IPv6-Only Is Becoming Viable

An anonymous reader writes "With the success of world IPv6 day in 2011, there is a lot of speculation about IPv6 in 2012. But simply turning on IPv6 does not make the problems of IPv4 exhaustion go away. It is only when services are usable with IPv6-only that the internet can clip the ties to the IPv4 boat anchor. That said, FreeBSD, Windows, and Android are working on IPv6-only capabilities. There are multiple accounts of IPv6-only network deployments. From those, we we now know that IPv6-only is viable in mobile, where over 80% (of a sampling of the top 200 apps) work well with IPv6-only. Mobile especially needs IPv6, since their are only 4 billion IPv4 address and approaching 50 billion mobile devices in the next 8 years. Ironically, the Android test data shows that the apps most likely to fail are peer-to-peer, like Skype. Traversing NAT and relying on broken IPv4 is built into their method of operating. P2P communications was supposed to be one of the key improvements in IPv6."

Comments

Don't worry, be happy

[celtic_hackr]

Criminal Hackers all over the world are working hard to come up with lots of zero day exploits for IPv6. When it finally goes live, they'll have plenty of hacks to bring it down in the first hour.

Re:FreeBSD, Windows, and Android are working on IP

[knifeyspooney]

At this point, it's a lot like buying an electric car when your power comes from a coal plant. It may make you feel better about yourself but nobody actually gains anything.

Well, with an electric car, you move the emissions to the industrial area that hosts your local coal plant, and so hopefully make the neighborhoods you drive in healthier places to live. Similarly, the uh, network ecosystem of the, uh kernel environment... Ugh. This is the one time when a car metaphor won't work!

Re:Waste and Bloat

[ultranova]

Also your car doesn't need an IP address.

For now. But things like navigators could certainly use them, for example to get weather and traffick information or download maps when you're going to a new area. And what happens when self-driving cars move out of prototype stage - wouldn't it be nice to be able to send instructions remotely?

Period. End of story.

Contrary to the popular misconception, saying "period" does not actually prove anything, nor does saying "end of story" mean that the world will actually stop changing.