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If You Think You Can Ignore IPv6, Think Again
wiredmikey writes "Now that the last IPv4 address blocks have been allocated, it's expected to take several months for regional registries to consume all of their remaining regional IPv4 address pool. The IPv6 Forum, a group with the mission to educate and promote the new protocol, says that enabling IPv6 in all ICT environments is not the endgame, but is now a critical requirement for continuity in all Internet business and services. Experts believe that the move to IPv6 should be a board-level risk management concern, equivalent to the Y2K problem or Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. During the late 1990s, technology companies worldwide scoured their source code for places where critical algorithms assumed a two-digit date. This seemingly trivial software development issue was of global concern, so many companies made Y2K compliance a strategic initiative. The transition to IPv6 is of similar importance. If you think you can ignore IPv6, think again."
Not so fast:
http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/ipv6mess.html
http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=128822984018595&w=2
There are *many* 6 year old Cisco routers and switches out there that are still covered under support contracts that won't be getting IPv6 support as they have been End-of-Life'd. Consider for a moment that many of these same ISPs are the ones who elect to throttle their users to 256Kbps if they go above their 5GB monthly usage limit. Smaller ISPs are already going in and double-natting their customers as well to further over-subscribe their network and get by with less. Home ISPs will likely continue ignoring this problem for years to come, until the eventual hardware swaps enables them to support IPv6 and then have a reason to start billing their customers more for "now with public IPs to improve your gaming performance".
Thirty four characters live here.
The amount of *new* networking kit and software that still doesn't support IPv6 is frankly depressing. Microsoft's Forefront TMG (Their ISA replacement), for example, requires Server 2008/2008 R2 (which have full IPv6 support out of the box) but doesn't actually support IPv6 routing itself and it's only ~1 year old.
Too much could change between now and then (then probably being in about a decade or so).
I'm with OP, when my ISP gives me one.. i'll deal with it.
It's been done: http://www.ipv6experiment.com/ (NSFW). Didn't work, unfortunately.
My captcha: "banged"
wow..just..wow. You really don't know the criticality of this or the momentum moving through ISPs, do you?
Decade my ass.
It sure doesn't seem all that critical if you go by their actions.
Most haven't even started moving to ipv6, and those who have are doing so rather methodically.
Most of them appear to have all the address space they need at the moment, and are heavily nat-ed on their internal networks. Most customers don't care, because they don't need inbound connections.
Most cable/DSL providers still have not even started rolling out modem replacements (mine can't handle ipv6 per the spec sheet).
If you ask them questions about their modems like... ... You get nothing but blank stares.
Do they plan firmware upgrades, or total replacements of the modems?
Will I be limited to a small number of world route-able ip6 addresses? (and therefore still need nat)
Will they handle 6-to-4 in the modem?
etc
etc
Panic hasn't set in. Static IP prices haven't started to rise. Nobody other than Comcast even want's to discuss the issue.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
There are some ISPs that are starting off with just a single /64 (e.g. Comcast's trial), because they've got some equipment or management software that's not bright enough to handle more complex routing than that, but the general consensus is that businesses should get /48 and residences should get at least /56. That not only allows for a couple of subnets (e.g. wired, wireless, uplink, DMZ), but it also lets you use relatively dumb routers that handle subnets by cutting their address space in 2-4 pieces, and you can stack a couple of those.
I have heard of one ISP that's only allocating a /60 for residences, but IPv6 has enough address space that most people think it's worthwhile wasting some of it to get addresses aligned on byte boundaries and not mess with nibble-aligned, much less single-bit-aligned.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks