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Why You Shouldn't Worry About IPv6 Just Yet
nk497 writes "While it's definitely time to start thinking about IPv6, it's not time for most to move up to it, argues Steve Cassidy, saying most can turn it off in Windows 7 without causing any trouble. Many network experts argue we're nearing network armageddon, but they've been saying that for years.'This all started when Tony Blair was elected. The first time. Yep, that's how long IPv6 has been around, and it's quite a few weeks ago now.' He says smart engineering has avoided many of the problems. 'Is there an IPv6 "killer app" yet for smaller networks? No. Is there any reason based on security or ease of management — unless you're running a 100,000-seat network or a national-level ISP — for you to move up to it? No. Should you start to do a bit of reading about it? That's about the stage we're truly at, and the answer to that one is: yes,' he says."
Is there any reason based on security or ease of management – unless you're running a 100,000-seat network or a national-level ISP – for you to move up to it? No.
What if you're writing web applications that monitor IP addresses? Shouldn't you be making sure that your regexp fits for IPv6 as well? What if you're storing IP addresses and your sanitizing your data? What if you're doing anything at all with IP addresses? Like monitoring logs for abuse? Shouldn't be preparing for the inevitable move to IPv6? What if you collect metrics so you can report to management your country by userbase? I say this because we've started to account for IPv6 in our coding and auditing.
What if you write any sort of firmware or software for network devices?
And if you're a consumer and you're about to purchase something that's going to last you more than three years you should probably make sure it supports IPv6 in case the computer you buy down the line can only handle IPv6 addresses allocated to it.
Go ahead and tell your readers that it's cool, Microsoft's got it covered. I'm going to err on the side of safety whether the armageddonists are right or wrong about the ETA.
My work here is dung.
Torrenting is the killer app. Very unlikely all the spooks have updated to ipv6 snooping.
There is nothing in IPv6 which precludes the use of proxies and/or NATing. Its just that adoption of IPv6 no longer mandates the use of NAT'ing. Nothing is lost. There is only gain to be had from an IPv6 upgrade.
Many people are already using ipv6 by default without even knowing it!
One important reason to use it is for small devices that you really don't want to have to have a user interface to enable Static IP / Router Info / DHCP configuration on.
Also, if you use use Apple MobileMe's Remote Desktop feature, you are using ipv6 only - MobileMe provides an IPv6 VPN to access all of your devices wherever they may be.
So in fact there are many many users of Ipv6 out there, just not much sending packets over the un-vpn'd internet.
ipv6 is my vpn
Roll it out in the cell phones and the problem is solved! Most of the growth in the adress space is in the mobile space, so if the telecom backbone is made IPv6-compatible and all our fancy iPhones and Android phones resolve IPv6-adresses instead, we won't run out of adresses.
You and many others desperately need to read more about v6 before regurgitating the same old myths.
* Read up on RFC 4941 - Privacy Extensions for Stateless Address Autoconfiguration in IPv6
* Their is NOTHING in IPv6 that negates a hardware firewall. You get a prefix routed to your 'router' it can have whatever allow or deny rules you like.
* If you want to use NAT and non-routable IPs for whatever reason, however misguided, there is nothing in IPv6 preventing you from doing so, see also FC00::/7 link-local addresses
* Whether a network is routed or switched has as little to do with IPv4 as it does with IPv6, these topology decisions have nothing to do with the protocol.
"Many network experts argue we're nearing network armageddon, but they've been saying that for years." Say what?
"Network armageddon" is already here and we've been living in it for years. The horrors of NAT, the crampedness of addresses making configuration a pain, public addresses expensive, and so on. It's just not been a sudden catastrophe, it's been more like boiling a live frog by putting it in cold water and then slowly heating it.
Sure, ipv4 addresses were a little cumbersome but at least they were numbers and dots. 192.168.0.1. I can type that out on the numeric keypad. 2001:0618:71A3:0801:1319:0211:FEC2:82DC is just awful. Yeah, I know you need to have more characters in there to represent the value and a larger address space means it's going to be a larger number. Keeping the old ipv4 decimal scheme would make addresses look like 128.91.45.157.220.40.0.0.0.0.252.87.212.200.31.255. But I don't really see the hex as an improvement!
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
You're wrong on several counts, within 2-3 years your ISP will most likely switch you to IPv6. Can you turn it off in Windows 7 without problems in a word, no. Windows 7 has features that depend on IPv6, OS X probably does as well.
Those who really need to worry about it, is those who do not like using ISP provided routers. Many routers do not support IPv6 unless you're running a custom build on them. Those people should be looking around for IPv6 enabled routers of switch to one that can use custom firmware to do the job.
The other set of people who should be concerned are those running Windows XP since support there is flaky at best.
IPv6 is here folks, my new home printer even supports it out of the box.
Same here. There have been several instances where IPv6 has caused a lot of problems. I work for a local government and have 5000 new PC's being installed on my network and they are all getting IPv6 turned off on their images because it is annoying, to say the least.
As a network engineer I am not worried about IPv6. The most that will have to be done is our main firewall and/or router will maybe eventually have to be setup to accept incoming IPv6 addresses. But for our internal network, IPv4 won't go away anytime soon. I doubt if it ever will. There is just no reason to run IPv6 on an internal network unless you need some specific function of IPv6 on your internal network (which other than the mandatory IPsec integration and multicast additions I can't see anyone needing the larger address space or any other features on an internal network).
IPv6 seems to be more for ISPs and super-large networks than for the rest of us.
"I hope you know how very lucky you are to know me, because I am so incredibly incredible."
It's not a religious taboo, it's just you not knowing what the hell you're talking about (and this happens every damn time an IPv6 story on slashdot shows up).
Except NAT doesn't do that. PAT does that.
Except NAT doesn't do that. A firewall does that.
You should not be doing any job involving networking with your current level of knowledge. If you don't even understand how current technology works how can you determine what is or isn't better for your customers.
It is? I run hundreds of SIP phones complete with video calling behind NAT without a problem. It only becomes an issue when you have 10s or 100s of thousands of phones.
Why would the phones even need Internet access? You have your SIP proxy on your network which connects to your SIP provider or POTs provider depending how you like to deploy. It's a very simple setup, makes auditing really easy, and allows me to do tricky stuff like divert the video from the gate to the phone so whoever answers can choose whether or not to let them in.
Worms will propogate as they always have, properly firewalled setups have dramatically reduced this in IPv4 and the same will happen on IPv6. I keep hearing people speak of NAT like it's not a firewall but most of those people are forgetting that most NAT devices actually are real firewalls these days unlike the early days of NAT.
I'm not against IPv6 but I have to agree with the parent, it has to start with the ISPs before it really makes sense for the rest of us to change. ISPs are having enough trouble with current traffic levels however that I have no faith in their ability to launch anytime soon on any real scale.
It might not be time for residential networks and ISPs to flip the switch yet. . . but it's *definitely* time for all new home routers, DSL/Cable gateways, etc, to include full IPv6 compatibility. That way, when the ISPs decide it's time to turn on IPv6, they and their customers don't need to replace most of the hardware already deployed. IPv6 support at the vast majority of network endpoints needs to already be present before you can actually make the switch - you can't change the protocol and just force people to suddenly change.
ISPs need to start configuring networks to run in a dual-stack mode (at least as far as the end-user is concerned - once it hits the first ISP owned router, it could be all IPv6 from that point on), so that those who are ready to use IPv6 can start using it (yeah, you can use tunnel providers or 6to4 [which is really another sort of tunnel], right now, but that usually adds additional hops and latency to your connections - basically, if you are tunneling IPv6 traffic over IPv4, why bother using it to begin with).