of propagating routing information and finding usable paths across the net, particularly as the demands of human-conversational traffic and the political acts of nations are (unfortunately) driving routing to become increasingly aware of the types of traffic being routed.

    I'm waiting to be shown that I'm wrong - I helped do the very first calculation of IPv4 address consumption back in the mid 1980's. And I was in the group at Sun back in the very early 1990's where IPv6 took form. I spent time at Cisco wrestling with questions like how to efficiently mechanize 128-bit longest-prefix matching on 32 and 64 bit hardware. And my company currently has IPv6 testing products. So I've been watching IPv6 for what will soon be two decades.

    To me one of the tilt-points of IPv6 will be when I can go into Frys Electronics and find IPv6 capable print servers and other widgets of that ilk on the shelves.

    I saw ISO/OSI come and go (I was rather a fan of TUBA - which included the use of ISO/OSI CLNP for the new IP layer - when the various IPv4 alternatives were being considered in the early 1990's.) It would not surprise me to see IPv6 go the way of ISO/OSI.

    1. Re:Minor nit - ARP cache timeout by Aloisius · · Score: 1

      What, they don't sell HP printers at Fry's? New HP Jetdirect print servers are IPv6 capable.

    2. Re:Minor nit - ARP cache timeout by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      To me one of the tilt-points of IPv6 will be when I can go into Frys Electronics and find IPv6 capable print servers and other widgets of that ilk on the shelves.

      We're starting to see this already. The Apple Airport Express/Base Station products are IPv6 capable and do 6to4 tunnelling when used as gateway devices, out of the box.
      The HP CPxxxx series network printers are also IPv6 capable.
      Now we just need the other tilt-point of broadband providers handing out IPv6 allotments, and we'd be set.

    3. Re:Minor nit - ARP cache timeout by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The compelling argument, for me at least, is that IPv6 is really a new internet that runs along side of the existing IPv4 net - there is no direct interoperability. This means that pretty much any new expansion of the net is going to require IPv4 connectivity, and IPv4 addresses, to reach the legacy net. And that makes IPv6 redundant from the user's point of view. That sort of drains the oil out of the IPv6 crankcase.

      Not at all. It just means users will realize they'll have different networking systems for different things.

      For example, if they have a NAT'd IPv4 address, and a public static IPv6 address, they might not know anything except "I need the '6' crap to do easy videoconferencing".

      This isn't new. We've added and simplified services at all levels, for as long as there's been an internet. Sometimes we make it faster ("I need the '56k' box to do ..."), sometimes we add features ("I need a 'static IP' to do..."), sometimes we distinguish between parts that users don't even think about ("I need 1.5M 'up' to run my VoIP...").

      It would be nice if it was simply a feature that all our ISPs checked off one day and magically everything worked with that. Unfortunately it'll be a bit harder, but considering all the hardware and software support that's already in place, I think it'll be a lot easier than what we've done so far, which is gotten my technophobe parents from "what's this internet thing" to "broadband".

    4. Re:Minor nit - ARP cache timeout by tepples · · Score: 1

      they might not know anything except "I need the '6' crap to do easy videoconferencing".

      What about "You don't need the 'videoconferencing' crap; you're a residential user"?

    5. Re:Minor nit - ARP cache timeout by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      O HAI Karl. The answer is ephemeral network layer addresses and longer-lived application-rendezvous names.

      "_smtp._tcp.mail.cavebear.com." as a name is likely going to be stable for a long time, but the assumption that the A RR (and the corresponding PTR RR) or the SRV RR will last more than a few minutes is legacy wrongthink.

      Mike O'Dell once half-jokingly suggested a global DHCP system with aggressive timeouts so that the whole Internet renumbered "weekly". This was before it became commonplace for people to carry their service-offering laptoys from one wireless LAN conference network) to another (hotel room, restaurant, ...) several times a day.

      The other assumption that should vanish is that of isotropy. Your idea of what your network layer address is may be purely local; your counterparties may each think your NLA is something entirely different.

      Do this and v4 will scale to trillions of simultaneous conversations and expose the DNS as the One True Scalability and Reliability Problem of the next several years of intardnet history. It will also force a rethink on IPvsux mobility, which is sorely needed, and may open the door to changes in IPvsux that make it actually attractive, or at least it may make a transition from a combination of v4 and vsux to a mix of those and some new shiny thing easier to manage in a no-flag-day, non-uniform manner.

  38. When it ain't rainin', the roof don't leak by symbolset · · Score: 0

    When it is rainin', you can't fix it nohow.

    --
    Help stamp out iliturcy.
  39. Re:To be honest. by stonedcat · · Score: 0

    You know what fuck it, evidently someone has it out for me.
    As soon as my karma gets to the point where I can post as I please, some fucking douchebag goes and started moderating everything I post down regardless of content.

    Fuck you. Fuck your mother, I'm tired of this shit. I hope you get cancer in your fucking ball sack and it rots your cock off. Die you ignorant shit.

    --
    You can't take the sky from me.
  40. The new internet address is the URL/URI by karl.auerbach · · Score: 1

    From the point of view of most users the internet address is a URL/URI, not an IPv4 or IPv6 sequence of bits.

    The fact that some protocols work poorly over NATs is based on architectural aspects that we've known are wrong for years - most particularly the carriage of lower layer addresses within higher layer protocols. SIP, particularly its use of SDP, is an example of this and which is why SIP tends to have trouble with NATs and needs assistance from things like STUN. This may the reason why Skype use so greatly dominates SIP.

    HTTP/HTTPS is becoming the new transport. And HTTP/HTTPs anticipates the kind of proxying and relaying that comes as the net evolves into a lumpy world of NATs, firewalls, and application level gateways.

    1. Re:The new internet address is the URL/URI by ion.simon.c · · Score: 1

      HTTP/HTTPS is becoming the new transport.

      I imagine that a Team Fortress 2 server will perform poorly when shoved through HTTP.

    2. Re:The new internet address is the URL/URI by Lennie · · Score: 1

      I think the parent, should have said tf2server.somedomain.tld, that would have been more clear.

      It's called DNS, DNS already supports IPv6 and IPv4 next to each other for a very long time.

      --
      New things are always on the horizon
    3. Re:The new internet address is the URL/URI by ion.simon.c · · Score: 1

      I thought that karl.auerbach was saying "HTTP knows how to easily traverse NAT. Because of this, new applications are using it for all their data transportation needs."

      In response to this, I said "TF2 over HTTP would not be very performant, IMO."

      How did you interpret his statement?

    4. Re:The new internet address is the URL/URI by badkarmadayaccount · · Score: 1

      HTTP is a protocol. How can it have bad performance? Overhead? Seriously, I'd like to know.

      --
      I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
  41. Think of the opportunities here! by symbolset · · Score: 1

    When your refrigerator and your toilet can both talk to your doctor, you may find your refrigerator adjusting its resupply order with the supermarket and hence your diet, based on the intestinal parasites of your weekend guests.

    --
    Help stamp out iliturcy.
    1. Re:Think of the opportunities here! by palegray.net · · Score: 1

      Man, that's a great idea. Once you get all your household appliances talking to each other, life will be so much easier. Except for the toilet, which will probably always be in a shitty mood.

    2. Re:Think of the opportunities here! by John+Hasler · · Score: 1

      And the script kiddies will once again have entertainment.

      --
      Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
    3. Re:Think of the opportunities here! by symbolset · · Score: 1

      When your lights can talk to your therapist, she may have more questions about your birthing experience.

      --
      Help stamp out iliturcy.
    4. Re:Think of the opportunities here! by symbolset · · Score: 1

      And the script kiddies will once again have entertainment.

      They get their amusement from 4chan. There's nothing you could do to avoid their entertainment.

      Sadly, the ever increasing number of exploits for Windows clients are a ripe field for the entertainment of script kiddies. They have the metasploit project to feed them exploits in a format that delivers the ability to generate viruses that defeat your infrastructure defenses in real time, and your patching process is still dependent on vendor patches that take a year or more to be published and even longer to be installed. Linux and OS/X clients have less exposure. Maybe that's because they're designed better. Maybe it's because they're not the biggest target. Ask yourself: does it matter why? Alternate platforms are not the preferred target. If you're in information security, this is a no brainer. Don't be the preferred target.

      --
      Help stamp out iliturcy.
  42. I still think they could have extended ipv4 by Marrow · · Score: 1

    I think they could have extended the address space in the existing IPv4 protocol to accommodate a hierarchical address space.

    Instead of having a flat address space, you could have a "Network of Internets". With each country having its own 32bit address space.

    The "zip code" to these 32bit address spaces comes inside a dns packet or syn packet. Isn't the IPv4 header size flexible as well?

    The "zip code" would tell your machine which route to use to send the packets back. So the extra address space is actually supported by the routing table. Think 20 routes instead of one default route.

    Once the packet is inside the "zip code" it functions just like a normal ipv4 packet.

    Simple hacks to dns and the ipv4 code could make it all work. No hardware changes. No ridiculously large flat address space. No tunneling.

    I am just afraid that it will never switch over to native, and we will be left in a tunneled limbo land forever. With the header overhead of both protocols in every packet. The ISPs will be forced into the role of tunnel brokers. And because there were so many problems with the first transition, no one will have the stomach for the second transition to native IPv6.

    1. Re:I still think they could have extended ipv4 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is an interesting idea that probably could work, but it would involve so much coordination and effort that it wouldn't be worth it. And it would require updating the TCP/IP stack on every endpoint system.

      Basically, you are suggesting that when you want to send a packet to Europe from the US, DNS would direct it to a predefined border gateway with the "real" address in an IP extension header. The gateway would extract the real address and pass it along.... then you'd hope that the host in Europe knows how to play the same game. This is the sort of trick that the telephone companies have been playing for decades, for routing international calls. But the border gateways would present bottlenecks and security (spoofing) problems, and there would still be a need to update all the hosts with compliant routing software.

  43. Are You Kidding Me? by anthonymel · · Score: 1

    No business case? I'm just staring to read deep into IP6 I don't see much negative in there. And correct me if I'm wrong here but with an address space that big every damn thing on this planet many times over can have a global IP address. Google would have a field day with that type of stuff. There is like a billion addresses available for each person on planet earth and if they wanted to my jeans could have an IP address assigned to me. Basically it comes down to don't fix it till it's broken. I expect sheer panic in all news media in about two years or so.

    1. Re:Are You Kidding Me? by shentino · · Score: 1

      There just isn't a business case to move away from lucrative IPv4 hoarding and NAT.

      Those companies that have hoarded their class A's from back in the days of "plenty" are now sitting on a gold mine.

      What possible incentive could there be to top that?

    2. Re:Are You Kidding Me? by ponraul · · Score: 1

      The business case shall likely be supplied by India and China.

      It's fairly common to have three different levels of NAT in "developing" countries like India. Sooner or later the leadership in these "developing" countries shall come to the conclusion that the kind of network fragmentation that comes as a result of NAT is direct impediment to continued economic growth.

  44. That's pretty much what government is for by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If there is no business case for something that's nonetheless necessary, you must get the government to do it. It works well for police, health care, education, national defence, keeping our feet dry, and so on, we might as well let the government have a go at it. Just pass a law that says that every provider and server in the country has to be IPv6 enabled, wait a few months and slowly start shutting everyone down who ignores you. Costs almost nothing to implement (at least on the scale governments think in), practically can't fail, if it does fail we're back where we started, i.e. here, same as without doing anything so we've lost nothing, and if the private sector does get there before the government, we're exactly where we wanted to be also. There's no way this can go wrong, except through inaction. So call your representatives; let's get this ball rolling.

  45. Our customers keep asking for IPv6... by The+Lord+of+Chaos · · Score: 1

    but we keep having to telling them there's no demand for it. I mean can't they understand that there's no business case for it if none of customers want it. Oh wait...

  46. Re:IPv6 will eventually be a cost reduction measur by maz2331 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm going to sacrifice 5 of my mod points to comment here, just because I have to in order to refute your preposterous point.

    "Climate change" and "fossil fuel supply" sure sound like big FUD points. We have little of the former, and much of the latter at this time. Thus, at this time, any radical and painful "cure" is not indicated any more than it would be for giving an ultra-aggressive course of chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and surgury to a person who has a potentially pre-cancerous cell.

    Could it be real? Yep.
    Could it be wrong? Yep.

    I guess some people are SO uncertainty-adverse that they would rather guarantee an absolute collapse of the entire world's economy. Absolute collapse is easy and "certain" (properly engineered) and very comforting to the asshats that actually want such a thing to happen.

    We can't just up-end an installed base that would cost tens (or hundreds maybe) of trillions of dollars to replace.

    Truly clean energy in abundance and cheap enough that even the poorest person can have 10 kW/h sustained in perpetuity? Yes - I'm for that.

    Energy so expensive that only the richest among us can have any? Fuck that, fuck it in the ear, and fuck anyone advocating such an approach in the ass with a canon firing a shell at full velocity.

    And if a new tax or "cap and trade" law makes my heating bill double, I'll be beyond angry.

  47. Accelerate IPv6 the way Congress does it by theendlessnow · · Score: 1

    Make IPv6 a rider on top of something everyone wants!

    So let's make IPv6 a requirement to enable all of those Blu-ray features.

    Err... wait a minute...

  48. Self-contradictory comments? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "customer demand for IPv6 is on the rise and that they are planning or deploying IPv6 because they feel it is the next major development in the evolution of the Internet."

    Sounds like a business case to me!

  49. Damn business cases by AxeTheMax · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The recession occurred because there was no business case for financiers and banks using common sense.

  50. IPv6 Meme - State Change by broward · · Score: 1

    As I noted five weeks ago, the IPv6 meme shows significant change almost one year ago. There's substantially greater chatter about IPv6 and the rate of change is up.

    http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme/?entry=ipv6_revisited

  51. How to create demand for IPv6 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Customers will not demand IPv6 until they are really hurt by poor performance in their existing installations. This means ISPs have to create demand for IPv6 to get the transition done. The best way to do this is to only allow IPv6 on new, faster services. As customers switch to faster plans, they will happily accept to upgrade their equipment. There will be a long transition period, with just a few early adopters in the beginning and then an avalanche as the majority discovers the benefits.

    However, without incentives like this, I think that we will be stuck in IPv4 land for a very long time.

  52. Joe Sysop doesn't give a flying fuck about IPv6 by Colin+Smith · · Score: 3, Insightful

    He and the entire 100,000 person corporation he works for are sitting behind half a dozen routable IPv4 addresses on their own private 10net. He is already overworked supporting the infrastructure which is in place already and when an IPv6 rollout is suggested the first thought which comes to mind is "Just how retarded are you?".

    IPv6 is neither exotic nor frightening. Admins and programmers have been dealing with differing networking protocols for decades, including IPX, IP, OSI etc. IPv6 is nothing new. It's simply a fuck of a lot of work for little or no gain.

    The question is. What is the "killer application"? If you want IPv6 adoption to proceed at faster than a crawl, you're going to have to come up with something as compelling as the WWW but which simply cannot be realistically achieved over IPv4. Maybe some sort of peer to peer mobile phone application might do it, otherwise, go away and come back when you have something worth talking about.

    --
    Deleted
    1. Re:Joe Sysop doesn't give a flying fuck about IPv6 by tepples · · Score: 1

      Admins and programmers have been dealing with differing networking protocols for decades, including IPX, IP, OSI etc.

      But since the 1990s, businesses have had to deal with only one globally routable network protocol, as commercial ISPs never built any sort of IPX or OSI backbone. For the last decade, IPX has been "the protocol that NetWare 5 switched away from", and OSI has referred not to the defunct protocol suite but a way to model the division of labor between stacked protocols (layer 1 is 100BASE-TX, layer 2 is Ethernet, layer 3 is IP, layers 4 and 5 together represent TCP and TLS, layer 6 is the Internet Message Format of RFC 5322, etc.). And as of 2009, the providers of the last mile to homes and small businesses typically don't route IPv6. Specifically, cable companies won't support IPv6 until they roll out DOCSIS 3.0.

    2. Re:Joe Sysop doesn't give a flying fuck about IPv6 by windsurfer619 · · Score: 1

      [quote]Maybe some sort of peer to peer mobile phone application might do it[/quote]
      Like, say, peer-to-peer VoIP calling?

  53. Autoconf? by tepples · · Score: 1

    "I can't even get through the setup of a DHCP server running IPv6."

    That is because IPv6 networks don't generaly use DHCP. They use autoconf or similar tools.

    You've found one potential confusion already. Wikipedia describes Autoconf as "a tool for producing shell scripts that automatically configure C/C++ software source code packages to adapt to many kinds of UNIX-like systems."

    Now, at the real life, lots of ISPs are reluctant to make IPv6 available, and some of them will just give you one address. If you get a good one, tough, you'll have nothing to fear.

    By "tough" I'll assume you meant "though" and not "tough shit". So how does one find a "good one" between only two last-mile providers in any given city?

    1. Re:Autoconf? by multi+io · · Score: 1

      "I can't even get through the setup of a DHCP server running IPv6."

      That is because IPv6 networks don't generaly use DHCP. They use autoconf or similar tools.

      You've found one potential confusion already. Wikipedia describes Autoconf as "a tool for producing shell scripts that automatically configure C/C++ software source code packages to adapt to many kinds of UNIX-like systems."

      He meant stateless autoconfiguration, which has absolutely nothing to do with autoconf (you probably knew that).

  54. NAT comes with a firewall by tepples · · Score: 1

    NAT doesn't give you anything over a well-configured firewall.

    Other than perhaps that newbs can easily deploy a $50 appliance that gives them NAT, a firewall that comes configured with no DMZ address and no forwarded ports out of the box, and an Internet gateway all in one.

    1. Re:NAT comes with a firewall by growse · · Score: 2, Informative

      And if everyone could have as many IPV4 addresses as they wanted, you could still probably buy a $50 appliance that had a firewall configured to deny everything incoming except established traffic out of the box.
      NAT exists entirely because of the need to provide point to point routing with a shortage of IP addresses. Remove the shortage and you remove the point of NAT.

      --
      There is nothing interesting going on at my blog
    2. Re:NAT comes with a firewall by spitzak · · Score: 1

      I think the point is that when a user gets the box that does NAT, they get a firewall for free. If NAT did not force them to buy the box they would probably not be running a firewall, or running one on the same machine they are running their software and thus much more vulnerable.

    3. Re:NAT comes with a firewall by growse · · Score: 2, Insightful

      And I'm saying the point is irrelevant. You could categorise broadband consumers as (a) those who need more than one computer to access the internet and (b) those who don't. (a)-type users need a router anyway, and (b) type users don't - they can just plug their modem into their PC.

      Users in the first category only need NAT because their ISP gives them one IP address. If they got a ipv6 /64, they would still need a router, and would be able to buy one with a firewall on it. Users in the second category don't need NAT, or a router.

      --
      There is nothing interesting going on at my blog
  55. Proxies cost money to run by tepples · · Score: 1

    the other problems (inbound connectivity to end-user machines) can be solved by polling or proxies.

    Proxies are not a solution; they are a workaround. They double backbone traffic, as packets must travel from one machine to the proxy and from the proxy to the other machine, instead of from one machine to the other. And they still cost money to run and need some sort of revenue model to cover costs. Polling is even worse, as it adds both traffic and latency.

    1. Re:Proxies cost money to run by HuguesT · · Score: 1

      Caching proxies routinely save traffic and are usually a good investment, especially now.

  56. We won't run out soon by kilodelta · · Score: 1

    Everywhere I've worked for the past decade never got more than a class C block, and in most cases, a single IP address.

    You just took that and NAT'd all your traffic.

    To go to IPv6 means the following:
    Upgrade all operating systems to support IPv6
    Upgrade all routers, switches, etc.
    Upgrade all end point routers

    You get the idea. It'll be fairly expensive to make the switch.

    1. Re:We won't run out soon by FireFury03 · · Score: 1

      Upgrade all operating systems to support IPv6

      What operating systems are you using that don't support IPv6? They probably need upgrading for many other reasons by now since it probably means you're still using Windows 95.

      Upgrade all routers, switches, etc.

      Business routers have generally supported IPv6 for many years, so the chances are your routers already support it just fine.

      Switches are layer 2 devices and thus don't know or care about what protocol you're running over your network (*)

      (* Ok, so you'll still need to use IPv4 for management, but this isn't a big deal since you'll be running a dual stack network anyway. IGMP snooping isn't going to work for IPv6 multicast traffic on your old switches, but there is probably so little multicast traffic that most people aren't going to notice or care.)

      You get the idea. It'll be fairly expensive to make the switch.

      Not really - switching a network to a dual-stack setup is going to be pretty easy and cheap. On the other hand, you'll be well positioned to take advantage of lots of technologies that can't reliably be used through a NAT - this could well save you money.

  57. Wait, what? by wirefarm · · Score: 1

    I'm really looking forward to going back to having every PC with a globally routable IP address

    You really think having every *Windows* machine out there having a globally-routable IP address would be a Good Thing?

    While of course it's possible to run a clean Windows box if you have half a brain, millions of people don't. The idea of having them all directly on the Internet scares me.

    --
    -- My Weblog.
  58. There's no obvious pr0n benefit by wirefarm · · Score: 1

    Seriously.
    All of the important advances in Internet technology have been driven in some part by better access to pornography:

    "Sir, with the new multi-widgeted-gigaplexing in the new Roto-Router2k, you'll have greater compliance with IETF standards and fewer packet-collision-related neck and back injuries."

    "Ummm... I dunno."

    "Oh, you'll also be able to anonymously download pr0n 1000x faster and get immediate access to young hotties in your neighborhood who are looking to Hook Up Tonight."

    "I'll take it, whatever the cost."
    Later that night...
    "Honey, I upgraded the Interweb thing so you can watch your cat videos and Ice Dancing on YouTube in Holographic HD..."

    --
    -- My Weblog.
    1. Re:There's no obvious pr0n benefit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh, you'll also be able to anonymously download pr0n 1000x faster

      Assuming an identical distribution of p2p peers (or "legitimate servers/streamers") and underlying bandwidth, you will get your IPvsux porn slower than your IPv4 porn because of the greater per-packet overhead thanks to the vast empty deserts of the IPv6 header address fields. Moreover, the assumption of identical distribution of peers is invalid now because of the small number of end systems and p2p applications that talk IPv6 at all so far, and the assumption of identical bandwidth is undone by the prevalence of tunnelling of IPvsux datagrams over IPv4 (6in4, 6to4, teredo, etc.), which shrinks the possible v6 MTU/MSS by about twenty bytes per packet compared to the v4 MTU/MSS.

      IPv6 porn: more energy processing headers, more bandwidth trasmitting headers -- more headers, less head per unit of time.

  59. You have to tell ARIN you're multihoming by billstewart · · Score: 2, Informative

    The official philosophy behind IPv6 addressing was that they wanted to keep everything hierarchical, to avoid the IPv4 problem that makes everybody's routing table have to keep track of (currently) ~300,000 separate routes plus whatever their own users and customers need. So they want to hand out fat blocks to ISPs, and have those ISPs hand out whatever-sized blocks to their users, and if you change ISPs, IPv6 is supposed to be easier to renumber than IPv4.

    In practice, of course, this doesn't help the problem of business users who need to be multihomed for reliability, so their 2nd-Nth ISPs are still going to have to announce their little blocks to the world. There are ugly hacks like shim6 that some people think will help, but it's basically an unsolved problem. So you can generally get larger blocks if you're multihoming, and if you were asking for a /32, that's a typical ISP allocation, so it makes sense that your ISPs said to get it from ARIN.

    If you wanted to get a /48, your ISP should be handing those out like candy, but of course that's still Provider-Assigned address space.

    --

    Bill Stewart
    New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
  60. No Uk providers?Hmm by vikarti · · Score: 1

    Have you looked at http://www.goscomb.net/services/ They are UK They have ADSL,Leased lines,etc (in addition to hosting services) on their ADSL-you will get /128 by default. If you request - you will get /48 on their leased lines-you will get /48 from them They even have IPv6 DNS servers p.s.I personally use their hosting services only(i'm not in UK), and IPv6 was one of reasons I didn't go to alternative provider.

    1. Re:No Uk providers?Hmm by arkhan_jg · · Score: 1

      I hadn't heard of them, but their ADSL services look interesting. Cheers for the heads up.

      --
      Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
  61. Private streams by tepples · · Score: 1

    Caching proxies routinely save traffic

    If a bunch of people are viewing the same resource, this is true. But I don't see how one can cache real-time private streams, such as those seen in voice and video chat.

  62. Department of redundancy department much? by badkarmadayaccount · · Score: 1

    Department of redundancy department much?

    --
    I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.