Comcast To Bring IPv6 To Residential US In 2010

darthcamaro writes "We all know that IPv4 address space is almost gone — but we also know that no major US carrier has yet migrated its consumer base, either. Comcast is now upping the ante a bit and has now said that they are seriously gearing up for IPv6 residential broadband deployment soon. 'Comcast plans to enter into broadband IPv6 technical trials later this year and into 2010,' Barry Tishgart, VP of Internet Services for Comcast said. 'Planning for general deployment is underway.'"

Comments

Re:I still don't like IPv6

[characterZer0]

They can't really forbid something that gets built into the OS like these sorts of features probably will.

Of course they can, and they will.

Re:I still don't like IPv6

[tlhIngan]

What it's supposed to mean is that every computer can have a public address. So if you sign up with one of the dynamic DNS providers (which will probably be integrated with your OS fairly soon) you should be able to share pictures and things from your own computer without having to upload them to somewhere, or be able to log in remotely to look at some file (private) you forgot to bring with you, or any number of other things (fewer firewall errors on p2p networks? true p2p voip, without needing to sign up with a service that lets you punch holes in NAT?). This would also work without the dynamic DNS provider, but the URL would look uglier.

Most likely, this would also lead to relaxing the typical rule ISPs tend to have against running servers on home connections. They can't really forbid something that gets built into the OS like these sorts of features probably will.

No, it'll be an excuse for an ISP to give you a /64, but firewall out all but the number of addresses you get unless you pay for more.

And servers will still be banned - there's not enough bandwidth upstream from most connections to handle everyone serving something (last mile problem).

Everyone thinks IPv6 is the magic savior - it'll enforce net neutrality, it'll prevent your PC from getting infected, it'll solve the public IP issue, it'll solve NAT issues, it'll have QoS for real, blah blah blah.

Sure IPv6 has it all. But I doubt any ISP will do business any differently with IPv6 than otherwise. In fact, they'll just salivate that any caps will be reached a bit quicker because of the increased IPv6 header size. Mobile operators are probably salivating as well - 5 cents per kilobyte (not kiB), which includes the OTA headers, plus increased IPv6 header size, means the real payload per packet goes down, and more data usage results (== more $$$ - the incremental network cost for IPv6 is low to the network to support IPv6, but not you the user have to pay more for the same traffic since the amount of data you need to transfer increased).

I see IPv6 as allowing an ISP to ding people for more. "You set 20% of your packets last month to have QoS high priority, while your plan only allows 10%". While worms will have to do more work to infect hosts, they'll just be a lot smarter about checking hosts. And the home user, even if they got 1:1 IP mappings, will probably stick a nice firewall in front of their modem that blocks incoming packets. Cablemodems (not sure about ADSL) can also be blocked from recognizing more than N MAC addresses per boot, too, so you'll have to alias your NIC to have more IPs (how many home users can do THAT? And it makes routing so much more fun!).

Nothing will change, really, other than not being able to run out of IP addresses. Business as usual.

Hell, NAT has had one benefit - it's made firewalls a lot easier to configure because you don't have to open 20 ports to play a game like you used to just over a decade ago. Torrent clients seem to work fine using one port rather than one port per torrent like they used to. Online gaming seems to work just fine with 2 or 3 ports opened (or none - it was ironically easier to configure my PS3, Xbox360 and Wii to play online than my PC - and I have UPnP disabled!), and many protocols that required incoming connectivity got phased out or adapted (e.g. FTP). And the prevalence of ssh makes life a lot easier for remote access and poor-man's VPN stuff.

Re:OMG! OMG!.IPv6 is coming for ME!

[Just Some Guy]

But guess what, if you understand NAT, you will NEVER have to upgrade past IPv4, because you will NEVER run out of IP Addresses. NAT is just the flexible approach to the problem that alot of people don't like because they don't understand.

Meanwhile, back in reality...

In abstract, NAT treats addr+port as a 48-bit address, so you're effectively trading ports for address. That means you only get one port 80 per public IP, so forget having more than one webserver (unless you can somehow get your visitors to go to http://www.example.com:8080/ ). Every P2P app, every Skype, every game server, every random application you want to post has to have a unique port number across your entire network.

Can you really not see why that sucks in comparison to IPv6 which lets every machine on your LAN listen on the whole 2^16 port range as your firewall allows?

People who don't understand NAT at all like IPv6. People who only barely understand it, like yourself, think IPv4+NAT is spiffy. People who actually understand NAT and what it implies think that it needs to be taken out back and shot.

Re:Proud to be a Comcast customer?

[Tacvek]

Indeed. I am always shocked that people install any software provided by the ISP. They don't need some broken net-nanny software, a half-assed firewall that does not work as well as the Windows firewall it disables, having branding adding to internet explorer and outlook express, yet another worthless IE toolbar, or even worse, some form of stand-alone (screen edge docking) toolbar. The only feature that might be reasonable, is changing the IE homepage, and they can install software to do that.

Then again, I also find it incredibly annoying that home routers come with big warning stickers that you should install the software on the cd, since that software is in no way nessisary thanks to the web interface. Indeed, I honestly have no idea what is even on said CDs, but whatever it is, I don't miss it.