Slashdot Mirror
June 6 Is World IPv6 Day 2012: This Time For Keeps
An anonymous reader writes "On 8 June 2011 many companies (big and small) enabled IPv6 to their main web sites by published AAAA records; 24 hours later, almost all of them disabled it after the test was done. This year, on June 6th, many of those same companies (Google, Bing, Facebook) will be enabling IPv6 again, but this time there won't be any going back. In addition to content providers, several ISPs are also participating: Comcast, AT&T, XS4ALL, KDDI, and others. CDNs Akamai and Limelight are on board, as well as network equipment manufacturers Cisco and D-Link. Is the chicken-and-egg problem of IPv6 finally, slowly coming to an end?"
For those of you who don't know anything about IPv6, here's the Wikipedia page for it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6/
Happy reading!
I hope that some of the network/systems analysis companies out there are taking accurate notes about the state of what's accessible via IPv6 and IPv4. I think we'll see an interesting sort of "avalanche" graph when we reach the tipping point. Or not -- perhaps there will be enough dual-stack that we'll just have a slow deathmarch of sites available by IPv4, with a few less year after year?
But to step back and wax lyrical about the whole problem, the reason that IPv6 hasn't taken hold yet is because it just hasn't gotten enough of an IPv6-only install base clamouring for support on their popular websites.
Having major websites and hardware manufacturers on board is an important piece of the puzzle, but it's nothing compared to money. Get enough people inconvenienced that they will take their eyes and their money elsewere (directly, or through advertising revenue on sites, etc...), and every site that cares about their viewership will hop on the IPv6 train. Of course, this means that Bob's website that features his personal Banana Sticker Collection might not get IPv6 support until his ISP drags him to an IPv6 address, kicking and screaming all the way.
That whole idea a year or two ago about putting out a big zip file of porn, but only available on IPv6, was kind of a hoot. AFAIK it never came to fruition, but I liked the creative thinking there. Has anyone else had any crazy good (or just crazy) suggestions about how to spur IPv6 adoption?
coding is life
Hell Yes!
If enough of us do it, those profiteering assholes at Big Internet$ will be forced to deal with us on our terms and open up all that extra space they're holding out on.
What extra space you say? Ever heard of a number greater than 255?
It's a conspiracy I tell you. They're all in it! Google, Micro$oft, IBM, The Queen, the Vatican, the Getty's, the Rothchild's and Colonel Sanders before he went tits up! They're trying to keep our eyes shut to the truth!
Wake up! We have all the IPv4 addresses we need! Why at home all my machiens in the 478.921.357.* range!
First Duke Nukem Forever in 2011, and now this in 2012? What's up for 2013, Hurd??
I see you missed the Freemasons. Your oversight is why they will continue to screw you over.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Did you know that for the past three year Google has actually published AAAA RRs for its online properties? However, the catch is that they won't serve you those as a response unless your /32 is on the list of vetted ISPs.
Even if you query one of their public IPv6 resolvers ( e.g. 2001:4860:4860::8888 ) you'll not see a AAAA for YouTube or Google+ unless you're on the list.
To pass the vetting an ISP has to demonstrate various technical aspects such as redundant, othogonally-routed global routes to Google's servers. For small ISPs such as mine, who have worked to implement native IPv6 connectivity, this is simply a step too far. So a proportion of the IPv6-connected world has to fall-back to v4 to talk to Google.
Read more about the frustrating policy here: Google over IPv6.
There are no IPv6-ONLY services
This is incorrect. There are a number of IPv6-only services, especially in the asian markets, where IPv6 has been available to clients for a goodly number of years.
The alternative to IPv6 to work around the problem with NAT.
This isn't an alternative. NAT expands tha number of clients that can use the internet, but is largely useless on the server side. APNIC has run out of addresses, RIPE is going to run out this summer, at some point its going to become impossible for datacentres to get new IPv4 addresses, and at that point anyone runing servers is going to start having problems. They will start by shoving services behind proxy servers, etc. to reduce the number of IPv4 addresses that need to be exposed, but this only goes so far. Some services can't be placed behind proxies, running services on non-standard ports is almost as problematic as running them on IPv6 (a large proportion of customers are behind restrictive firewalls). At some point, IPv4-only clients are going to become second class citizens - they will be able to access the internet, but some services will be unavailable to them. Yes, it will take many years, but it will slowly happen.
Oh, and on a private network, which is behind a NAT anyway, there is even less reason for IPv6 - Yes, I do have enough 10.0.0.0 addresses for my home network.
For a *home network* you're correct. For the generic case of a *private network* you're wrong. I'm informed that Virgin Media are actually very interested in rolling out IPv6 because there aren't enough RFC1918 addresses for device management. I'm sure that they *could* bodge their network to make it work with the restricted number of addresses, but its probably easier in the long run to just bite the bullet and roll out IPv6 (and on a truely private network this is easier because everything is under your control).
http://blog.nexusuk.org
There are billions of addresses - entire A blocks - locked up in early-adopter organizations that could be made available.
Given that 2^32=4.3 billion, you're wrong. There are a few million addresses locked up in old class A networks. If you bother to look at the consumption rate you'd realise that even if all of these addresses were returned to the pool they would buy a few weeks and then we'd be right back where we started. In short, recovering those addresses is going to be a lot of effort, will not solve the problem and will only postpone it for a very short length of time.
We're years away from ipv4 exhaustion.
IANA ran out of addresses at the start of last year. APNIC also ran out of addresses in the first half of last year. RIPE is going to run out of addresses this summer. We are *not* a significant number of years away from exhaustion. We've got maybe 3 years until there are no more IPv4 addresses left to allocate by any RIR. Reclaiming the legacy blocks to buy a few more weeks doesn't make sense.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
ISPs use 10.x addresses to manage their end user devices. Comcast has already exceeded 16 million users. They already have to kludge together a solution just to manage their devices.
Sorry, but your thinking is outdated and shows a lack of understanding of the true infrastructure of the Internet as a whole. As you have already been told, there are parts of the world today who turn on their devices and don't get a public IPv4 address. Not to mention, this entire article is about key services and websites turning on IPv6 in recognition of the future.
I'm guessing you never lived in a flat Internet. I have. This bullshit we've had to suffer with for a couple decades is actually pretty horrible. When we return to a flat internet, we will be able to video conference from one PC directly to another, anywhere in the world.
It's the future, and in a sense, returning to the past.