Slashdot Mirror
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."
All that needs to happen now, is to get ISP to get their asses in gear and adapt IPv6. I know mine still doesn't on cable, and their DSL side has been in beta for 4 years. Cable though isn't so much their fault, but rather the fault of who they buy their headend connection through(rogers). And since most of their hardware is still docsis2, and they're still using docsis2 DPI hardware, well I'm sure it'll be another 10 years.
Om, nomnomnom...
One thing that is not mentionned here is that the 4G specs actually mandate IPv6 and deprecate IPv4 support - something that should really push IPv6 adoption forward, especially with providers that offer both cell phone and traditionnal internet connectivity...
Good thing too. Getting those suckers in would have been difficult otherwise. With IPs running out in Europe this year, we are really starting to feel the pressure now...
Semantics is the gravity of abstraction
You seem to be confused. Linux is a kernel, no more no less. A Linux distro is a Linux kernel with a 3rd party userland. The kernel itself really has very little to do with what protocols are ultimately offered to the userland as those all have the option of loading kernel modules if need be.
Honestly, it's not that complicated. Those userland programs are why Linux can't yet be IPv6 only yet. I believe that most of them can handle it, but there are still IPv4 only utilties left.