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IPv6 Traffic Remains Minuscule
judgecorp writes "Even though we are running out of IPv4 addresses, IPv6 traffic is still not taking off. In fact it is less than one percent and falling, according to a report from Arbor Networks."
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NAT and other hacks I imagine.
Truth is, I don't expect IPv6 to be widespread for about 10 years. The reasoning being that:
- while we are technically out of IPs ... this is not the world ending problem it's been hyped to be.. as evidenced by the world not ending .. these will all need to be replaced. In a decade, there will probably be a noticable "IPv6 transition period" layer in all landfills.
- the stuff we should have been doing 10 years ago at the consumer level we are just starting to do now (how many _new_ home routers still don't do IPv6
- carrier grade NAT "solves" everything
ISPs en-masse should have been giving people IPv6 addresses to play with _years_ ago. I have experimented with IPv6 locally and via tunnel, but it's just not worth it when I don't know how my ISP will allocate addresses. It also concerns me to think how they will roll this out to the masses... because they are going to have to make it user friendly and seemless to the large consumer base... which means it's probably going to be primitive, locked down, and very frustrating for anyone with technical savvy. I _hope_ they don't require everyone to use some half baked custom hardware with some propriatary switchover software that you _have_ to use.
Your mum.
In that case, the transition from NTSC to ATSC might be a better analogy. It needed an act of Congress to make it happen.
Yeah, but you're not factoring in the cost to move to an area where Verizon offers FiOS.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
In truth, IPv6 for an internal network doesn't make any sense at all, it's not worth the switch for most people. For the internet, it may make some sense if the cost of a fixed IP address is too much, and you provide or use a service that can't use NAT, and the people who are trying to reach you are from a new audience who are not IPv4 bound, and other means like dynamic DNS are not practical. The key question, isn't the number of IPv4 addresses available, but the number that absolutely must be fixed for people to go about their business ... and that number is probably closer to a few million, than to 4 billion.
IMHO, the key problem here is that the powers that be are not letting IP addresses be allocated by the market, but rather by assignment. The market would automatically adjust supply, and demand, and once the cost reached a certain threshold (if ever) ... that would determine when people think it's worth it to switch.
I remember a few years ago, I talked about how IPv6 was overrated on slashdot and in the tech community, and promptly got blown off and down voted. They may have had a fundamental understanding about the technology, but didn't jack fuck about the marketplace.
End to end connectivity is the main selling point, but apps like Skype use hacky work arounds that the end user doesn't need to know anything about. The tipping point is going to come when there start being some services only available via IPv6. APNIC has now run out of IPv4 addresses, so I imagine that some services in the Asia-Pacific region will start to be v6-only in the near futures. Not a huge problem, since most ISPs in the region are already providing dual-stack, so their customers probably won't notice, but people trying to connect from the USA will.
I wonder what would happen if Google decided to make HD videos on YouTube v6-only. I imagine some interesting conversations with tech support:
"Hi, I'm trying to watch some kittens on YouTube and it says I only have Internet 4 not Internet 6. I'm running Microsoft Internet 9, but it still doesn't work"
"Sorry, we don't provide IPv6 access, and Google requires that for HD videos on YouTube."
"You pee vee six? Don't confuse me with jargon I just want to watch the video. I paid for an Internet from you, but Google says it's an old Internet. How do I use the new Internet?"
"I'm sorry, but we don't support IPv6, there's no demand for it."
"Well, how do I upgrade to Internet 6? I pay you for Internet and I want to use Internet."
How this conversation ends depends largely on whether the ISP in question has any competition...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Yup, the modem/router my ISP just "upgraded" me to is a _complete_ piece of junk (speedstream is anyone is curious) that they've made even worse by overlaying custom firmware.
Put the thing in bridge mode, get an old machine from a few years ago and run ipcop or pfsense on it.
When put under load most consumer modems fail, especially with nat and anything like that. best leave it be a dumb modem and let decent hardware handle everything else further down the line.