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Apple Under Fire For Backing Off IPv6 Support

alphadogg writes "Apple Computer came under fire for back-pedaling on its support for IPv6, the next-generation Internet Protocol, at a gathering of experts held in Denver this week. Presenters at the North American IPv6 Summit expressed annoyance that the latest version of Apple's AirPort Utility, Version 6.0, is no longer compatible with IPv6. The previous Version, 5.6, offered IPv6 service by default. While home networking vendors like Cisco and D-Link are adding IPv6 across their product lines, Apple appears to be the only vendor that is removing this feature."

460 comments

  1. Because 32bits of addressing... by JoeMerchant · · Score: 1, Funny

    is all the world will need for the next 20 years, right?

    1. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by V!NCENT · · Score: 2, Informative

      I was really puzzled about this, so I went to 'investigate' the issue a bit. Turns out Airport is not a router, but a sort of wireless switch (no modem). So this is probably another speed optimization as packets are 96bit smaller and your home network probably isn't filled with more than 4294967296 devices.

      The first thing that comes to my mind is how in the hell this is going to work when you want to access the internet in such a configuration. The utility or physical Airport station probably converts this. I don't think Apple is that retarded...

      --
      Here be signatures
    2. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Concerned+Onlooker · · Score: 0, Troll

      And cue all the idiots making ad hominem attacks on anyone who uses an Apple product.

      --
      http://www.rootstrikers.org/
    3. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by smpoole7 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I guess I'll try one more time. Whether in this *specific* case it's a good or bad thing, remember that most of us are running small IPv4 networks. IPv6 adds needless complexity and simply isn't needed.

      I just wrote an article on this for an industry trade magazine. One gem of a quote came from a vendor who makes audio-over-IP remote equipment (i.e., remote broadcast from a site away from the studios). He said, and I quote, that his company is IPv6-ready at the hardware level, but hasn't added it yet, because -- here's the quote -- "not one single customer has requested it." In fact, those who have added it get support calls from people: "why is this so slow?" "Why can't I connect?" The answer? Disable the IPv6 unless you KNOW you need it! :)

      Remember: the shortage of IPv4 addresses is on the PUBLIC INTERNET. (An extremely important distinction.) A small business with maybe 10-20 devices on an internal network doesn't care about IPv6. At all. Now, those of you with hundreds of clients on a large network, might indeed want it. But for most of us, all we'll need is an IPv6-capable router/modem at the Internet gateway. Inside the facility, who cares?

      --
      Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
    4. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Cinder6 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Source on this? It seems to do the important parts of routing, at least for a home network configuration--assigns IP addresses, allows port forwarding, etc. And it certainly can do IPv6--the option was removed, for some reason, from the newest configuration utility. Also, it obviously works when connecting to the Internet, unless it has a really sophisticated Slashdot emulator :)

      You can still download the old Utility: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1482?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

      --
      If you can't convince them, convict them.
    5. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by evanbd · · Score: 4, Insightful

      IPv6 makes VPN a lot easier and more reliable. Many small businesses care about that so that their employees can work while at home or traveling.

    6. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by pankkake · · Score: 2

      > A small business with maybe 10-20 devices on an internal network doesn't care about IPv6.

      IPv6 isn't only about having more adresses. For instance, stateless address autoconfiguration is interesting in a local network.

      --
      Kill all hipsters.
    7. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by amorsen · · Score: 1

      But for most of us, all we'll need is an IPv6-capable router/modem at the Internet gateway. Inside the facility, who cares?

      You are planning to run IPv4 on the inside NAT'ed to IPv6 on the router? This is doable but somewhat tricky since you need to fake DNS. You won't get any of the IPv6 benefits, of course.

      I doubt it will be a particularly popular deployment model. Putting complexity in the CPE's which are already behind schedule to save trouble for the client systems which have been ready for ages seems somewhat backwards.

      --
      Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
    8. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Cue every Apple hating fuck.

    9. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by ericloewe · · Score: 4, Interesting

      IPv6 allows us to finally get rid of NAT by having the router request several public addresses which are handed out to the individual computers.

      The "not needed" mentality doesn't solve anything, especially because they could have just added an option to disable IPv6 instead of removing it.

    10. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by udippel · · Score: 4, Funny

      Inside the facility, who cares?

      Patronizing, are you? What makes you think you may prescribe the type of internal addressing (size of RAM, internationalisation, etc.) to anyone and everyone?
      I for one do care. Be it to work with IPv6 islands in an IPv4 shop, or student and research work. Maybe someone wants the same IP address wherever she goes?

      It can be understood from your post that you say "as long as the Apple box allows a connection; by whichever means and difficulties including eventual downgrades and encumbrances, I will defend its weaknesses to the very end".
      Though you could have said so.

    11. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by element-o.p. · · Score: 1

      Remember: the shortage of IPv4 addresses is on the PUBLIC INTERNET. (An extremely important distinction.) A small business with maybe 10-20 devices on an internal network doesn't care about IPv6. At all. Now, those of you with hundreds of clients on a large network, might indeed want it. But for most of us, all we'll need is an IPv6-capable router/modem at the Internet gateway. Inside the facility, who cares?

      That's all well and good, but the technology to translate an IPv4 private network to an IPv6 public network -- and the need to do that is coming quickly -- *sucks*. It is not nearly as trivial a problem as one might initially expect, and every solution I've seen other than dual stack is an ugly hack that makes IPv4 NAT look like the very model of elegance. Removing IPv6 as even an option at this point is just stupid. Make the default "off?" Sure. But remove it entirely? Stupid in the extreme.

      --
      MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
    12. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by davester666 · · Score: 1

      Where to you live that you can assume that your home, office and whatever hotel/coffeeshop/hotspot you come across has IPv6 working?

      Last year, for World IPv6 day, the goal was to enable IPv6 FOR ONE DAY. And that's all most people got. This year organizers are trying to convince ISPs to actually leave it enabled. And most home routers that are actually deployed don't have IPv6 support.

      So, for a very small percentage of people, IPv6 is making VPN easier today.

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
    13. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by rogueippacket · · Score: 5, Informative
      I already spent a few mod points on this article, but I simply have to address your post. It quite clearly demonstrates the lack of awareness surrounding IPv6 today.

      I don't believe, for a second, that all addresses in companies or homes need to be public addresses!

      Not every IPv6 address is a "public" address - private addresses can be assigned to a local subnet, very much like RFC1918 addresses, except now called Unique Local Addresses.

      and, of course, there is some security to NOT being directly touchable on the net.

      I don't WANT my address to be easily and directly reachable

      Second of all, I can only assume by "directly reachable" you remain the loss of NAT/PAT. Again, Unique Local Addresses invalidate your statement. Furthermore, NAT/PAT can still be implemented. Not that it gives you any security whatsoever today.

      running ipv6 is about as useful, to home users, as running BGP.

      You do know that BGP is a routing protocol and IPv6 is a routed protocol, right? Please take a moment and read through the Wikipedia page on IPv6. Maybe even try running it for a week or two in a virtual environment?

    14. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There are two models of Airport offered on Apple's page: Airport Express, and Airport Extreme. Airport Extreme is most certainly a router, it is stated as such in a bullet point. Both models have the ability to have a printer attached to share on network, so they are certainly addressable units.

      IPv6 consumer devices will certainly not be able to handle 2^32 devices (at least not for the short-term foreseeable future... this may change), but they will need to be able to handle (and route) at least as many devices as current devices can (2^8-2) to be competitive.

    15. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by rogueippacket · · Score: 4, Informative

      So this is probably another speed optimization as packets are 96bit smaller...

      Actually, an IPv6 packet can be smaller than an IPv4 packet. The IPv4 header contains a lot of garbage not required by IPv6. See for yourself.
      Secondly, IPv6 addresses can be concatenated. Only if you're using an extremely complex IPv6 address will your router need to process a large source or destination header.

    16. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      NAT prevents information leaking. All traffic appears to come from 1 device. With IPv6 without NAT, every device in a LAN can be individually identified.
      Without NAT external parties have more information then with NAT. Hence, NAT IS a security measure.

    17. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by evanbd · · Score: 1

      Most people can set up IPv6 networking at home with a tunnel broker or similar. You can probably get it working on your laptop when traveling, provided the firewalls aren't too brain dead. So having your business support it will make it easier a lot of the time, but not all the time.

    18. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Auroch · · Score: 1, Troll

      Cue every fucking Apple fag in the world parrotting that IPv6 is evil and broken - and that's why Apple has removed it.

      I wasn't aware you could buy fruity, avian cigarettes, nor was I aware they were against IPv6. After all, everyone knows cigarettes are bad for you.

      --
      Quartz Extreme and Core Image. Are there any other real reasons to spend all that money on generic hardware?
    19. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by evanbd · · Score: 5, Informative

      That's what firewalls are for. The fact that NAT and firewall often go together in IPv4 does not mean it has to be that way. Just set your IPv6 firewall to deny by default, and you'll have the same security setup you usually get with NAT+firewall on IPv4, but with more flexibility.

    20. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      IPv6 addresses are not concatenated within the packets. The concatenation is only a display feature. Each packet contains all of the bits in each IPv6 address. While the router may display fe80::10 the packet actually contains fe80:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0010

    21. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by ColdWetDog · · Score: 1

      Which is what Apple did. I IPv6 is still there. You just can't get to it... (At least in the current software, using the older firmware still works).

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    22. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      The more you know about security the less you'd rely on stateful firewalls for security. For organizations that care about security, every device in the network not having a publicly accessible address is a desirable feature and not a problem. The day someone makes a mistake does not necessarily expose your entire network. It just exposes the servers/services that you hopefully have already hardened for such a scenario. A NAT router does not protect your internal network from your ISP and whoever has control over the adjacent network to it, but that risk is way lower.

      Even if you don't care about hiding your network if you use IPv6 you will need NAT technologies or similar.

      Because if you need to talk to "IPv4 only" servers, you need an IPv4 address. If you do not have an IPv4 address because your ISP has run out of them your ISP is going to have to provide proxies or NAT, what do they do - use proven IPv4 hardware/software or use IPv6 to IPv4 proxies/NATs?

      I remember not long ago when many IPv6 proponents either didn't realize or didn't think it was a big problem that an IPv6-only client could not talk to an IPv4-only server. You'd need a proxy or similar - and nobody was/is making those proxies, so guess why those of us with a clue didn't bother with IPv6? It was clear the technology and developers were not aware of the real world. Sorry if we aren't keen on implementing dreams by delusional people.

      There was even a time when they were thinking they wouldn't need DHCP for IPv6. I think some hilariously thought it was not needed and were busy reinventing the wheel badly. How many years do you think it'll take for those new "DHCP-like" services to be less buggy and exploitable?

    23. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by ugen · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Except some of us *like* NAT for the added privacy it provides. Personally, I'd be a lot more willing to switch to IPv6 once there is a workable NAT masquerading solution that lets me hide all my devices behind a single address

      As an aside, Linux is no help here, the iptables authors are religiously opposed to it, last time I checked. FreeBSD might work out in the end - we'll see. Once I can get this solution to run on a wifi router (like I do now with dWRT) - it's a go :)

    24. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by pancake_lover · · Score: 1

      Uh, no. The minimum size of an IPv6 header is 40 bytes. The minimum size of an IPv4 header is 20 bytes.

      (Not that the header size is that important. Decisions about how individual packets are handled are done pretty much at wire speed using the ASICs. These chips are designed to handle IPv4 and IPv6 natively.)

      --
      Homer no function beer well without.
    25. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by smpoole7 · · Score: 1

      > IPv6 makes VPN a lot easier and more reliable

      Even if I grant that, once again, you are talking about the public internet.

      --
      Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
    26. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Tore+S+B · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I guess I'll try one more time. Whether in this *specific* case it's a good or bad thing, remember that most of us are running small IPv4 networks. IPv6 adds needless complexity and simply isn't needed.

      No, NAT adds needless complexity and simply isn't needed if we could all just start using IPv6! Incomplete appliance support is an extreme hinderance to that.

      Remember: the shortage of IPv4 addresses is on the PUBLIC INTERNET. (An extremely important distinction.) A small business with maybe 10-20 devices on an internal network doesn't care about IPv6. At all. Now, those of you with hundreds of clients on a large network, might indeed want it. But for most of us, all we'll need is an IPv6-capable router/modem at the Internet gateway. Inside the facility, who cares?

      I happen to work in broadcasting, so I know your anecdote is a bit of an edge case. Few people in broadcasting even use DNS or DHCP, much of the time, IP networks are simply replacements for whatever proprietary bit of telco comms preceded it.

      But of course no end user asks for IPv6. The mere idea that an end user should need to care about what happens on the transport layer for improvements in transport layer tech to be a Good Idea is flabbergasting. These things are supposed to be transparent. Technicians should realize they have a social responsibility to implement it, because the net gain is dependent on almost everyone getting it into place, so it can reach a critical mass so that we don't have to deal with the gigantic, internet-breaking kludge that is NAT.

      The main point is: There should be no distinction in addressing, there should be no NAT. One address should be able to reach another address no matter what network each host is on. That's kind-of why it's called an inter-net.

      --
      toresbe
    27. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      "can be smaller", but won't.

      IPv4 header: "Variable length of 20-60 bytes, depending on IP options present." (if you don't use any options, 20 bytes).

      IPv6 header: "Fixed length of 40 bytes. There are no IP header options." (if you don't use any options either, 40 bytes)

      IPv6 is terrible if those "20 bytes more" are relevant for your application.

      Src: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/iseries/v5r3/index.jsp?topic=%2Frzai2%2Frzai2compipv4ipv6.htm

    28. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by JoeMerchant · · Score: 1

      If a vendor's IP6 solution is that much slower than IP4, they're doing it wrong. There's not so much overhead in the protocol that any decent cell-phone processor chip can't rip through it in a small fraction of a nanosecond per packet.

      I do believe that they can do IP4 better, with 20 years of practice I would hope they can, but it's not intrinsically IP6's fault that the vendors' implementations are slower, especially on Gigabit bandwidth local links.

    29. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by smpoole7 · · Score: 1

      > stateless address autoconfiguration is interesting ...

      I won't argue that. But look at my needs and what I have working now. I'm doing just fine with DHCP on an IPv4 internal network. All of my monitoring tools, my ClearOS firewall, and everything else, are IPv4.

      Further -- and this is the killer -- I have transmitter sites all over central Alabama that will be linked with microwave relays (Trango and Dragonwave). These are IPv4-only. I've also spent a good bit of time getting my IPv4 VLANs in place. We're comfortable with what we have, and in this particular case, cannot justify spending another $100-200,000 replacing all of this equipment just so I can say, "yass, yass, we're all IPv6, all the time!"

      Apropos of the original article ... I suspect the real reason why Apple has done this is for two reasons: (1), there is no demand for IPv6 and (2) it increases support costs from people calling with problems.

      --
      Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
    30. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by microbox · · Score: 1

      Don't know why they header doesn't specify the address in the same way that utf8 specifies numbers. Sure it means that the numbers of sometimes longer, but for non-routable addresses, you should be able to use just 1 or 2 bytes. (Say, make all addresses 32000 unroutable.)

      --

      Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
    31. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by smpoole7 · · Score: 0

      > the technology to translate ... *sucks*.

      Then may I be the first to suggest that the emperor is nekkid, and that maybe this whole IPv6 thing wasn't very well thought out? A bunch of ubergeeks got together and said, "here's the answer!" ... with only a passing thought given to the real world, with billions of people using IPv4, and just how they're going to make the real-world transition without a lot of down time and expense.

      If there aren't real, easily-implemented and cost-effective solutions in place for the transition, then it's going to be a nightmare. Thus far -- and I've talked to a bunch of people, not only for our own networks, but while researching that article -- the sense that I've gotten from the IPv6 crowd is that everyone OUGHT to be IPv6 tomorrow morning, and they're just not terribly interested in helping people (like me) who must maintain an IPv4 internal network for a least several more years. If anything, they're doing all that they can do discourage continued use of IPv4, making it even harder on people like me.

      --
      Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
    32. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by samkass · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I was really puzzled about this, so I went to 'investigate' the issue a bit. Turns out Airport is not a router, but a sort of wireless switch (no modem). So this is probably another speed optimization as packets are 96bit smaller and your home network probably isn't filled with more than 4294967296 devices.

      The first thing that comes to my mind is how in the hell this is going to work when you want to access the internet in such a configuration. The utility or physical Airport station probably converts this. I don't think Apple is that retarded...

      If you investigate further, you'll see it's just the Admin tool that lost support when they rewrote it, and it has nothing to do with the actual Airport device. Just like Final Cut Pro X, I'm sure Apple will re-add features over time.

      --
      E pluribus unum
    33. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by slimjim8094 · · Score: 5, Informative

      You're breaking the internet because you don't understand it. There's not really a nicer way to say it. Every host is *SUPPOSED* to be addressable. It's called the end-to-end principle. The fact that NAT prevented unsolicited connections was a consequence of its design, not a feature. Firewalls do it better, and with more control. They even do it by default! The reason the iptables authors are religiously opposed to it is because the internet isn't meant to be like that, and there are perfectly good solutions (in iptables!) to do what you want without a broken end-to-end principle.

      For what it's worth, I've been running IPv6 at home for a few years without the slightest trouble. My clients get NATted IPv4 addresses, and a public IPv6 address. They have the same security, since the firewall prevents unsolicited connections. But since it's a firewall and not shitty NAT, I have three SSH servers on port 22 and two webservers on port 80 that are publicly routable. Try doing that with NAT

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    34. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So you argue that IPv6 adds needless complexity... then explain how DHfuckingCP is just fine. Clearly simplicity in a small network isn't your actual concern, it's change that's bothering you,

    35. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by ugen · · Score: 4, Informative

      :) As one of the original authors of some of the software that makes this Internet run (you probably are using it too, at least indirectly) I have a vague idea :)
      Not every host is supposed to be addressable. There is a very specific reason private non-publicly-addressable subnet ranges were created, for example. So, your claims are false - you simply don't know what the Internet is "supposed" to be like.

    36. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by pankkake · · Score: 4, Informative

      And IPv6 can do better, without all the ugly side-effects of NAT: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4941.txt

      --
      Kill all hipsters.
    37. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      IPv6 NAT works so you can keep that fail setup if you like. It is protecting your privacy just as well as wearing sunglasses - it does not.

      If you want privacy for web browsing, setup a proxy like Squid. With proper settings, it will work much better than any NAT setup.

    38. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by ugen · · Score: 2, Insightful

      In addition - I don't have any publicly accessible servers at home and do not plan to ever get such. My servers are hosted in a dedicated facility and have publicly addressable IPs (of course :) ).

      At the same time, I am strongly opposed to all the possible devices on my home network being visible/enumarated by hosts they need to access on the public Internet. These devices are only for me to know, and I go to great lengths to make sure that externally all access from my home network appears uniform and indistinguishable (for example, right now my web browser tells this web site that I am running Firefox 3.0 on the same Windows XP box :), irrespective of which computer or device I am using). Try doing that *without* "shitty NAT" :)

    39. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Relayman · · Score: 2

      The comments to the original article pointed out that Apple didn't remove any IPv6 functionality, just the configuration tools for now. Those who need to configure IPv6 should continue using ver. 5.6. Presumably, the configuration tools for IPv6 will be added later.

      --
      If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
    40. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by pankkake · · Score: 1

      Moreover, given the huge number of IPv6 adresses, brute-forcing IPs at random isn't possible. So even if you authorized incoming packets by default in your router, you likely wouldn't be bothered by attacks.

      And relying only on NAT for "security" is utterly stupid as there are many ways to traverse NATs.

      --
      Kill all hipsters.
    41. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by evanbd · · Score: 1

      No, I'm talking about both. Having IPv6 on the internal network, with public IPv6 addresses (properly firewalled, of course), makes VPN easier.

    42. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Remember: the shortage of IPv4 addresses is on the PUBLIC INTERNET. (An extremely important distinction.) A small business with maybe 10-20 devices on an internal network doesn't care about IPv6. At all. Now, those of you with hundreds of clients on a large network, might indeed want it. But for most of us, all we'll need is an IPv6-capable router/modem at the Internet gateway. Inside the facility, who cares?

      "Comcast (a large cable operator based in the USA) moved to IPv6 because it was in need of over 100 million addresses. Simple projections showed Comcast that the number of IP addresses that Comcast would need in order to support its future growth in terms of subscriber base, as well as to be able to leverage potential new services, exceeded those available. In fact, estimations were that within a few years, Comcast would have some 20 million video customers, an average of 2.5 set-top boxes per customer, and 2 IP addresses per box. If these estimates are correct, the company will be needing over 100 million IP addresses."

      Ref: http://www.ipv6now.com.au/primers/IPv6Advantages.php

    43. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by slimjim8094 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The v6 address space is so enormously huge, you can't enumerate all hosts. Even if you could, it's trivial to block ping scans at the firewall in the same way as unsolicited connections. Furthermore, the Privacy Extensions (made possible by the address space!) give you a different address every few minutes, for the same net effect (it's the same prefix, but a different host portion every time, which is analogous to one NATted public address).

      Regarding your earlier post, the internet is in fact supposed to have end-to-end connectivity. Private address spaces were supposed to be non-routable, organization-internal addresses using the IP as a convenience - not bridged to the "real" internet with a nasty hack. The nodes in the middle are supposed to be "dumb", since that's how IP was designed to function. I don't know what software you wrote, but it doesn't change the facts. And yes, I have read the papers.

      --
      I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
    44. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Lord_Jeremy · · Score: 5, Informative

      The Airport Utility 6.0 actually has a whole lot less administration features than the 5.6 utility. In fact Apple has a download on their site for 5.6 if you want to use some of those features that are missing. As far as I can tell 6.0 is pretty much a Beta version. It's got an entirely different interface philosophy than 5.6 and most other router administration panels. I suspect that a lot of the missing functionality will be added soon, including ipv6.

    45. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Interesting reasoning. I at least want to "break the Internet" precisely because I DO understand it. Yes, machines are supposed to be addressable. However, nowhere in the design of the Internet is a provision for bad actors (law enforcement and ISPs primarily) to engage in the massive logging and data mining that they do, which will only be made worse the the IPv6 purist nightmare of a public address for every device.

      It's not the blocking of unsolicited connections that makes NAT attractive, it's the masquerading of addresses. Different thing. I get that it's a religious thing with some people that NAT is bad, but the world without it would be much worse. Some of the stuff it breaks needs to be broken.

    46. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Dagger2 · · Score: 1

      Although ULA does exist... it's actually not very relevant for most people. Generally you want to be able to connect to anywhere on the internet, and to do that you use global addresses.

      The thing the GP really wants is a firewall. If he doesn't want people on the internet connecting to his systems, all he has to do is say so. Firewalls have been around for a while and work just fine in IPv6; this is a solved problem.

    47. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by CodeBuster · · Score: 1

      IPv6 allows us to finally get rid of NAT

      And the privacy advantages that it confers...

    48. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by allo · · Score: 1

      NAT (66) may be useful, PAT will not be useful anymore.

    49. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 4, Informative

      Turns out Airport is not a router, but a sort of wireless switch (no modem).

      Your terminology is not quite standard.

      So this is probably another speed optimization as packets are 96bit smaller and your home network probably isn't filled with more than 4294967296 devices.

      My comparatively ancient and underpowered WRT54G manages IPv6 just fine.

      But more to the point, the Airport Extreme itself is perfectly capable of routing IPv6, so your point is moot. It's just that IPv6 support is no longer included in the configuration utility.

      --
      Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
    50. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by allo · · Score: 1

      then firewall it. not on the host itself, but at your router.

    51. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are you insinuating that Apple fags are gay?

      I imagine they have a well paying job in a good work environment, so yah I think they are happy.

    52. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by profplump · · Score: 2

      The only "security" NAT provides is *exactly* the same as a stateful firewall. No more, no less. It makes no sense to talk about NAT providing some different kind or amount of security than a stateful firewall.

      There are all sorts of IPv6->IPv4 proxies available. Virtually every load-balancing appliance and proxy software project with any IPv6 support provides such capabilities. All you need to make your IPv6-only internal network compatible with an IPv4-only website, or visa versa, is a copy of squid. Plus no one is suggesting that IPv4 should be shut off immediately when you enable IPv6. Depending on your environment that may make sense, but generally speaking dual-stack configurations are likely to be around for a while, at least on publicly-accessible hosts.

      And I'm still not sure what so many people want to do with DHCPv6. Router announcements and default DNS servers cover a very significant portion of DHCP uses under IPv4. There are some things that need additional configuration -- any sort of netboot arrangement for example, probably needs additional configuration data -- but those are all specialized applications, and given self-configured IP networking, quite easy to do without DHCP or at least without DHCP-based address assignment (i.e. just use DHCP for configuration of the non-IP-network parameters). And I have no idea what you mean by "buggy or exploitable" -- both IPv6 stateless autoconfig and DHCPv4 can be disrupted or hijacked by any host on the same broadcast segment, and even at that IPv6 has better recovery modes because the refresh interval is typically orders or magnitude shorter.

    53. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's time to give up microoptimizing and embrace ipv6. The 0.1% overhead you save isn't worth keeping us in the world of IPv4 when ipv6 is such a vast improvement. But you are welcome to your opinion, even if it is antiquated and caught up in the 20th century.

    54. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Dagger2 · · Score: 1

      Yet you don't seem to understand privacy extensions, which confound logging by generating lots of useless addresses rather than by trying to hide them all.

      NAT breaks stuff. Its benefits are available other ways, so there's no need to put up with its downsides anymore. The world will be better off not having to deal with it everywhere.

    55. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Turns out Airport is not a router, but a sort of wireless switch (no modem).

      I'm not sure where you got that piece of misinformation. I own three Apple Airport devices (primarily for their simple streaming media capabilities) and they all come factory set as routers. You have to disable routing to use them as only Wireless Access Points.

    56. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by ericloewe · · Score: 2

      It does not give you privacy. Assuming it does, now *insert evil entity here* only knows that occurrence X happened on your network, not on your computer. For all practical purposes, even IF NAT worked as a "privacy shield", you're still on the hook for whatever you did.

      Knowledge of the network is often just as useful as knowledge of the machine behind it.

    57. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why do you care if other people hate Apple?

      Apple fans caring about that is the main cause of the hate.

    58. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by smpoole7 · · Score: 1

      > I happen to work in broadcasting, so I know your anecdote is a bit of an edge case.
      > Few people in broadcasting even use DNS or DHCP .... .. . ... uh ... OK.

      Do you work in television? Tee-Vee people aren't normal, anyway. :)

      (For the rest of you here: that's an insider's joke. Sorry.)

      But in radio, where I work, we use both DNS and DHCP quite frequently, thank you. :)

      Since you work in broadcasting, I'll even tell you the vendor's name: it's Comrex, by far one of the most popular for remote radio broadcasts. I would hardly consider them to be an "edge" case.

      But that's just me. And as for the rest of what I said, feel free to go to Trango's Website. As of mid-March, I did a search of their entire site (with their search, and then again with the "site:" option in Google and got zero hits on IPv6. Nada. Nothing. They are IPV4 only.

      --
      Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
    59. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by jythie · · Score: 1

      Of course 'not needed' doesn't solve anything, that is the point. 'Not needed' is a way of indicating that there is not a problem in the first place.

    60. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by jythie · · Score: 1

      Seems to be working pretty well for being 'broken'. I don't know where you got the idea that every host is 'supposed' to be addressable, but it has not been that way for a longtime. Principles are nice, but they have to justify their existence. You can not simply say 'there is a principle in play' and have that justify anything, esp when twisting things to meet that priciniple makes things more complex/expensive/etc and removes perfectly functional solutions to real problems.

    61. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Maybe someone wants the same IP address wherever she goes?"

      You don't understand IPv6, do you? Only part of the IPv6 address stays the same. That part that identifies you to external networks.....changes based on which external network you're on.

    62. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by smpoole7 · · Score: 2

      By the way, the "uh ... OK" in my reply is mine. For some reason the editor decided to join it to your quote. Sorry about that.

      But while I'm on a roll, let's see: hmm, umm ... My Dial Global satellite receiver uses both DNS and DHCP. It's IPv4-only, too. My Westwood One "Max" receiver, my XDS-Pro receiver and my Comstream (used for corporate feeds) is IPv4-only. The first two use DNS and obtain their address by DHCP by default. The Comstream was designed before gravity and dirt, so it's merely IPv4-only.

      At my transmitter sites, there are racks containing remote controls, HD Radio exciters and other equipment that are IPv4-only. These use both DNS and DHCP by default, because vendor's Websites might change addresses and they automatically log in to receive updates and scheduling info.

      How many more "edge" cases do you want? :)

      --
      Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
    63. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by QuantumRiff · · Score: 2

      You have obviously never had to build site to site VPN's to other customers/departments.. It completely loses any argument about 'private addresses that can't be reached' and in fact, makes it much, much worse.

      Source and destination NATing on an IPSEC vpn is a royal pain in the ass, but is necessary, because people seem to think NAT is a security feature, so they run their company on the same 10.10.x.x or 192.168.1.x subnet as everyone else.

      btw, how on earth do you use NAT without relying on a statefull firewall for your security? Isn't that a requirement to do NAT? do you scan and deny all outgoing traffic by default?

      --

      What are we going to do tonight Brain?
    64. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by jythie · · Score: 2, Informative

      Hush, you are getting in the way of the Apple hate! If people realized that the 6.0 utility was a rewrite with many features still in development, only containing the most commonly used ones, and released at the same time as the 5.6 utility so that people who do use those configuration features still can... well, that would get in the way of the "Apple sheeple are destroying the our internet!' narrative.

    65. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by sjames · · Score: 1

      Any conceivable scheme that would expand the address space would require a transition. There's nothing to be done about that.

      If you need an internal v4, fine, just run dual stack. NAT the v4 out or don't. (until the servers out there get v6, you'll probably want the NAT).

      What's hard there?

    66. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by DikSeaCup · · Score: 3, Informative

      In an interview one of the designers of IPv6 admitted that they should have made it backwards compatible. Hindsight being 20/20 and all that.

      The impression I get (since I'm part of the group that runs the network for a major southeastern university) is that everyone should be running dual-stack for a while. Any infrastructure equipment you get that runs v6 should also be able to run v4 fairly easily. Any time we upgrade all the equipment in a building, or put in a new building, the addressing for the switches gets done via IPv6. For a majority of desktops, dual stack is available. For servers ... it depends (the issues there being more human than technical).

      But we have the money available to us to have IPv6 capable equipment. At home, FiOS has yet to provide me anything that provides IPv6 connectivity natively (ignoring tunneling). From what I've ready recently, say what you will about Comcast, at least they're deploying it.

      The impression I get from your post is that you have equipment (both infrastructure and otherwise) that's more than 10 years old. I feel for you; we do, too. To a large extent, I'm not so sure you want an OS that old to have any kind of Internet access anyway. From a "It makes me feel good" stand-point, it would be nice if there were an easily implemented v4-v6 translation method available, but there just isn't.

      So, what am I trying to say? Well, I've never talked to the "IPv6 crowd," but I don't doubt that they can be obsessive. But need to maintain an internal IPv4 network? Oh my, that can't be that hard. IPv4 isn't going away any time soon, and I seriously doubt there's anything out there on the services side (IE, a website) that you couldn't easily get to via IPv4 (unless it's an IPv6 proof of concept site).

      It's going to be outside-in. Until all the major providers of home internet are providing at least a majority of their customer base IPv6 access, it's not going to be that big a deal. And even after they're doing that, you've got to assume that they'll be dual-stacking it, too. At least for a while.

    67. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by hairyfeet · · Score: 1, Redundant

      Actually its this kind of stupidity that has always had me hating IPV6. Frankly they should have included backwards compatibility with IPV4 private networks because who in the hell is EVER gonna have more devices than a class A private address can provide?

      Which brings us to the second stupid ass move with IPV6 the removal of NAT. That was stupid because it relies on what i call "Star trek thinking" where they only see the bright side of life, never the dark. engineer: "With IPV6 you'll have so many addresses you won't NEED NAT so everything can just be online!" Me-What about those of us who don't want to have everything online ALL the time, but don't want to switch back and forth between private and public addresses? What about the security risk as now I'll have to worry about the possibility of security weaknesses in every damned device like TVs, game machines, PMPs, etc? Engineer: "-------". Whether you love it or hate it you have to admit NAT WORKS, it makes it a hell of a lot harder to target an individual device on a network.

      But Apple has probably figured out what I could have told them years ago, that without backwards compatibility getting IPV4 and IPV6 to play nice is a giant PITA. Because so few use it either you default to IPV4 in which case you are just dragging around IPV6 for nothing, or you default to IPV6 in which case you have to wait for it to time out before switching to IPV4 which just slows every damned thing down. why they couldn't have encapsulated the IPV4 address INSIDE the IPV6 so that one could simply use IPV6 is anyone's guess but I bet Apple has done some surveys and found nobody is using the thing and it makes things more of a PITA. Considering Apple's "It just works" mantra making something a bigger PITA simply isn't on the agenda so no wonder they are scaling back support.

      BTW everyone here should pray that IPV4 lasts as long as possible because when the switch is flipped? May God have mercy upon your data packets because frankly the flyover states is gonna be fucked. The corps have royally screwed IT for so long when it comes to pay and hours most of the older guys rather than deal with the massive headaches that IPV6 will bring are just quietly getting other jobs and because again the corps are greedy shits the kids they are hiring to replace them just don't have the experience which is gonna make troubleshooting a nightmare. Then add in the fact with so few using it its a royal PITA to get any real hands on so when that switch is pulled shit that would have taken a few hours tops under IPV4 to fix will take days or even weeks under IPV6 simply because the experience isn't there. Anybody remember the clusterfuck that civilian Internet was during the 80s? How shit would just break and even the tech support was "uuuhhhh"? Frankly this is just one more reason I'm glad I'm out of corp IT because i wouldn't wish this trainwreck on my worst enemy and I don't blame Apple for just wanting to skip it when it just adds cost and shows no benefits to the majority of their customers whom I'm sure aren't using it.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    68. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by cheater512 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Far more additional complexity.

      A) You need an extra length field to specify the length in bytes so it doesn't accidentally start reading other data as part of the IP address.
      B) Makes routing more difficult. You can use bitmasks and so on to help with routing when it is in binary form. You'd need to expand everything to the binary form anyway.
      C) The vast majority of packets would be drastically larger. E.g. IPv4 ips are a 32bit long in a packet. 4 bytes. 255.255.255.255 is a whopping 15 bytes. Multiply that for a 128 bit (only 16 bytes) address.
      D) In some instances, IPv6 addresses are based on MAC addresses. No 'compression' there.

    69. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Engineer: "With IPV6 you'll have so many addresses you won't NEED NAT so everything can just be online!"

      Me-What about those of us who don't want to have everything online ALL the time, but don't want to switch back and forth between private and public addresses? What about the security risk as now I'll have to worry about the possibility of security weaknesses in every damned device like TVs, game machines, PMPs, etc?

      Engineer:

      "A firewall! You know, the other part of the NAT router which actually does the real work?"

    70. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by amorsen · · Score: 1

      Yes, 4to6 looked good ten years ago. Now we have DNSSEC and faking DNS records looks a lot less attractive. It's fine if you have a random box in the corner which can't be upgraded to support IPv6, but for general deployment it doesn't really cut it.

      --
      Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
    71. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Junta · · Score: 1

      NAT as a 'security' feature is one of the worst concepts to come out of the whole mess. Just because an address is actually consistent in the wide world does not mean your home router suddenly can no longer filter incoming traffic to various embedded device.

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
    72. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Junta · · Score: 4, Insightful

      existing solutions work just fine with ipv4.

      Really? Because I had to renumber my home network because I happened to conflict with one of my employers non-routable networks. I had established a peer VPN with an associate, but he had to renumber his network to do it. There are numerous departments I have had to deal with, but I can't connect to all their VPNs at the same time. Why? Because half of them used 10.0.0.0/8 as 'their' network.

      I don't believe, for a second, that all addresses in companies or homes need to be public addresses!

      Even if you believe that, ULA in IPv6 is really quite nice. Instead of conflicting with everyone using 10.0.0.0/8 because everyone likes having a fake class A, I have a 1 in 1^40 chance of conflicting with private addresses.

      I don't WANT my address to be easily and directly reachable.

      Everyone knows the address of the white house. That does not mean a gunman can walk through the front door just because he knows where to find it. Firewalling rules are still viable even if you aren't NATing.

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
    73. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Junta · · Score: 1

      For IPv6 to IPv4, now they've (admittedly a bit late) have endorsed NAT64 as a strategy.

      The biggest challenge IPv6 faces is that a lack of urgency makes these changes slow. In IPv4, things have historically been as bad and worse as IPv6 today. Advances and changes came about more quickly as the world really had no choice. However, slowly, the same thing is happening with ipv6. As more and more take it seriously, RFCs emerge and things evolve.

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
    74. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Junta · · Score: 2

      The only "security" NAT provides is *exactly* the same as a stateful firewall.

      As much as I agree with the sentiment, I will play devil's advocate for a moment. In an ideal world they are 100% equivalent. However, I think security people may consider NAT to be more 'failsafe'. If a NAT fails to apply its capabilities correctly, you have an outage and a problem, but it failed in a way that more likely than not still doesn't let foreign traffic in. For a stateful firewall, a failure is more equally likely to cause unwanted traffic to flow. Or, if being more pessimistic, cheap home routers stop bothering to set up rules as they aren't needed and naive consumers don't care.

      And I'm still not sure what so many people want to do with DHCPv6

      At the very least life is a bit more straightforward/familiar. I know a lot of people are content with RA for routing and mDNS for service discovery. Sometimes people like managing the address space a little differently. Having things more predictive and centralized also opens up the opportunity for things like trust relationships with DHCP servers in a way that's a bit more manageable than analagous meausers to mDNS. Also, RA by itself doesn't lend itself well for a non-routable network (I have networks with no current 'router' I'm DHCP managing with ULA, optimistically assuming I might get connected to other islands one day and not have to fret the nightmare of private address conflicts). I will add to your point that IPv6 has another nice characteristic. If your legitimate network management tracks the LLA, even if rouge DHCPv6/RA disrupts things, you actually have a shot at remotely recovering systems through their LLA.

      I think one of the biggest enemies of IPv6 adoption has been the attitudes of some of the architects behind it. You don't have to look for in various IETF mailing lists or similar places to see people making an earnest effort to adopt IPv6, but hitting roadblocks. They very specifically identify their problem and identify some behavior that could be brought forward from IPv4 to make their lives easier, and architects will rebuff them thoroughly. The most blatant example to come to mind is the refusal to put 'chaddr' from BOOTP into DHCPv6, or if it were even allowed as an option insist that it *must* not be used the way it was in BOOTP/DHCP. I'm content with client identifiers instead of interface identifiers and in fact my life is actually easier that way (well, after RFC 6355 at least). However some people have legitimate need and even among those that could change their thinking if they tried hard enough, why should they bother? The reason against chaddr seems more 'religious' than anything, which is a bad point to be stubborn on in the face of overwhelming demand.

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
    75. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Kalriath · · Score: 1

      NAT is not a security feature. That's what SPI Firewalls are for. And every router I've ever seen has one.

      --
      For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
    76. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Junta · · Score: 1

      I won't argue that. But look at my needs and what I have working now. I'm doing just fine with DHCP on an IPv4 internal network.

      Let's say you and I become business partners, and you need to reach my server. If you used 192.168.0.0/16 as your network and I used 192.168.0.0/16, we are kind of screwed.

      Apropos of the original article ... I suspect the real reason why Apple has done this is for two reasons:

      Reason 3: They did a major overhaul and people are reading too much into a deferred feature release.

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
    77. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by rs79 · · Score: 1

      "Every host is *SUPPOSED* to be addressable."

      Uh, that was pre Cantor and Siegal. That way lies madness now.

      --
      Need Mercedes parts ?
    78. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Junta · · Score: 1

      Again, this is something I find a bit silly, but the security people were worried that your MAC address was part of the address, but they are *also* concerned that traffic analyses can glean another dimension about the traffic they analyze. Traffic can be more trivially grouped by system, the numbers of systems on the other side of a gateway counted, etc etc. Of course, I've never really gotten a good idea of what non-trivial bad thing an 'attacker' could do with this data, and I've seen enough discussion that traffic analysis of similar quality is possible even with most NAT/PAT configurations to erode the argument, but stateless addressing won't sate the proponents of 'NAT for security!'

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
    79. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by ugen · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Just because a host is not directly addressable does not mean it should not be able to actually communicate with hosts outside. But I certainly don't want it to be "visible" or known.
      Just like I don't want anyone to be able to tell by looking at my home from the outside what brand of refrigerator I have or what's in my stove or dishwasher (even though they are connected to public utilities too), I don't want anyone to be able to (easily, at least) tell what network-connected devices I am using in my home. It's a basic tenet of privacy and security. Providing any type of unique per-device addressing defies this objective.

      Think of it in terms of real world addresses. My house has one, but not each bedroom or item of furnishing. They are "things within the house" and the only way someone gets to talk to them is by mailing a letter to "Attn. : Commode, John Doe, 123 Main st, New York, NY 10001".

    80. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by WaffleMonster · · Score: 1

      Actually, an IPv6 packet can be smaller than an IPv4 packet. The IPv4 header contains a lot of garbage not required by IPv6.

      No way IPv6 minimum fixed header length is 40 bytes. IPv4 header is 20 bytes. Getting rid of garbage helps but still twice the size. Hardware interests need their precious structure alignment so we are still left with some useless junk in IPv6 like the version field.

        As much as I like IPv6 a legitimate critisim of IPv6 is increased per packet overhead.

      In some applications with small payloads it adds significant overhead. VoIP applications, interactive shells, keepalives, dns.. per packet payload is typically less than 80 bytes to minimize latency. A low latency VoIP application requires about 15% more bandwidth for the same communication via IPv6. For normal web site viewing and bulk transfers on a percentage of total packet basis it is insignificant.

    81. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But since it's a firewall and not shitty NAT, I have three SSH servers on port 22 and two webservers on port 80 that are publicly routable. Try doing that with NAT

      This!

    82. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by jgrahn · · Score: 1

      :) As one of the original authors of some of the software that makes this Internet run (you probably are using it too, at least indirectly)

      Care to name it? Because I find your analogy about NATing with physical privacy in your own home rather bizarre. And it should be obvious to anyone who has taken a quick look at e.g. TCP that end-to-end *is* an internet principle.

    83. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by arth1 · · Score: 2

      The only "security" NAT provides is *exactly* the same as a stateful firewall. No more, no less. It makes no sense to talk about NAT providing some different kind or amount of security than a stateful firewall.

      Um, no. A NAT hides the internal network topology from the outside, and won't uniquely identify a client to an outside server.

      The remote end of the socket has no business knowing whether it's the same device that connects for to separate sockets. Ad revenue based companies like Google and Facebook as well as *AA and DHS will rejoice over the possibilities this will give them. That is a security concern whether or not you are willing to see it.

    84. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, you are correct. Not every host is supposed to be addressable. And those that aren't, shouldn't be publicly routable either. NAT is a band-aid where to provide access to clients when you don't have enough IP addresses. It is NOT a friggin' security feature. The fact that it uses private addresses, had nothing to do with the purpose of a private (IE, NON-ROUTABLE) address.

    85. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Even if you believe that, ULA in IPv6 is really quite nice. Instead of conflicting with everyone using 10.0.0.0/8 because everyone likes having a fake class A, I have a 1 in 1^40 chance of conflicting with private addresses.

      Pretty bloody likely!

    86. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by RoccamOccam · · Score: 1

      1 in 1^40 chance of conflicting? I'll take that bet!

    87. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      This, 1000 times this.

      NAT may not add security, but it does add privacy.

    88. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by WaffleMonster · · Score: 1

      The more you know about security the less you'd rely on stateful firewalls for security. For organizations that care about security, every device in the network not having a publicly accessible address is a desirable feature and not a problem. The day someone makes a mistake does not necessarily expose your entire network. It just exposes the servers/services that you hopefully have already hardened for such a scenario. A NAT router does not protect your internal network from your ISP and whoever has control over the adjacent network to it, but that risk is way lower.

      1:many NAT router is less secure than SPI cause ALGs and their associated packet mangler state machines are subject to compromise.

      Internal networks for "security" is an old joke that is not much funny anymore.

      All it takes is one employee to be suckered into opening the wrong attachment to create a bridge between your Internal network and the Internet and all your "security" goes down the drain.

      If you want real "network" security you need airgap or IPSec with sane access policies. Anything less is a delusion.

    89. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by element-o.p. · · Score: 1

      To the user, there is no practical difference. "...Still there, you just can't get to it" might as well be "removed entirely" as far as a user wanting to build an IPv6 network is concerned.

      --
      MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
    90. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You are completely wrong. It's IPv4 that wasn't "well thought out" (under your definition), it was never supposed to work on the scale it does. IPv4 was, more or less, proof of concept (this is from the people who created it BTW) and expected to be replaced way before now if it actually took off. IPv6 is the proper solution, the hacks that have kept IPv4 going till now is the "here's the answer", classless routing and clever hacks like NAT that break fundamental assumptions and require yet more clever hacks to make things work.

    91. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by element-o.p. · · Score: 1

      Have you looked at what it takes to NAT IPv4 to IPv6? There are 2^128 possible addresses in IPv6 vs 2^32 in IPv4. Thus it is simply impossible to map all possible IPv6 addresses into IPv4, for starters. You can map a subset, but then you have to have a stateful firewall doing the mapping, and adjusting the mapping on the fly. Next, DNS is an issue, because you aren't just translating an internal subnet to an external subnet. You have to proxy DNS as well and that has to be consistent with the mapping on your firewall. The end result is that you need a significantly beefier router/firewall to NAT IPv4 to IPv6. It becomes a lot easier to DoS a network because of the additional overhead of NAT'ing IPv4 to IPv6. There are already workarounds in place for all of these problems, but each one comes with its own set of tradeoffs, and the network administrator has to be aware of what those tradeoffs are and make the best choice for his application.

      It's somewhat easier if you are running IPv6 internally and want to reach an IPv4 Internet, but it's still a lot more complex than NAT'ing RFC-1918 addresses into public IPv4 addresses like we are all used to doing.

      --
      MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
    92. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by nurb432 · · Score: 1

      And how many business are going to be using an airport to provide vpn services?

      --
      ---- Booth was a patriot ----
    93. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by element-o.p. · · Score: 1

      Yep. Of all the compatibility schemes I've seen, dual stack is the only one that really makes sense to me. The other ones (tunneling, NAT in its various implementations) all seemed too complex and involved too many trade-offs, IMHO. You can make them work, but...ugh.

      Even dual stack has its issues. For starters, that means you need to have two configurations on every piece of network equipment -- routers, servers, desktops, switches, firewalls. And correct me if I'm wrong, but with dual stack, don't you generally try one addressing scheme first and then fail over to the second, if you can't reach the device? You try a DNSv6 lookup for your host, but you get a nack on that host name, so then you have to send a *second* DNS request, IPv4 this time, and wait for that response. IIRC, Vista did that by default, and people complained that Vista was a dog compared to XP until they learned to turn IPv6 off (I think they still complained it was a dog, but at least it was a Husky or Malemute instead of a lazy, old hound dog, lol).

      <shrug>

      There *are* ways of getting IPv4 and IPv6 to play together, but it's still kind of a PITA, no matter how you do it. I heard the same story about the IPv6 engineers realizing they could have done a better job providing transition tools, but there's only so much you can do when opening up a vastly larger address space.

      --
      MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
    94. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Don't know why they header doesn't specify the address in the same way that utf8 specifies numbers.

      Because with fixed-length address fields, I can implement routing with NAND gates.

      --
      Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
    95. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by marcosdumay · · Score: 1

      IPv6 adds needless complexity and simply isn't needed.

      Unless you want to do VoIP. Or use some instant mesaging software that doesn't spy on you. Or want to be able to login on more than one computer inside your network. Or you want to run BitTorrent for any reason. Or want to descentralize your network setup... Well, in a couple of seconds I couldn't think in any other reason.

    96. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by bsane · · Score: 1

      With that attitude- please retire. People that can adapt to changing technologies will handle things from here...

      Theres nothing wrong with ipv6. Corporate networks may never switch from ipv4, and they don't need to. The rest of the world needs to start supporting dual stack in the next year or two, and be ready for primarily ipv6 internet by the end of the decade (at least).

    97. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by jroysdon · · Score: 1

      VLANs are layer 2, not layer 3. Your same VLAN that has IPv4 can have IPv6.

      Not sure what you're running, all of my Cisco gear just needed an IOS upgrade to get IPv6. My HP switches don't need IPv6 addresses or even understanding of IPv6 to pass the traffic along. Only my core routers where my VLAN interfaces route IPv4 & IPv6. Same with all the microwave stuff we have - it's all just bridging equipment, and (mostly) doesn't care what we are bridging (that's not 100% true, as I've run into pieces of few low-end gear that won't bridge IPv6 traffic, but that's few and far between).

      My biggest problem is that some of my Cisco gear won't do L2L VPNs with IPv4 & IPv6 remote LANs going over IPv4. I can do 4in4, 6in4, 4in6, but not 4&6in4 (or 4&6in6). It'll get there, but for now my remote sites don't get IPv6, and that's OK.

      I do have to keep pestering Websense to add IPv6 filtering support. Any time now they're supposed to add it. For now, that means we don't allow any external IPv6 surfing since we can't filter it.

    98. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by mjwx · · Score: 1

      Turns out Airport is not a router, but a sort of wireless switch (no modem).

      Your terminology is not quite standard.

      So this is probably another speed optimization as packets are 96bit smaller and your home network probably isn't filled with more than 4294967296 devices.

      My comparatively ancient and underpowered WRT54G manages IPv6 just fine.

      But more to the point, the Airport Extreme itself is perfectly capable of routing IPv6, so your point is moot. It's just that IPv6 support is no longer included in the configuration utility.

      I dont deal with Apple equipment for a variety of reasons but... Does it not have a WAN port? Then IPv6 routing may very well be required of it. In Australia, Fibre connections come out of a NTU (Network Termination Unit) as an ethernet cable and expect a Layer 3 device. IPv6 support will be required for the WAN connection despite there only being 2 or 3 devices on the LAN side of things.

      That old Linksys WRT54G (yep, I have one too, fantastic little routers) is fine for connecting up to an NTU.

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
    99. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      And I'm sure, just like FCP X, they will charge you and upgrade fee for the 'new' version with those old features.

    100. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 1

      Yep, it has a WAN port. And yes, it can do IPv6 routing. Using Airport Utility v5, you can set it up as an IPv6 host (in case you wanted to use it for printer or disk sharing), a router (if you have native IPv6 from your ISP), or a tunnel (automatically with 6to4, or manually if you use a tunnel broker like HE). I was commenting on the OP's terminology, like he was implicating that if it didn't have a modem then it was some sort of a switch.

      I have two 54G's: one is my house NAT/firewall/router, and the other runs in bridged mode to provide WiFi to the opposite end of the house. They're great little units! But the lure of the Airport Extreme with it's simultaneous b/g/n support and generally very nice specs was too strong to pass up.

      --
      Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
    101. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by crawdad62 · · Score: 2

      I guess the same can be said for the people that hate Apple. Why would someone that has absolutely no interest in a subject feel so compelled to click the article, read it along with all the comments (so they can pick out just the right one to respond to) and then spread the hate. I really don't like eggplant but I can't remember the last time I trolled an eggplant forum.

    102. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Tim+the+Gecko · · Score: 1

      And correct me if I'm wrong, but with dual stack, don't you generally try one addressing scheme first and then fail over to the second, if you can't reach the device? You try a DNSv6 lookup for your host, but you get a nack on that host name, so then you have to send a *second* DNS request, IPv4 this time, and wait for that response. IIRC, Vista did that by default, and people complained that Vista was a dog compared to XP until they learned to turn IPv6 off

      This problem was solved in time for last year's IPv6 test day (June 8th, 2011) - http://www.conceivablytech.com/7616/products/google-preps-chrome-for-ipv6-test-day

      The trick is to send an IPv4 request if you don't get a very rapid (300ms) turnround from IPv6, and then use whichever comes first. I think this logic is now applied in Firefox, etc., as well as Chrome.

    103. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Lord_Jeremy · · Score: 1

      The firmware on the router still has all the IPv6 support that it's always had. The new UI just doesn't support accessing those features.

    104. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by CAIMLAS · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I don't think Apple is that retarded...

      I'm sure I'll be modded flamebait for this, but I take it you don't have much dealing with Apple products in a support capacity. They can be pretty retarded. Little things like:

      * Improper grounding on wifi cards in the macbook air
      * Driver/kernel integration with DHCP
      * Signed binaries becoming corrupt requiring a full reinstall (or similar)
      * Removing features and adding steps to perform basic tasks while calling it 'streamlining'
      * Removing compatibility for no apparent reason (eg. samba removal)

      --
      ~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
    105. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by mjwx · · Score: 1

      I have two 54G's: one is my house NAT/firewall/router, and the other runs in bridged mode to provide WiFi to the opposite end of the house. They're great little units! But the lure of the Airport Extreme with it's simultaneous b/g/n support and generally very nice specs was too strong to pass up.

      Asus have a unit that has BGN support, as does Netgear.

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
    106. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by saleenS281 · · Score: 2

      Apple actually does ipv6 right. I run ipv6 at home, and all of my OSX systems handle it flawlessly. Win7 requires me to kill ipv6, because there's no good way to tell the system to prefer ipv6. It ALWAYS tries to do lookups via ipv6 first. I've tried all the registry hacks and I've yet to get it to change that behavior. Because of that, queries always fail, and shit randomly breaks. This is the *wrong way* MS. Let me easily set priority of v4 vs. v6.

      The problem with Apple is the oversimplification shit has gone too far on this one. They wanted airport utility to match the iphone utility, and the iphone utility is completely crippled. They should've found a way to increase functionality in the iphone app instead of removing it from the standalone.

    107. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just because a host is not directly addressable does not mean it should not be able to actually communicate with hosts outside. But I certainly don't want it to be "visible" or known.
      Just like I don't want anyone to be able to tell by looking at my home from the outside what brand of refrigerator I have or what's in my stove or dishwasher (even though they are connected to public utilities too), I don't want anyone to be able to (easily, at least) tell what network-connected devices I am using in my home. It's a basic tenet of privacy and security. Providing any type of unique per-device addressing defies this objective.

      Think of it in terms of real world addresses. My house has one, but not each bedroom or item of furnishing. They are "things within the house" and the only way someone gets to talk to them is by mailing a letter to "Attn. : Commode, John Doe, 123 Main st, New York, NY 10001".

      I was also under the impression from some people that there were design flaws in ipv6.
      Something to do with "axe murderers"

    108. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by saleenS281 · · Score: 1

      Let's continue to have a walled garden internet of "providers" and "consumers" with significant price differentials depending on which you want to be. That's what you're lobbying.

      I'll take some things being broken in the short term so that the internet can operate like it was originally intended to in the long term.

    109. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by emt377 · · Score: 0

      NAT is a routing feature. Routing is handled by routers. NAT is not needed to route IPv6.

      Firewalls implement traffic policies. Whatever restrictions were implied by NAT on v4 is implemented as explicit policy control for IPv6. Basically you tell the firewall what if anything on the inside should be accessible, and what on the outside if anything should be accessible for which hosts.

      Using a crutch routing feature like NAT to implement traffic policy is a pretty damn retarded idea, it's fragile and barely works.

      Now, there ARE legitimate migration issues with v6. They're not so much technical as practical. If an online game company for instance sees lots of bot access from a certain set of IP addresses they'll want to temporarily block this. This is often moderately effective to mitigate attacks. But with IPv6 renumbering hosts is trivial, and the attacker would just come back with a different address. So instead of blocking a few addresses and quickly figure out the subnet if any, you end up having to research how that particular downstream partitions the routing prefix and block that particular last hop's routing prefix. It's often not as easy as simply looking at the prefix half of the address.

    110. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by emt377 · · Score: 1

      it's fragile and barely works.

      If in doubt, google "NAT traversal".

    111. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by unixisc · · Score: 2

      Actually its this kind of stupidity that has always had me hating IPV6. Frankly they should have included backwards compatibility with IPV4 private networks because who in the hell is EVER gonna have more devices than a class A private address can provide?

      Which brings us to the second stupid ass move with IPV6 the removal of NAT. That was stupid because it relies on what i call "Star trek thinking" where they only see the bright side of life, never the dark. engineer: "With IPV6 you'll have so many addresses you won't NEED NAT so everything can just be online!" Me-What about those of us who don't want to have everything online ALL the time, but don't want to switch back and forth between private and public addresses? What about the security risk as now I'll have to worry about the possibility of security weaknesses in every damned device like TVs, game machines, PMPs, etc? Engineer: "-------". Whether you love it or hate it you have to admit NAT WORKS, it makes it a hell of a lot harder to target an individual device on a network.

      NAT is a retarded way of being online, always intended as a temporary solution and forced due to the shortage of IP addresses. If you don't want certain things to be on the internet, then simply assign them private addresses, but not public ones. In IPv6, any device can have multiple IP addresses, but that doesn't mean that they have to. If you don't want a device, such as your console, to be online, simply disconnect it from the external network - say if you want your kids to play w/ each other within the LAN, but not connect w/ someone in Moscow or Seoul playing the same game. There is no reason why the protocol has to be crippled in order to accomodate it.

      If the console needs to be online, just let it fetch a public IP address (one of the 2^64 addresses on your link), and directly connect online. Worried about security? Just set up your firewall accordingly, and you then determine what traffic is allowed and what ain't. If you don't want your console to be online, but just want to connect to the other consoles, PCs and netbooks in the house, assign a private (i.e. link local) address to the toy, and be done w/ it. But there is no reason that the private network needs to be the vehicle to connect to the public network - it's like one is currently using a bicycle to get to BART, and taking the train from that point, and later, when one gets a car, complaining that there isn't the capability to use the bike to get to the car.

      But Apple has probably figured out what I could have told them years ago, that without backwards compatibility getting IPV4 and IPV6 to play nice is a giant PITA. Because so few use it either you default to IPV4 in which case you are just dragging around IPV6 for nothing, or you default to IPV6 in which case you have to wait for it to time out before switching to IPV4 which just slows every damned thing down. why they couldn't have encapsulated the IPV4 address INSIDE the IPV6 so that one could simply use IPV6 is anyone's guess but I bet Apple has done some surveys and found nobody is using the thing and it makes things more of a PITA. Considering Apple's "It just works" mantra making something a bigger PITA simply isn't on the agenda so no wonder they are scaling back support.

      My guess is that Apple has just - probably for the time being - disabled the IPv6 configuration, since it just confuses people who don't know whether to use it, and how. They'd be really stupid if their long term plan was to not support IPv6 at all.

      BTW everyone here should pray that IPV4 lasts as long as possible because when the switch is flipped? May God have mercy upon your data packets because frankly the flyover states is gonna be fucked. The corps have royally screwed IT for so long when it comes to pay and hours most of the older guys rather than deal with the massive headaches that IPV6 will bring are just quietly getting other jobs and because aga

    112. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by sjames · · Score: 1

      I didn't say nat v4 to v6, I said run DUAL STACK and if you like, NAT the v4 (to v4, not to v6).

      Also don't NAT v6 to v4, run DUAL STACK.

    113. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by emt377 · · Score: 1

      The thing the GP really wants is a firewall. If he doesn't want people on the internet connecting to his systems, all he has to do is say so. Firewalls have been around for a while and work just fine in IPv6; this is a solved problem.

      I think he's suggesting he doesn't want say a web site to be able to differentiate access from different internal computers, and NAT makes them indistinguishable.

      In some organizations this may be a legitimate concern; for instance, an employee may not be allowed how many people work on a particular project. By collecting host information this secrecy is compromised.

      Of course, in this case the right policy is to restrict outbound access to go through a web proxy, or restrict outbound access period, because even natted IPv4 is going to leak internal organizational info. (Amazon, for instance, will know fairly precisely how many of their customers work at google in mountain view.)

    114. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by hairyfeet · · Score: 1

      And the fact that every geek here is screaming "firewall!" just illustrates what a Star trek problem truly is. You see because YOU have no problem with firewalls you automatically assume that the CONSUMERS won't have a problem either. you know what they say about assume right?

      As someone who deals with consumers 6 days a week i can tell you handing the average home user a firewall is like handing a monkey a wrench and letting them loose in a bomb factory. Sure there might not be a giant boom, but IRL you'll be lucky if the chimp don't blow the place sky high.

      so you either need to add a shitload of support costs or do a major redesign of the entire firewall concept to make it user friendly. while I wish you luck I can tell you it'll probably end up like most IPV6/V4 dual setups I've seen, broken.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    115. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by emt377 · · Score: 1

      > A small business with maybe 10-20 devices on an internal network doesn't care about IPv6.

      IPv6 isn't only about having more adresses. For instance, stateless address autoconfiguration is interesting in a local network.

      Unfortunately the spec relies on the MAC address. This means if the host can make outbound connections to the public Internet you'll be broadcasting your MAC addr. Some software uses this as part of a hash to generate host-specific session keys and such, so sharing it with the whole world isn't always such a great idea. It would have been much better if the spec simply called for md5(macaddr) instead.

    116. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

      One form of privacy that NAT offers is that it masks Internet Service Providers from knowing exactly how many devices you have attached to the modem/router they provide. When IPV6 is rolled out, it will allow ISPs to enumerate, and bill, for everything you have connected.

      That sounds like a shocking rollback in privacy to me.

    117. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

      NAT keeps my ISP from knowing how many and what sort of devices I have connected downstream from the demarcation point where their wire enters my house. And they have no fucking need to know. IPV6 may allow the ISPs to charge per device connected. They will doubtless do so for commercial reasons, not to invade privacy. Or they'll do it to make sure only Their Brand of hardware is attached.

      Lots of possibilities.

    118. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by unixisc · · Score: 1

      You can have the same privacy in IPv6 using DHCP6. You assign certain addresses to certain devices using your own schemes, and allow only a few of them, such as your web server, to be accessable externally. People won't be able to tell what device of yours is connected to 2001:432:1:22:fedc:ba98:7654:3210 if you have the firewall set up to block any external access to that - they won't even be able to tell whether it's used or not.

      And again, things that don't need to connect to the external internet do not ned external IPv6 addresses - just assign them a link local address, like fe80::ace and you're done

    119. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by element-o.p. · · Score: 1

      Cool -- I hadn't heard that. Thanks for sharing!

      --
      MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
    120. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by unixisc · · Score: 1

      Which part are you referring to? The interface ID - the lower 8 bytes - can be the same, provided they are configured that way by a DHCP6 server, not if they are automatically obtained through Router Advertisements. The upper 6 bytes - the global prefix - will change according to the network, while the next 2 bytes will change depending on that network's assignments of various subnets.

    121. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by element-o.p. · · Score: 1

      'Kay, I didn't pick up on what you were suggesting with NAT, since that doesn't really address the topic we were discussing (bridging an IPv4 private network onto an IPv6 network). The post that I replied to recommended staying with IPv4 networks. I commented that translating IPv4 to IPv6 was doable, but ugly. I also mentioned that dual stack was the best option.

      In other words, we are in agreement about which technologies work, and we aren't even arguing the same topic ;)

      --
      MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
    122. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by sjames · · Score: 1

      Then where is the nekked emperor? Run dual stack, be happy.

    123. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 1, Offtopic

      You don't need to hand them the firewalls; they don't even need to know that one exists. Just put it in the IPv6 router, and configure it such that effect on security is same as NAT (i.e. no random incoming connections), out of the box.

    124. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by CAIMLAS · · Score: 1

      The people assigning networks for major ISPs have a hard time understanding IPv4 cidr and subnetting in general as it stands.

      If you think addresses which are exponentially more complex are going to make things any easier you've got another thing coming... I can only imagine spending 5 hours on the phone trying to get them to fix their fubars instead of the 2-3 it takes now....

      --
      ~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
    125. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by CAIMLAS · · Score: 1

      Every host is *SUPPOSED* to be addressable.

      No, no it is not.

      It was supposed to be that way, back when the Internet was designed. That was before your average business person walked around with two or more Internet connected devices and your average person had at least one - IE, today. The reality is quite different.

      Not all devices are created equal. In fact, most devices on a network should not be able to address anything more than themselves and their gateway, and maybe a small subnet of local servers (a use case in which IPv6 would likely be well suited).

      What I think is funny is that IPv6 proponents are all gung-ho about IPv6 but then make note of the fact that they use it - with NAT'd IPv4 addresses. Why would you bother doing that if IPv6 met your needs? Well, simply put, it probably doesn't.

      But since it's a firewall and not shitty NAT, I have three SSH servers on port 22 and two webservers on port 80 that are publicly routable. Try doing that with NAT

      A valid usecase, I will grant you. Point: you probably shouldn't be doing that unless you've got a good reason to be doing it, for security reasons. Small exposure is a good level of exposure, even if the machines are 'secure'. Accidents happen, 0day exploits happen, and people go on vacation. Obscurity has it's place.

      --
      ~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
    126. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by WaffleMonster · · Score: 1

      NAT keeps my ISP from knowing how many and what sort of devices I have connected downstream from the demarcation point where their wire enters my house. And they have no fucking need to know. IPV6 may allow the ISPs to charge per device connected. They will doubtless do so for commercial reasons, not to invade privacy.

      It really does no such thing. There are an endless number of ways an ISP can fuck you over including monitoring higher layer traffic to count number of devices you have behind your IPv4 NAT. They may also limit number of established tcp sessions or source port usage to effectivly limit concurrent use. If your an ISP and paying for expensive DPI gear might as well use it...

      With IPv6 privacy addresses enabled on devices by default it is not so easy since local bits of your IPs keeps changing over time. They have to do more than simply count unique IPs. However your right it is a real danger.... no doubt some will see IPv6 as an opportunity to press their luck.

      In the end there is no substitute for market competition.

    127. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by tobiah · · Score: 1

      Re:Because 32bits of addressing... (Score:?)
              by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16, @02:03AM

              Ya, the samba thing was a time-waster. But OS 10.7 Lion as a whole is a messy memory-hogging waste of time. They changed the default compiler which undermines package-managers like fink, installing dev tools no longer installs command-line options (it's a sub-option), and scrolling is backwards! Snow Leopard (10.6) gets you into the iOS market and and is very efficient. I hope the next one forks from there.

      --
      "The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
    128. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by rdebath · · Score: 1

      Sigh, you don't need NAT to intercept connections, at the primitive level you can block the connection with a firewall and receive and respond to the connection with packet capture. All the IPtables 'REDIRECT' target does it wrap this up into a 'simple' interface; when your server program receives the connection it still has the IP address that the original connection was being made to so it can continue the proxy connection even if the client doesn't say what it was trying to do. NAT actually breaks this.

    129. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      255.255.255.255 is 15 bytes? In String form, maybe, but at layer 3 those 32 bits are either on or off, and an IPv4 address is always 4 bytes.

    130. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by arkane1234 · · Score: 1

      *sits back with popcorn watching apple haters expecting some kind of fight* ahah

      --
      -- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
    131. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by arkane1234 · · Score: 1

      Why do you care if other people hate Apple?

      Apple fans caring about that is the main cause of the hate.

      And conversely, why do you care if other people don't hate Apple?
      Apple haters caring about that is the main cause of the hate.

      --
      -- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
    132. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Jepp, this is the usual bullshit article. I wanted to post it as well, the funny thing is that Apple is fully aware that some users need the ipv6 support and hence they added a download link for a new version to the old admin tool as well, for power users.
      IPv6 is not the only feature which got the axe in the new admin tool for now, also printing support was axed.
      This is the typical rewrite problem of not being able to get all features in, in time.

    133. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by V!NCENT · · Score: 1

      Well aside from an iPad, I don't own Apple products. I hate Apple products, but when I was in need of a tablet for setting up my own Cloud with a Linux box, and I was able to get one for free, why not?

      I was googleing what the hell Airport was, stumbled upon an Apple page explaining the home network. Then I searched for routing capabilities, as no such thing was mentioned on that particular Apple page (they removed IPv6, so go figure) and then I stumbled upon a Mac forum in which someone asked if he/she could use Airport as a router with his modem, to which someone replied that it could be possible, implying that it's not actually supposed to be used for that.

      I could have looked further, but didn't really like the braincell killing content of all the 'information' (stupid computernoob-talk) Google gave me, so I gave up. That's why said 'investigate', not investigate.

      --
      Here be signatures
    134. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by V!NCENT · · Score: 1

      And by default I'm guessing GCC? Don't know, but Apple used to include that in Mac OS X, untill GCC was released under the GPLv3, Apple stuck with that ever older GCC GPLv2 version and is developping Clang (I believe?) as a compiler frontend for LLVM (Low Level Virtual Machine Jit compiler thing).

      --
      Here be signatures
    135. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by fuzzel · · Score: 1

      > Win7 requires me to kill ipv6, because there's no good way to tell the system to prefer ipv6.

      If you have tunneled connectivity, thus non-native being announced on an Ethernet interface you will likely have to set in the registry:

      SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\Dnscache\Parameters\AddrConfigControl = 0 (DWORD)

      That way AAAA lookups are always performed and also preferred. Though it still depends on the application if it actually uses getaddrinfo() at all and does not resort addresses itself, which some applications do and some others do not.

      > Let me easily set priority of v4 vs. v6.

      With Lion Apple has implemented a variant (quite unrelated to the IETF drafts) of Happy Eyeballs in their systems. As such, depending on previous connection history, latency and other factors you might get IPv4 or IPv6 connections at random. And nope, there is no knob at all to turn off that behavior. Right back at you.

      (oh and yes, I have a Mac too, which is why it kinda annoys me, but if you just slow down IPv4 a bit on the outbound router you always get IPv6 as the Mac thinks that IPv4 is "slower" than IPv6... still a knob would be useful, yes, bug reported a long time ago)

    136. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by HJED · · Score: 2

      Actually the airport express is a wireless AP, which can and is designed to act as a router.
      The airport extreme is a wireless router with some modem functionality, it can also act as a wireless AP.
      Both of these have DHCP and print/file sharing servers.

      --
      null
    137. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Except that a firewall does only half the job.
      You also need a tool to address rewriting and port rewriting to get the same features.
      Because you might want to have a nice simple address and the default port on the inside but not on the outside.
      Or you might want to easily switch which computer provides the outside services.
      Or you might not want to have to switch all your internal addresses just because your provider decided to give you a different IPv6 prefix (very likely at the latest when you moved to a different country).
      Oh, that can all be done. But it is completely irrelevant if it can be done if nobody is doing it. Which IPv6 router provides all these features that they had with NAT almost for free?

    138. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Electricity+Likes+Me · · Score: 1

      Bingo.

      This isn't a hard problem and it certainly isn't a protocol problem and with the proliferation of Linux based router/firewalls its not even an implementation problem. Any consumer IPv6 device should default it's firewall to "disallow unsolicited inbound". Slap Bonjour and UPnP on top of that so people's XBoxes and iPads can continue to unsafely open whatever ports they like and go nuts.

    139. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Electricity+Likes+Me · · Score: 1

      Yes I am 100% sure this will happen, not in any way lead to immediate public backlash and then be trivially defeated by people NAT'ing everything again promptly.

      It's not going to happen, and /. needs to get over this mindset that all security and freedom must be provided by technology first because it was never remotely possible.

    140. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Electricity+Likes+Me · · Score: 1

      What I think is funny is that IPv6 proponents are all gung-ho about IPv6 but then make note of the fact that they use it - with NAT'd IPv4 addresses. Why would you bother doing that if IPv6 met your needs? Well, simply put, it probably doesn't.

      Because the whole world isn't IPv6 yet, and you clearly don't understand how IP addressing works?

    141. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Electricity+Likes+Me · · Score: 1

      In an interview one of the designers of IPv6 admitted that they should have made it backwards compatible. Hindsight being 20/20 and all that.

      I'm curious as to what they think could've been done to make that work. You feed a router ASIC designed for 32-bit addressing a 128-bit address, and you're going to get nothing sensible out.

      The problem is the lack of transition mechanisms and the collective action problem that no one group has any incentive to implement them.

    142. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Those tunnel brokers almost all provide a slow service with 90% uptime (even if you ignore the times when they are too slow to be really usable).
      So make that "it will make it an insignificant bit easier occasionally and huge pain and waste of time the rest of the time".

    143. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by 1s44c · · Score: 1

      is all the world will need for the next 20 years, right?

      Apple don't make products to last 20 years. They make products that last 6 months to 1 year at which point they are no longer 'cool' and should be replaced with new ones.

      Apple products are a non stop treadmill designed to extract as much cash as possible from their customers.

    144. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't need to tell me, through no cash outlay of my own, I have come to acquire a PowerPC MacMini - perfectly serviceable except that you can't upgrade the OS, a MacBook Pro that would cost more than a new UltraBook to restore its graphics chip to non-overheating functional status, and an iPad 1 - that's still pretty useful after 2 years, but definitely trying hard to be made obsolete by the new hardware.

      My non-Apple electronic gadgets tend to run about 10 years before they feel as old and outdated as a 3 year old Apple product.

    145. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by allo · · Score: 1

      i do not think you know, how privacy extensions work.

    146. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by allo · · Score: 1

      firewall which allows outgoing traffic and denies incoming connections. and privacy-extensions, which obfuscate how many hosts are there, and which one is communicating at the moment.

    147. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Which they recommend to be disabled for good reasons, namely that it will potentially break any application not written with it in mind.
      So you replace the ugly side-effects of NAT with something with even uglier side effects that probably is also less effective at doing it, and you still need a firewall on top of it.
      Nice job, if you wanted to make things as complex as possible that is.

    148. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by wasabii · · Score: 1

      All of my office machines have public IPv6 addresses. It's quite awesome. Makes so much stuff so much easier.

    149. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by kestasjk · · Score: 1

      But there's simplified routing due to no checksums or fragmentation. Plus 20 bytes isn't much compared to typical MTU sizes (and doesn't make a difference for low latency stuff).

      Is it really plausible that networking standards groups would back a new protocol, released 20 years later than a protocol which preceded the modern internet, and that it would be worse overall?

      --
      // MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
    150. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Finally someone mentions PRIVACY. Thank you. Every-light-bulb-needs-a-unique-ID people never got it.

    151. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yet you don't seem to understand privacy extensions, which confound logging by generating lots of useless addresses rather than by trying to hide them all.

      I don't see how the same mind that considers NAT broken can formulate this sentence without throttling itself.

    152. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have a 1 in 1^40 chance of conflicting with private addresses.

      A 100% chance to conflict isn't really that good :P

    153. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The really case for IP6 is for Quality Of Service (QOS), not address space.
      Said that, I rather use DUMB IP4 than smart IP6 that will allow for a lot of abuse.

    154. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by bobcat7677 · · Score: 1

      I don't like Apple, but I don't like IPv6 even more...it's a very bad solution to a problem that deserves the most elegant solution possible. So in this case the enemy of my enemy is my friend I guess.

    155. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by CAIMLAS · · Score: 1

      You realize IPv6 and IPv4 are incompatible, right?

      The whole world will never be just IPv6. You've got over 30 years behind IPv4 now, with the proponents of IPv6 wasting our time for over a decade with only marginal penetration. Even then, the penetration is bootstrapping to IPv4 so it doesn't break the original design of the Internet.

      Maybe, just maybe, IPv4 will be around for a while. If IPv6 were backward compatible, integrated with OS networking stacks a decade ago, the transition may not be so painful. As it stands, IPv6 will be a long time coming.

      --
      ~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
    156. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, it's not an important distinction. The projected date when RIPE (the European address authority) will run out of IPv4 addresses is August 12, 2012. After that date, NO NEW CUSTOMER (be it home or business) will be able to get a new IPv4 public address.

      Sure, some ISPs will place their "home" customers behind large NATs (called CGNs for Carrier Grade NATs), but that means a LOT of applications (like Skype) will stop working for those customers. CGNs cause a large number of very bad problems.

      IPv6 address space is the only solution. If you don't want your machines reachable from the public internet, place them behind a firewall, like you should have done in the first place. Using a NAT as a "outgoing connections only" firewall just complicates a large number of internet protocols, and introduces problems which even a very basic (cheap) firewall would not have.

    157. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by bigtrike · · Score: 1

      If you've got 2^64 IPs to choose from, just switch frequently.

    158. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by gl4ss · · Score: 1

      Jepp, this is the usual bullshit article. I wanted to post it as well, the funny thing is that Apple is fully aware that some users need the ipv6 support and hence they added a download link for a new version to the old admin tool as well, for power users.
      IPv6 is not the only feature which got the axe in the new admin tool for now, also printing support was axed.
      This is the typical rewrite problem of not being able to get all features in, in time.

      in time for what? I could understand the pressure for the new config utility if the old one didn't have ipv6 and printer support in it.. but not the other way around..

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    159. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by gl4ss · · Score: 1

      can't you build nat for ipv6 too though? just put them all behind the same ipv6 address? there's not anything fundamental about the protocol that would prevent such shenigans anyhow - and there can't be(and yes nat/ip masquerading is shenigans..).

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    160. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Furthermore, the 6.0 utility is intended for Ma' and Pa'... anyone needing more detailed controls uses the 5.6 utility that was released along side the 6.0 utility. I think the numbering convention is confusing but 5.5 is essentually the administrators utility while 6.0 is the consumer at home utility.

    161. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by hairyfeet · · Score: 1

      I agree that it SHOULDN'T be a hard problem....but it is, at least from what I've seen the IPV6 routers frankly have NOT been very user friendly. Sadly it looks like it'll be the 80s all over again as it takes awhile for common sense designs to come out and until then its gonna be a royal clusterfuck.

      Hell look at what should be so damned simple (and would have been if they wouldn't have taken a dump on backwards compatibility) which is having both an IPV4 and an IPV6 address. If they would have went with a sane design one could simply use IPV6 for both but as it is now either you use IPv4 primarily and IPV6 is useless or you use IPV6 and have to wait for a timeout before it switches over to IPV4.

      And Linux isn't magic, it can be royally fucked up just as badly as any other embedded OS, it all comes down to the implementation which so far most I've seen are really either piss poor or insanely expensive. But until we end up with sub $50 routers that I can just slap on a network and it "just works' I honestly don't see IPV4 going anywhere. Hell just look at how many IPV4 only routers are being sold right now on Tiger and Newegg, all those trendnet and zonenet routers will end up in some landfill because there is simply no way to upgrade the damned things.

      Anyway you slice it the switchover is gonna be a mess, there is just no damned way around it. The corps don't want to spend any money so the experience just isn't there, pretty much ALL of the consumer level stuff is gonna have to be thrown in the garbage, that millions of devices that are gonna be chunked, and the stuff that is currently out there that supports IPV6 is overpriced and/or badly designed and unintuitive. Anyway you slice it its gonna be a mess and having it happen when the economy is a corpse will just make it that much worse.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    162. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by unixisc · · Score: 1

      Port Address Translation is only used b'cos both static and dynamic NAT are inadequate for the purpose. It was never the purpose of ports to provide address mapping - their role was to provide protocol identifiers at layer 4. Requiting them in NAT has meant crippling other applications that need ports, such as online mapping. IPv6 enables ports to be freed up for their original use.

      Address rewriting - the only addresses that need to be involved are the source and destination addresses, but nothing in b/w. If a firewall is there to prevent malware and other security breaches penetrate a node, it's irrelevant whether its address is known or not. One can have whatever public and priv ate addresses one likes using DHCP6, and it would even preserve the interface ID addresses if the global prefix changed.

    163. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by WaffleMonster · · Score: 1

      Hell look at what should be so damned simple (and would have been if they wouldn't have taken a dump on backwards compatibility) which is having both an IPV4 and an IPV6 address. If they would have went with a sane design one could simply use IPV6 for both

      Some actually are backhauling IPv4 over IPv6 to CGN using prefix maps and DNS rewrite hacks. Works pretty good for web sites for the most part but this is not 100% compatible with all existing applications and systems.

      Without access to a time machine to fix IPv4 to make interop possible the path to interop is dualstack.

      but as it is now either you use IPv4 primarily and IPV6 is useless or you use IPV6 and have to wait for a timeout before it switches over to IPV4.

      The operating system makes a policy decision based on your level of IP connectivity and the capabilities of the site you are connecting via DNS.

      If your computer supports IPv4 only and you go to a site with IPv6 and IPv4 your computer connects via IPv4.

      If your computer supports IPv4 and IPv6 and you go to the same site IPv6 is preferred unless you are using a transition technology for IPv6 reachability such as 6to4 in which case IPv4 is preferred.

      If your computer supports IPv4 and IPv6 and the remote site supports only IPv4 then IPv4 is used.

      See RFC 3484 for more details. The situation you describe is what IPv6 day was intended to address. It should not happen normally. If it does it is related to configuration or software bugs. These problems have mostly been resolved via subsequent software updates.

    164. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by dgux69 · · Score: 1

      The "I don't need it" fraction will realize that they will though need it as soon as they try to access a IPv6 only addressed service.
      I'm running IPv6 at home (connected via dual-stack VDSL) since more than 3 years and whitout any noticeable speed difference.

    165. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by dgux69 · · Score: 1

      There still a huge amount of people who thinks that IPv6 is a replacement for IPv4.
      Well it will be somewhen but it will take quite a while...
      Dual stack is a must for everybody who wants to keep theirself connected to future services.

      I'm a network and security engineer and although IPv6 require a rethinking about the security it is the solution to lot of IPv4 related problems.
      For instance and just as an example, port scans are kind of useless in IPv6 when run it on a /64 network as it contains more addresses than the whole IPv4 range...
      NAT/PAT belongs to the category "security by obscurity", if you want to secure your network get a good firewall and know which traffic passes it.

      Finally lets put it that way: if you want or not, IPv6 is there, so either you move to dual stack or you look for an ISP who does NAT-PT for you...

    166. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have a 1 in 1^40 chance of conflicting with private addresses.

      Umm, 1^40 = 1 :)

    167. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Kalriath · · Score: 1

      What the hell are you talking about? Every single router I've seen has shipped with the firewall turned on. User can do whatever they want from inside the firewall but nothing unsolicited can get in anyway.

      Face it, NAT is shit. It's not a security feature, it's a crappy hack that causes more problems than it solves. You folks advocating staying on IPv4 because "it's got NAT!" and "IPv6 is hard!" need to cut it out - you're holding back the internet because you're frightened of change.

      --
      For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
    168. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ok, I'll bite...

      * Improper grounding on wifi cards in the macbook air

      I don't have any experience with the air, but I haven't heard any complaints from my friends who own them

      * Driver/kernel integration with DHCP

      You must be talking about the OS setting the host name based on MS's crappy DHCP server implementation. This sucks for Mac users, but it is Apple who is following the RFC, and MS that changed the behavior of the server and broke things. The IETF actually criticized MS for integrating dynamic DNS with DHCP as it broke virtually every non-MS DHCP client stack . There really is no reason not to include DHCP functionality into the kernel, as the entire TCP/IP stack is already running there, and DHCP is fundamental to most IP networks.

      * Signed binaries becoming corrupt requiring a full reinstall (or similar)

      I've never seen or even heard of this happening in any environment. Maybe due to a bad disk?

      * Removing features and adding steps to perform basic tasks while calling it 'streamlining'

      Like the extra 4 steps it takes in windows > vista to find the network card settings? I still cringe every time I have to click through 18 layers of control panel hierarchy to get there now. The search box in System Preferences beats Control Panel hands down as it has only 1 layer of hierarchy, and when it finds where you need to go, it actually teaches you how to get there later, by highlighting the icon.

      * Removing compatibility for no apparent reason (eg. samba removal)

      This was removed due to Samba changing their license to GPLv3, which even Linus hates. They didn't have much choice here.

    169. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The reason the iptables authors are religiously opposed to [nat]...

      I guess that's why they decided to add the SNAT, DNAT and MASQUERADE targets?

      There actually are good reasons for NAT. I know it isn't /true/ security, but security is achieved through many layers, NAT being one of them, and obscurity being another. Not divulging your internal IP structure is a /very/ good thing to do. If there is no reason for an external machine to connect to an internal machine, there is no reason for it to be publicly addressable. Doing so just adds one more attack vector.

      People will continue to use IPv6 NAT, and it won't hurt anything. We just have to make the jump to full IPv6 instead of the completely broken 4to6 and 6to4 crap that is out there now.

    170. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Electricity+Likes+Me · · Score: 1

      Please outline a plan to make a router ASIC designed for a 32-bit address system handle a 128-bit address system.

      There is no possible way to make IPv6 backwards compatible with IPv4 because an IPv4 host cannot uniquely specify an arbitrary IPv6 address, which means it absolutely can't actually send reply packets to IPv6 hosts without some type of transitionary mechanism of the many that have been developed.

    171. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anomalyst · · Score: 1

      Unfortunately there is no RFC for doing a PXE boot in an IPv6 infrastructure. This means being forced into accommodating an IPv4 infrastructure into your networking when creating Virtual Machines with some of advanced tools, like orchestra. Without a spec the BIOS vendors (nor QEMU) cant implement it.

      --
      There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
    172. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      Is it really plausible that networking standards groups would back a new protocol, released 20 years later than a protocol which preceded the modern internet, and that it would be worse overall?

      It is not just plausible, it is a fact. Breaking compatibility completely with IPv4 is a killer flaw.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    173. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by CTachyon · · Score: 1

      The only "security" NAT provides is *exactly* the same as a stateful firewall.

      As much as I agree with the sentiment, I will play devil's advocate for a moment. In an ideal world they are 100% equivalent. However, I think security people may consider NAT to be more 'failsafe'. If a NAT fails to apply its capabilities correctly, you have an outage and a problem, but it failed in a way that more likely than not still doesn't let foreign traffic in. For a stateful firewall, a failure is more equally likely to cause unwanted traffic to flow. Or, if being more pessimistic, cheap home routers stop bothering to set up rules as they aren't needed and naive consumers don't care.

      If anything it's the other way around: a firewall is designed for security, whereas NAT is designed for functionality. For instance, all but the cheapest NATs inspect packets and automatically open holes to the LAN for compatibility with FTP, IRC DCC, various IM protocols, etc.

      --
      Range Voting: preference intensity matters
    174. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by anethema · · Score: 1

      Even "No longer" is not quite accurate. They released 5.6 at the same time at 6.0. It just looks "older" because of the version, but really it is just as updated and includes all the features.

      --


      It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
    175. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by speculatrix · · Score: 1

      why, you eggplant-hater, you!
      get out of here, you broadbean-lover!!! :-D

    176. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by d3vi1 · · Score: 1

      You clearly never did any programming:
      A) Unicode is a beast if you don't use any libraries that take that complexity out. Doing something as complex as Unicode for the sake of 20 bytes is ridiculous. Doing something the Unicode way for anything other than charsets is idiotic to begin with.
      B) Things that are of fixed width tend to work better as you just put a struct/record over them which is a cost-free thing. Things of variable length require additional complexity and work for the processing side (NIC or IPv6 stack or some ASIC).

      --
      UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever ones.
    177. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by d3vi1 · · Score: 1

      IPv6 is terrible if those "20 bytes more" are relevant for your application.

      This is a ridiculous argument. Over the internet you don't have any guarantee of the MTU. A common value is 1280, another one is 1500, but you might end up with the packets fragmented to a lot less than that (sometimes even 400 bytes). There are bigger differences in path MTU sizes over the internet than the 20 bytes that might be different between IPv4 and IPv6.
      If you're talking about intranet, then I should remind you that Jumbo Frames have been around for about 10 years. If you're still not using at least Gigabit Ethernet, then it's your design that is at fault not IPv6.
      Sometimes admins and developers need to suck it up and go with the wave. We can't keep using Lotus Notes 6, Windows 95 and IPv4 over PPP/POTS forever.
      IPv6 is something that we need and you need to adapt your application to that. If you don't, it means that you're not doing your job. It's your duty to find out any hiccups and if you can't directly fix them, at least report them upstream as near-term risks for the infrastructure.
      If developers did their job properly, IPv6 will work without any intervention from them. Microsoft introduced the IPv6 stack for testing back in Windows NT 4.0. If you use the correct APIs, you should be using IPv6, IPv4 or even IPX depending on your network conditions almost transparently. Apple also documented the correct APIs for looking up hosts and getting sockets that are protocol agnostic for a few years. Even if you didn't follow the OS vendor recommendations, IPv6 clearly visible at the horizon for 10-12 years. I will presume that your application is not 20 years old, so you have no excuse for ignoring compatibility with a disruptive upcoming technology that everyone knew was coming unavoidably.

      --
      UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever ones.
    178. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I am a programming guru -- which means that I know how to look at a few bytes and encode/decode them. It's easy!

      Throwing a struct/record around a number is a good way to introduce subtle errors in a few different ways. A great programmer like you could surely think up a few.

      The point that some have made, that utf-8-like encoding takes additional processing is well taken -- I am sure that a clever engineer could do a cost-benefit analysis to work out the best way to format the IP address for the given number of cycles to decode it. Surely it is not a given that the best representation involves all of those 0s everywhere. Maybe true, but not a given. If apple have stopped using IPv6 addresses because the extra bytes is too much overhead... then reality has called.

    179. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by d3vi1 · · Score: 1

      OK. It seems that I am well rested, so let's see why you're an idiot:

      1) NAT doesn't work. It only works properly for trackable connections (TCP/IP for example). Otherwise NAT requires hacks such as NAT-PMP and UPnP. Can you please explain to me why do we need the intervention of a complex protocol (like UPnP) just to get layer 3 working properly? Understanding NAT traversal and implementing it properly is more difficult than just understanding and implementing IPv6.

      2) NAT is used as a security feature only by idiots (thus, my assumption that you're an idiot). Sane router defaults and enabling the firewall that comes with your operating system might do a better job. Even blondes have heard of a firewall. Not doing that is as inexcusable as not locking your car and then complaining that it got stolen/vandalised. In order to do some things (such as using a computer), you need to accept that you need to learn shit (such as enabling a firewall).

      3) Getting IPv4 and IPv6 to play nice is not a problem. Getting both of them at the same time might duplicate some of the work, but that's what you get when you migrate from something old to something new. Some things still need to be done twice. However, since they are independent protocols (none assumes or requires the other one), you don't have to get them to "play nice" and you don't "default" to one or the other. Google "CCNA Semester 1" if you're missing the basics about IPv4 and IPv6 and the layered OSI model.

      4) You make the ASSumption that if you have both protocols, somehow, all requests will first go through IPv6 and then, after timing-out will attempt IPv4. That ASSumes a few things that need to go wrong and usually don't.:
      4a) the requested resource advertises both protocols (most only advertise IPv4)
      4b) the application defaults to IPv6. Applications don't default! Applications do as they (or the OS in this case) are configured.
      4c) your system is imagining that it's connected to both an IPv4 and an IPv6 network that can route to the requested resource when if fact it's only connected to an IPv4 network that can route to the resource. If your network doesn't provide IPv6, even if your system supports it, the applications will NOT use IPv6, let alone time-out. Same with IPv4. If your network only provides IPv6, your applications will not attempt to connect via IPv4. Actually, some applications will, but will instantly get a "no route to host" on the missconfigured protocol and only then will attempt to use the other protocol. But even in this scenario, you don't have a time-out, you get an instant exception.

      5) Making IPv6 somewhat backwards compatible with IPv4 would make it IPv4.

      6) Not having experience at something should be an incentive for us to get better at it, not a reason to stick with IPv4. We've already had almost 15 years to learn what IPv6 is all about, but some 'experienced' fucks are too damned lazy to give IPv6 6-12 hours of their life.

      7) It's about time we move on and get rid of all the crap around IPv4 (such as: IPSEC not mandatory in all implementations, DHCP/BOOTp, ARP, RARP, 32-bit addressing, not-auto-configuring)

      BTW, everybody should pray that we still use horses for transport as much as possible, because investing in tarmac is so expensive and time-consuming. God only knows what happens when the switch is flipped and we move to cars.
      Thank God you're out of corp IT because you're definitely not able to adapt to the natural evolution of things.

      --
      UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever ones.
    180. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by d3vi1 · · Score: 1

      I do appreciate your sarcasm. It's of quite reasonable quality; unlike most /. comments.

      UTF-8 encoding comes with a lot of additional processing. IP communication (v4 or v6) needs to be implementable in anything from ASICs to Java in as few lines as possible. Adding something like a decoder increases the complexity of the whole thing and definitely increases the latency. Since we're in a jitter and latency sensitive world, decoding each packet that comes through each router interface will most probably add a quite sensitive amount of latency to the whole equation.

      The whole article starts from the wrong premise. What I'm debating is the whole anti-IPv6 movement from idiots that aren't able to understand the need or the features of IPv6. If we're completely on-topic, Apple hasn't stopped using/providing IPv6. Apple still provides IPv6 on their AP/routers, however, their newest configuration tool doesn't provide a method for configuring it. So, what Apple is missing in the whole IPv6 equation is not IPv6 support, but:
      A) Support for configuring IPv6 in Airport Utility Version 6.0 (5.6 still does the job, and both versions can be installed in parallel). Following Apple standard behaviour, by July 1st, they will release Airport Utility 6.1 that 'reintroduces' IPv6 support. Fortunately, the 5.6 version is still available for download.
      B) Support for PPPoEv6. Apple supports static IPv6, 6to4 tunnels and automatic allocation (incl. DHCPv6) but no PPPoEv6. This is the only thing that is really missing on the AP/TimeCapsule side of the things (not in the config tool). PPPoEv6 is mandatory for most DLS providers that actually give you the option of using your own router (while turning that expensive VDSL2 router into a simple bridge).

      --
      UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever ones.
    181. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by CAPSLOCK2000 · · Score: 1

      You do realize that almost every NAT-box also runs a firewall?
      Consumers don't see it because it is linked to the NAT interface. Whenever they 'forward' a port, the firewall is also adjusted to let this port through. Heck, in Linux (which all of those routers seem to use) NAT is special case of firewalling, both are managed with iptables. Granted, consumers have a lot of trouble with port-forwarding, but (only) using a firewall will not make this any more difficult and might even simplify things a bit.

      The elephant in the room is that if you use a firewall you'll loose end-to-end-connectivity, which was supposed to be one of the big advantages of IPv6.

    182. Re:Because 32bits of addressing... by CAPSLOCK2000 · · Score: 1

      I agree that it SHOULDN'T be a hard problem....but it is, at least from what I've seen the IPV6 routers frankly have NOT been very user friendly. Sadly it looks like it'll be the 80s all over again as it takes awhile for common sense designs to come out and until then its gonna be a royal clusterfuck.

      While I agree with your opinion it's not going to change anything. New technologies are always hard at first. Most routers with IPv6 are high-end routers targeted at people that read Slashdot, not the average home-user. Yes, it's a mess, but nothing that people buying such routers are not able to deal with. The few people that actually use IPv6 at home tend to make a very conscious decision on what router to buy.
      By the time that ISPs start rolling out IPv6 to consumers they will select an appropriate router for their customers.

  2. Features by Nerdfest · · Score: 0

    With IPv6 likely to become mainstream soon, I'm sure they'll add it back ... for a fee. If it follows their use of XMPP, DAAP, ePUB, etc, there will also be proprietary extensions.

    1. Re:Features by JWSmythe · · Score: 4, Informative

      You know, I've been waiting for it to become "mainstream" for over a decade now. Constantly, people have said "It's coming! It's coming!". Support has been added to just about everything. The problem is still that all those pesky web sites that people want to reach haven't converted. I went cruising through the IPv6 migration sites, they show the dozens of sites that are available.

      Here's a quick look.

      $ dig AAAA www.isc.org +short
      2001:4f8:0:2::d
       
      $ dig AAAA google.com +short
       
      $ dig AAAA www.google.com +short
      www.l.google.com.
       
      $ dig AAAA ipv6.google.com +short
      ipv6.l.google.com.
      2001:4860:8002::67
       
      $ dig AAAA slashdot.org +short
       
      $ dig AAAA ipv6.slashdot.org +short
       
      $ dig AAAA www.slashdot.org +short
       
      $ dig AAAA xkcd.com +short
      2001:48c8:1:d:0:23:5482:d026

      So, if you just switch over, you can't use google.com, unless you remember to use ipv6.google.com. You can't reach Slashdot. Try all the sites you frequent. Of my daily reading list, the only one that works by its normal name is xkcd.com. Most of them are big sites.

      I'd expect to see ISP wide NAT deployed before IPv6. IPv6 is a novelty that may get adopted sometime in the future, but I wouldn't hold my breath on it.

      --
      Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
    2. Re:Features by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Google's DNS servers only return IPv6 addresses if they believe you're capable of reaching them over IPv6:

      http://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/

    3. Re:Features by Gonoff · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I have heard one paranoid assertion about IP6 which said that the reason it was being pushed so enthusiastically is that every device in the world will gets its own address. With a GUID on all traffic, everything is traceable and MAFIAA and the spooks are happy.
      discuss

      --
      I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
    4. Re:Features by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It's being adopted now. Verizon ran out of IPv4 addresses for their cell phone network. They're using NAT right now but that creates a huge headache not only because it requires more hardware, but also because an IP address no longer identifies a single cell phone on their network. They're forcing anyone who wants to talk directly to their cell network to be IPv6 capable in the very near future. NAT is fine for networks where there is a well-defined connection point between 2 different networks (like your internal home network and the rest of the internet), but it's not very nice to work with as soon as you have to have 2 devices within the same network that have to use the same IP. As soon as you put NAT there you can no longer connect to the device from the outside, the device must initiate the connection, which makes a whole class of programs much more difficult to make work well.

    5. Re:Features by Skapare · · Score: 2

      I disocvered that Youtube was delivering to me via IPv6 and I didn't even realize that. The main site has no AAAA record that I can see. But the video delivery actually went over IPv6, despite me only using IPv4 for DNS. I suspect they bugged the page with a transparent image that asks for a hostname that is only on IPv6, and set a cookie or something to engage IPv6.

      --
      now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
    6. Re:Features by marcansoft · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You don't "switch" to IPv6, you add IPv6. Nobody expects IPv4 to go away any time soon. What everyone's talking about is supporting IPv6 plus IPv4. So all your old sites work, but you can also reach any new hosts that have IPv6 addresses only directly, and get the benefits of avoiding NAT. Those hosts will likely be mobile customers at first, since that's one of the first places where ISPs are having to use v6. As for those users, they will be able to talk to IPv4 sites via DNS trickery and IPv6-to-IPv4 NAT, or just via plain old IPv4 NAT.

    7. Re:Features by Dagger2 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Every device gets an address, but that address is not a GUID. The address is different if you go to a different network. The address changes every day. It's not useful for tracking you, at least no more so than your v4 address was.

      Not much to discuss here.

    8. Re:Features by magamiako1 · · Score: 1

      Actually, the main google.com site does return IPv6 proper (so does Youtube and all of their services) assuming you use a whitelisted DNS server.

      On June 6th, however, this will no longer be a requirement and ALL DNS servers will return Google's public IPv6 addressing, including over your v4 servers.

    9. Re:Features by carpefishus · · Score: 1

      >>With IPv6 likely to become mainstream soon, About the same time the last corp is off IE6

      --
      Facts take all of the premium out of arm waving - T. Reynolds
    10. Re:Features by JWSmythe · · Score: 1

          So everyone has to add IPv6 to IPv4. How does that fix the fact that the world is ending on ... ummm .. Sometime in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and the beginning of this year, later this year, or maybe 10 to 20 years from now.

          Wake me up when it's globally adopted.

          I'm not *against* going to IPv6. I'm actually all for it. I got my block assigned quite a while ago. I just don't run around saying "The sky is falling, we're out of IPs, we have to switch now!" or even "Oh my gosh, vendor X forgot to include Y! "

      --
      Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
    11. Re:Features by Asic+Eng · · Score: 1

      It's not useful for tracking you, at least no more so than your v4 address was.

      That's implementation-specific - some systems (is Linux still doing that by default?) by default include the MAC address in the IPv6 address for some reason.

      (Note: this is completely different from using the MAC address in your local network as you usually do with IPv4. On IPv4 the MAC address is not visible outside of the local network, on IPv6 it is - unless you replace it by enabling privacy addressing.)

      It will be interesting to see how internet-enabled device which you don't completely control - like smart phones - will handle this in the future.

    12. Re:Features by helix2301 · · Score: 1

      I am a security consultant and I can honistly say I have seen maybe 2 customers running IPv6 besides that everyone else is still on IPv4 with Apple targeting the home use market I think adding IPv6 Support is a waist of Apples time and money.

    13. Re:Features by Dagger2 · · Score: 2

      Indeed, I was assuming privacy addressing was turned on. This is the default in Windows XP/Vista/7/8, so it's not an unreasonable assumption. It's still off by default in Linux, although that's nothing a sysctl or two won't solve.

      Smart phones, tablets etc could be pretty much taken care of if Android, iOS and Windows Mobile enable privacy extensions by default. I'm not sure what they actually do at the moment; I think they default to off with a few isolated devices that have it turned on.

    14. Re:Features by Tom · · Score: 1

      Nobody expects IPv4 to go away any time soon.

      Actually, I do. Around the time that everyone realizes that removing legacy support is the only way that IPv6 will ever get any actual traction. Also, we know the fantastic advantages and painlessness of legacy support from the windows world, right?

      IPv4 needs to die or IPv6 will remain a footnote in history.

      Europe switched to the Euro not by adding it and waiting if the local currencies die out, but by adding both the Euro and a deadline for local currencies. Today, the old local currencies aren't legal tender anymore (though the central bank will convert them in case you find any old notes in your grandmothers socks or something).

      Without that, I'm sure we'd still be having a mix of currencies today.

      --
      Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
    15. Re:Features by allo · · Score: 1

      just because IPv6 includes the mac in the address, when you follow the stateless autoconfiguration procedure without privacy extensions, it does not mean, your ethernet/wifi will not use MAC addresses anymore. This remains unchanged.

      and the MAC in the ip has one big advantage: if you know your hardware, you know the ip the computer will get. prefix:computed-suffix.

      of course, the reasonable default is, be reachable via :mac-suffix, but surf via :PE-suffix. And use another pe-suffix with a much longer validity for long connections like instant-messaging and such stuff.

    16. Re:Features by unixisc · · Score: 1

      There is no reason to have IPv6 just on LAN. The address shortage is in the public internet space, not the private ones. I have yet to hear of any LAN for which class A private addresses 10.x.x.x was inadequate. In the meantime, depending on which RIR one is talking to, the address shortage is pretty critical.

      In all likelyhood, things will start off as dual stack, since nobody will want to upset existing IPv4 connectivity. In the long term, things will all be IPv6 nodes connected to each other via IPv6 networks, and IPv4 would have to use dual stack lite i.e. tunnelled over the IPv6 network. Things like NAT 464 or NAT 46 or NAT 64 are unlikely to be deployed.

    17. Re:Features by unixisc · · Score: 1

      The only OS that I've heard doing that are the BSDs, particularly FreeBSD and its derivatives. I too wonder whether Linux does it. I agree that the EUI-64, as it is called, is a bad idea in an otherwise great protocol. The best thing to do is use a DHCP6 to configure the network as per one's network topology map.

    18. Re:Features by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You about about to turn very blue... It is already here and if you are not on it or looking at it your are behind.

      http://bgp.he.net/ipv6-progress-report.cgi

    19. Re:Features by goonerw · · Score: 1

      I'd expect to see ISP wide NAT deployed before IPv6.

      Too late. Although they default the configuration of the modems they ship to having IPv6 disabled, this will soon not be the case. So when that happens and you sign up to this ISP and buy a modem along with it, you'll get IPv6 by default.

      --
      LOAD ".SIG"
      PRESS PLAY ON TAPE
    20. Re:Features by Mathieu+Lu · · Score: 1

      Last week I was in a in a small village 2h north of San Francisco. The hotel had broken ipv4/NAT (using 200.200.200.1/32 for the internal network), but perfectly functionnal IPv6 (using Comcast).

      Most ISPs already have an IPv6 deployment plan. Most north american ISPs already ship wifi/dsl routers to their customers, so they will just switch the router at some point. No big deal really.

      (my home/office networks/ISPs/websites are already ipv6)

    21. Re:Features by marcosdumay · · Score: 1

      the world is ending on ... ummm .. Sometime in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and the beginning of this year, later this year, or maybe 10 to 20 years from now.

      There is some kind of stupid people with communication capacity, those are the problem. We call them "media".

      You see, somebody does some great research and discover that yes, the sky will fall 20 years from now. A bunch of smart people start to think on what to do. Things are great, they are able to come with a plan and everything, they just need a lot of people to do some easy thing and we a saved. Then they think "how can we send our message to that huge number of people?", and call the media. But the media isn't interested on a news that "The sky will fall 20 yeas from now!", that's not scary enough; thus, they publish that "The sky is falling!" and that is the message that gets to people like you. Then passes 1 year, then 2, then 5 years and nothing happens. People start to doubt that the sky will fall, and refuse to do that simple act that will save them. 20 years latter, the sky falls, and everybody is hurt.

      The IPv4 addresses are ending earlier than expected. The people that worked at IPv6 were expecting IPv4 to last until the 2020's. For some definitions of "end", the IPv4 addresses already ended. It is not tomorrow, or next year, or in a decade; it ended last year. For other definitions it is harder to say exactly when it ends, some services are already without new addresses, those will never get any new number, for them it is over; while some other services still have some addresses available. Some continents still have unnalocated addresses. It is likely that 20 years from now there will still be unasigned addresses, but that doesn't change the fact that several devices won't get an IPv4 address anymore.

    22. Re:Features by rdebath · · Score: 1

      The mobile phone companies looked into using NAT, in fact they are using NAT because there are simply not enough IPv4 addresses for them. They have hundreds of millions of customers, so they have to use multiple copies of 10.0/8 , one isn't enough.

    23. Re:Features by JWSmythe · · Score: 1

          You may want to take another peek at those numbers.

          156,111,429 registered domains that they have information on.
          137,146,863 (87.85%) have IPv4 addresses assigned.
                3,236,871 (2.07%) have IPv6 addresses assigned.

      46,385 AS counted
      40,890 (88.15%) AS for IPv4
        5,495 (11.84%) AS for IPv6

      1,000,000 Alexa top 1 million sites.
      941,619 (94.16%) with direct IPv4 addresses
      11,370 (1.13%) with direct IPv6 addresses

          Sorry, those numbers don't represent a majority. They don't represent a minority. That would usually be considered a fringe group. At this time, I don't know of anyone who's given IPv6 only. I've contracted for several business and enterprise class lines recently. Only one provider has offered IPv6 in any form. Theirs was a small mention, buried on their business customer help pages. Their CS knew nothing about it. If you're going to do it, you have to get your IPs delegated on your own, get your own ASN, and then ask for routing. At that point, it was still contingent on getting their permission. Doing the prerequisites is no guarantee that they actually will route your IPv6 traffic appropriately.

          I brought up my HE tunnel this evening, and started bringing up sites on it.

          I also discovered something rather disappointing. My brand new residential router/AP (Belkin F9K1103) does not support IPv6. It also doesn't pass the tunneled IPv6 traffic properly. I tried with HE's instructions. I tried gogoNet clients. No go there either. I went looking around for information on what residential devices *do* support it. Oddly enough, not many do. Some list it as available in the documentation, but don't advertise it as a feature or supported item. Some have it, but it's known to be flaky.

          So, at this time, and for the near future, it is not feasible to consider that it will be available as our salvation to the IPv4 problem. You'll most likely see carrier grade NAT deployed first, which will push IPv6 adoption off by decades. No residential provider wants to do a wide spread deployment, because it will cost them a fortune in new hardware. Commercial providers look at the same numbers you provided and I summarized, and say it's not worth considering at this time.

          I will admit, there are more places using it now than a few years ago, but it's still nowhere near enough to consider it near mainstream.

          The sky hasn't fallen. Customers can still get new IP blocks assigned. It won't be until providers are told "No, you can't have any IPs, because we don't have any to assign.", that it will become urgent. That is the business mindset. You as a hosting customer, or you as a residential customer, will continue to need to live with the providers corporate decisions.

          Before that day comes, a lot of companies will reduce their IP overhead. Further aggregation and load balancing will be done with fewer public IPs. Residential customers will find the wonders of carrier grade NAT. You can say it's coming until you are blue in the face. The simple fact is, it's not happening today, tomorrow, or even this year. It probably won't reach real mainstream adoption this decade.

          I'm bringing my servers up with IPv6 for the novelty of it, and the simple bragging rights. I seriously doubt I'll see more than a small fraction of my traffic coming in from IPv6 clients.

      --
      Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
    24. Re:Features by WaffleMonster · · Score: 1

      So, at this time, and for the near future, it is not feasible to consider that it will be available as our salvation to the IPv4 problem. You'll most likely see carrier grade NAT deployed first, which will push IPv6 adoption off by decades. No residential provider wants to do a wide spread deployment, because it will cost them a fortune in new hardware. Commercial providers look at the same numbers you provided and I summarized, and say it's not worth considering at this time.

      Packet for packet CGN costs (lots) more than a dumb L3 router. Deploying IPv6 means you pay LESS not more even if buying new hardware.

      In the numbers quoted a key point is missing. There is a "long tail" in distribution of bandwidth consumption.

      Only a very small handful of sites and large ISPs generate and consume the majority of overall traffic in the US. Between google, netflix, youtube, facebook and Akamai you are sadly looking at the majority of all network traffic. **ALL** of these sites are activly deploying IPv6. Millions of remaining sites consume the silver that is all remaining usage. The cost of CGN to manage the remaining sliver is managable.

      ISPs have incentive to deploy because they are running out of addresses and routing costs a lot less than CGN and provides better user experience.

      Content has incentive to deploy because they want to reach everyone and provide high quality service (Avoid CGNs)

      There is a long tail...all the millions of small sites and thousands of smaller ISP operations will lag behind for a considerable amount of time... here I agree it will take many many years to get everyone to switch over.

      I'm bringing my servers up with IPv6 for the novelty of it, and the simple bragging rights. I seriously doubt I'll see more than a small fraction of my traffic coming in from IPv6 clients.

      In a few months when comcast flips the switch for all customers it will be interesting to see what happens to your traffic. I suspect you will be surprised.

  3. IPv7 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Apple is secretly working on IPv7, where there's just a single light-weight packet type, and is exclusively available on the AT&T backbone (at a premium rate).

    1. Re:IPv7 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Do those packets have rounded corners?

    2. Re:IPv7 by Idbar · · Score: 5, Funny

      No, they are just pissed that the initial letter is capital. They are probably coming up with iPv6 for Mac.

    3. Re:IPv7 by game+kid · · Score: 1, Funny

      Close, It'll be called iPv5, actually. It'll work only with HTML5, and its packets will only support one standard transfer protocol. Google, Mozilla, and Apple disagree on whether it should be HTTP, FTP, or FTTP respectively, even though FTTP is not even a transfer protocol.

      Also it'll make canvas and video faster somehow, possibly through the patent-pending technology called "magic".

      --
      You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
    4. Re:IPv7 by Idbar · · Score: 3, Funny

      Well, if they name it
      the new revolutionary internet Protocol for enhanced experience on devices.

      You could actually claim "iPeed on an iPad".

    5. Re:IPv7 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Actually, it will be called iPv4s.

    6. Re:IPv7 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The new iP

    7. Re:IPv7 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      You joke but the rounded corners make the packets move through the series of tubes better.

    8. Re:IPv7 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Apple is secretly working on IPv7, where there's just a single light-weight packet type, and is exclusively available on the AT&T backbone (at a premium rate).

      FYI, odd numbered IPv# indicates that it is experimental and not for public real-world use.

    9. Re:IPv7 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      packet exlax. keeps you regular.

    10. Re:IPv7 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I scanned the page to see if anyone had made this joke yet.... Curses!

    11. Re:IPv7 by slydder · · Score: 1

      Then apple will only be releasing odd numbered versions. Fits perfectly.

    12. Re:IPv7 by unixisc · · Score: 1

      I thought that that was only the case for the Internet streaming protocol, which although rarely used, was already assigned the version# 5 in the version field of the IP header. At any rate, the version numbers supported will go up to 255, so there's no need to fret over the fact that 1, 2, 3 and 5 were never used

    13. Re:IPv7 by bytesex · · Score: 1

      http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1475

      The strangest RFC I had read in years.

      --
      Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
    14. Re:IPv7 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't think that is right. I tried pouring Exlax on my router and now none of the packets will go. Thank God for my IPoAC backup.

    15. Re:IPv7 by Zinho · · Score: 1

      I misread that as a play on ipecac, and was wondering how adding an emetic on top of a laxative would improve the situation...

      --
      "Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
    16. Re:IPv7 by Tarlus · · Score: 1

      Man. Mix those two and it would cause an implosion...

      --
      /* No Comment */
    17. Re:IPv7 by Anomalyst · · Score: 1

      Im expecting IP-Liger

      --
      There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
  4. It figures by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Apple is a company where non-engineers make the rules, which allows them to create the best user experience, but in cases like this it would be better to have someone with a technical background in the lead.

    1. Re:It figures by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      The input boxes/fields became to big considering the maximum size/length of an ipv6 address. UI design just doesn't allow such huge elements.

    2. Re:It figures by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As someone who actually uses this app, it seemed strange to me too when I first saw it. Like someone took away the admin/power user side and made it completely simple UI. They actually tell you to go and download an older version to do advanced stuff.

      Something must have snuck past the (whoever looks out for shit like this) to make it into the wild. I do not mind a simple interface for the simple people, but give the power users an access panel or something.

    3. Re:It figures by ColdWetDog · · Score: 1

      As someone who actually uses this app, it seemed strange to me too when I first saw it. Like someone took away the admin/power user side and made it completely simple UI. They actually tell you to go and download an older version to do advanced stuff.

      Something must have snuck past the (whoever looks out for shit like this) to make it into the wild. I do not mind a simple interface for the simple people, but give the power users an access panel or something.

      If you like that, check out Lion Server. About 10 steps backwards from Snow Leopard Server. But it's easier. So easy, that you could put it on a toaster.

      Somebody at Apple is regressing to the mean for some bizarre reason. I'm also OK with a 'simple' interface if you leave some functionality behind the scenes - dropdown menus (so 20th Century) or just a CLI - whatever. But something for those who walk upright all of the time.

      And then there is Final Cut X. And Aperture.

      The Apple singularity is going to be a little machine with a single button that just pulses quietly and does nothing at all.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    4. Re:It figures by mjwalshe · · Score: 0

      well as some one who worked for a big telcom back in the 90's back in the mid 90's when the internet took off big time it was obvious even before then that ipv6 was a disaster. Developed in an ivory tower like OSI with ZERO thought given to interoperability and migration which should have been the Key things when developing a replacement for IPv4.

    5. Re:It figures by ae1294 · · Score: 1

      The Apple singularity is going to be a little machine with a single button that just pulses quietly and does nothing at all.

      That's not true at all! Each blink is $29.95 being debited from your accounts... All of them... Belonging?

    6. Re:It figures by rs79 · · Score: 1

      Bingo.

      --
      Need Mercedes parts ?
    7. Re:It figures by WaffleMonster · · Score: 1

      Developed in an ivory tower like OSI with ZERO thought given to interoperability and migration which should have been the Key things when developing a replacement for IPv4.

      They gave way too much thought to interoperability and as a result we get disasters like 6to4 and parsers having to understand nonsense like ::10.2.3.4.

      No matter what you do end to end reachability is impossible when address space of one network is larger than the other.

      The network with the smaller address space can not address all peers on the larger address space network.

      The network with the larger address space can not be addressed by peers on the smaller address space network if they are not in the subset of the network that can be directly mapped between both address spaces.

      It really sucks but sometimes backwards compatibility is simply not possible. It is IPv4's fault for not being more flexible.

  5. Because its not an Apple product by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Probably removed it because Apple didn't design IPv6 and they'll release iIP next month to compete instead of following a standard.

    1. Re:Because its not an Apple product by Idbar · · Score: 2

      The internet protocol for enhanced experience, the new revolutionary: iPee

  6. We still need subjects? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm sure slashdot readers are entirely unaware of what goes on when a program is rewritten. And naturally assume that when it happens, 100% of all features and abilities are reproduced without any complications in a couple months. Just look at photoshop - its been such a breeze to rewrite for adobe.

    I'm sure no company would ever think about building a rewrite with enough features and polish to ship, then add in feature parity as updates later.

    1. Re:We still need subjects? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Logic doesn't work on Apple haters.

    2. Re:We still need subjects? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I just upgraded to Photoshop CS24. Too bad the filters don't work, and neither does export to jpeg, but hey I should give Adobe some slack. I cannot expect them to do magic when rewriting their flagship product, right? Oh well, I guess it will become available in a few months with SP1.

      Idiot.

    3. Re:We still need subjects? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mod this AAPL shill down. IPv6 should not come under feature parity, in fact the lack of it should be a release blocker.

    4. Re:We still need subjects? by ColdWetDog · · Score: 1

      I just upgraded to Photoshop CS24. Too bad the filters don't work, and neither does export to jpeg, but hey I should give Adobe some slack. I cannot expect them to do magic when rewriting their flagship product, right? Oh well, I guess it will become available in a few months with SP1.

      Idiot.

      CS Twentyfour? So they have really invented time travel then?

      Did Adobe do it (in which case you'd be bounced into the Civil War if your mouse click is off by a pixel) or did Apple do it? (If so, say hi to Steve II for us).

      What's the weather like?

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    5. Re:We still need subjects? by ericloewe · · Score: 1

      Your sarcasm detector is broken.

    6. Re:We still need subjects? by ColdWetDog · · Score: 1

      Damnit, I was really hoping somebody invented Time Travel. I really need to fix my High School experience.

      But I suppose it's for the best. I could never afford CS24. That would cost something along the GDP of Canada.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    7. Re:We still need subjects? by neokushan · · Score: 1

      Do you not think it's more because IPv6 is a pretty important feature and should have been in the "NEEDS to be implemented before shipping" category?

      Sure, IPv6 isn't popular now, nor is it about to explode any time soon but it's stupid decision like this that cause it.

      The switch to IPv6 seems to be marred in much the same way the switch to 64bit OS's was - people focus on just one aspect of it (for IPv6 it's the number of addresses, for 64bit it was the amount of RAM you could use) and declare that there's no need for such quantities just yet - we're fine for a few years. The problem is there are plenty of other benefits of switching that people who aren't that technically minded don't "get" so don't see a need for.

      --
      +1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
    8. Re:We still need subjects? by Elbart · · Score: 1

      I'm sure slashdot readers are entirely unaware of what goes on when a program is rewritten.

      You rewrite it behind the curtains, maybe release beta-versions for testing and bugfixing, and, when it's finished, push it as a major-version-update?

    9. Re:We still need subjects? by Elbart · · Score: 1

      Spot on! "IPv6 Support Required for All IP-Capable Nodes" https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6540

    10. Re:We still need subjects? by Relayman · · Score: 1

      Read the comments on the original article: IPv6 is implemented, just not configurable. If you want to configure it, use 5.6.

      --
      If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
    11. Re:We still need subjects? by Elbart · · Score: 1

      IPv6 is implemented, just not configurable.

      You're serious, aren't you?

    12. Re:We still need subjects? by jedidiah · · Score: 1

      If features are "missing", the product doesn't even qualify as a beta test version. That means that it shouldn't leave the campus.

      It really doesn't matter what kind of excuses you want to offer.

      So now you're supposed to just blindly accept incomplete alpha level configuration tools from a company like Apple?

      Great...

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    13. Re:We still need subjects? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If it's not ready, don't release it, plain and simple.
      It's like Final Cut Pro X, having less features and breaking the ones that remain makes it Revolutionary!

    14. Re:We still need subjects? by rs79 · · Score: 0

      Spot on! "IPv6 Support Required for All IP-Capable Nodes" https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6540

      Yeah they'd like that. They can sell you addresses all over again. And the money ends up helping the guys that publish these "recommendations". Nice little ecosystem.

      In the real world if you haven't heard of V6 your email and web still work fine and always will over v4,

      --
      Need Mercedes parts ?
    15. Re:We still need subjects? by Relayman · · Score: 1

      Here's my take: You configure IPv6 on your device. You upgrade the software to version 6. The IPv6 functionality that you configured earlier works just like before. You just can't make any changes. If you want to make changes, use version 5.6. The thought is that version 6.1 will restore the configuration tools.

      This happened because version 6 is a total rewrite.

      --
      If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
    16. Re:We still need subjects? by Elbart · · Score: 1

      And this is acceptable why? My understanding is that 6.0 gets offered as an update for the previous 5.5.x AU by the automagic updater, is that correct?

    17. Re:We still need subjects? by bloodhawk · · Score: 1

      features fail and bugs occur in rewrites, it happens all the time and should be expected. However missing IPv6 functionality??? if that isn't a showstopper for a release what the hell do they classify as a bug that prevents them from shipping? To put it in your terms, it would be like Adobe releasing the next photoshop without any JPG and GIF support.

    18. Re:We still need subjects? by rsborg · · Score: 1

      If features are "missing", the product doesn't even qualify as a beta test version. That means that it shouldn't leave the campus.

      It really doesn't matter what kind of excuses you want to offer.

      So now you're supposed to just blindly accept incomplete alpha level configuration tools from a company like Apple?

      Great...

      This product is not alpha-quality. It's a different interface. Apple has done this repeatedly - introduce a new codebase with simplified UI and the same moniker as a previous app (iMovie, Final Cut Pro) or even hardware (think: iBooks vs. iBook).

      This new app has one feature (among others) that's not present in the older version - it's usable by my elderly parents - I can tell them to use their iPad or Mac to do simple fixes for common issues without complex screenshots or such. Considering I don't want to allow remote WAN admin for their airport, this is very very important.

      I have faith that eventually most of those features will be restored or Apple will keep the more feature-laden complex airport utility available for download (you can use both to manage a given network - the new app doesn't overwrite things it doesn't have the UI for).

      --
      Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
  7. Non-sense! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Actually, the expertsare divided on whether IPv4 addresses will be exhaused. There may be many more addresses hidden out there. Before this is properly investigated it is too early to take action on IPv4 exhaustion. The idea that addresses are running out is only scare-mongering spread by the left-wing media. We should focus more on the controversy and less on IPv6 support.

    1. Re:Non-sense! by sunderland56 · · Score: 1, Redundant

      Actually, the expertsare divided on whether IPv4 addresses will be exhaused.

      IPV4 addresses have already been exhausted for a year now.

      Any so-called 'experts' claiming otherwise may not be reliable sources.

    2. Re:Non-sense! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Whoosh....

    3. Re:Non-sense! by Sponge+Bath · · Score: 1

      Teach the controversy!

    4. Re:Non-sense! by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 5, Funny

      you are right. we should 'teach to the controversy'.

      IPv4 addresses are less than 6000 years old. they are our god-given right and no heathen lefty is gonna convince me otherwise.

      USA USA USA!

      --

      --
      "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
    5. Re:Non-sense! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Actually, the expertsare divided on whether IPv4 addresses will be exhaused. There may be many more addresses hidden out there. Before this is properly investigated it is too early to take action on IPv4 exhaustion. The idea that addresses are running out is only scare-mongering spread by the left-wing media. We should focus more on the controversy and less on IPv6 support.

      Yeah, that hockey-stick graph of IPv4 address usage has been shown to be based on possibly misinterpreted data. It's still possible that our address usage is in fact decreasing.

    6. Re:Non-sense! by Count+Fenring · · Score: 1

      This is perhaps the most gloriously subtle troll I've ever seen.

    7. Re:Non-sense! by Dr.Dubious+DDQ · · Score: 1

      Not to mention the fact that adding IPv6 addresses hugely dilutes the value of IP addresses - you can't just print more IP addresses without causing hyperinflation! The internet IP economy will COLLAPSE!

      That's why I've been switching to doing all my communications with packets made of solid gold. It's a little slower, but no dang socialist government is going to collapse MY packets' value! I'll be the one laughing when you guys have to use like a billion IP addresses just to send one "tweet"!

    8. Re:Non-sense! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's a parody, not a troll.

    9. Re:Non-sense! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you hadn't tossed in the last sentence, I could easily have mistaken this rant as one describing Bush. It's cool that switching the letter next to someone's name brings about so much change!

    10. Re:Non-sense! by Semiprime · · Score: 1

      I'm personally a firm believer in abiogenic IP address origin (similar to Abiogenic petroleum origin). The issue is that those ICANN people who believe in the theory of biological IP origin are going about finding available IP addresses the wrong way. They just need to dig a little deeper where they will find large pockets of untapped IP addresses. If they also go back to some of the previously mined class A blocks they will find that a lot of new addresses have been spontaneously generated since they first allocated them. There's at least another 5-6 billion IPs waiting to be discovered. The true problem is that ICANN is trying to force their personal agenda on us which we all know is that IPv6 does not support the evil bit.

    11. Re:Non-sense! by Chemisor · · Score: 1

      Correction: free IPv4 addresses are being exhausted. Once there are no more free addresses, people will start selling them and anybody who really needs them will be able to buy as many as he can afford. Most normal people won't though, being quite happy with NATed connectivity.

    12. Re:Non-sense! by dkf · · Score: 1

      Most normal people won't though, being quite happy with NATed connectivity.

      That NAT layer at your ISP is the perfect place for the Government to spy on all your traffic. If it's all hidden behind NAT, you won't even be able to notice when They turn up the levels of censorship on you...

      --
      "Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
    13. Re:Non-sense! by lxs · · Score: 1

      My address isn't exhausted yet, but it is very tired.

    14. Re:Non-sense! by rs79 · · Score: 1

      Look at the address map again. See all those bits "reserved by IANA" - that's an artificial scarcity. There's isn't even a IANA any more. If the right poeple want to use them, they'll get used.

      --
      Need Mercedes parts ?
    15. Re:Non-sense! by WaffleMonster · · Score: 1

      Look at the address map again. See all those bits "reserved by IANA" - that's an artificial scarcity. There's isn't even a IANA any more. If the right poeple want to use them, they'll get used.

      Class E is "dirty". By design not all IPv4 devices can use or route addresses in this space without modification. This is partially why the decision was made to release it for use by private networks rather than place it into the free pool. It would have only bought us a year or two.

    16. Re:Non-sense! by Nursie · · Score: 1

      Couldn't agree more.

      I mean, you just have to look at the numbers. When you examine it, you can easily see that each address component only goes up to 255! Why aren't we going all the way to 999?

      It's a conspiracy folks!

      There are more than enough IPv4 addresses for everyone! I've been running my home network in the 674.413.900.* range for years now! Wake up Sheeple!

    17. Re:Non-sense! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, the expertsare divided on whether IPv4 addresses will be exhaused. There may be many more addresses hidden out there. Before this is properly investigated it is too early to take action on IPv4 exhaustion. The idea that addresses are running out is only scare-mongering spread by the left-wing media. We should focus more on the controversy and less on IPv6 support.

      Unable to detect if this is serious

    18. Re:Non-sense! by Reservoir+Penguin · · Score: 1

      While some believe we are near or have recently passed the Peak Addresses recent report indicate that Canada holds bast amounts of recoverable class Z addresses which are becoming economically profitable to extract.

      --
      US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
    19. Re:Non-sense! by rs79 · · Score: 1

      Keep looking.

      --
      Need Mercedes parts ?
    20. Re:Non-sense! by dgux69 · · Score: 1

      Yeah right, don't let you fool by those panic makers !
      Stick on you IPv4 !

      Too bad that the rest of the world is moving to IPv6...

      But hey, Darwin theory probably applies also on the Internet users ;-)

  8. and? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How much do you want to bet it shows up in a new update? This looks like FCPX, XCode4, iMovie08 etc etc all over again. Completely new redesigned version that has some feature that isn't used much stripped out that will be put in in a future update.

  9. Why am i not surprised by jmd_akbar · · Score: 2

    Steve Jobs gone, so we can do whatever we want with Apple!! :P

    --
    Nothing here... So... SHOOO!!!
  10. Battery life. by xyourfacekillerx · · Score: 0

    Simple as that. That's their core philosophy. Batter life. IPv4 got it. IPv6 don't.

    1. Re:Battery life. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      doubt it.

      This is a small symptom of Steve Jobs being gone. Time management is entering back into their process. Want to hit date xyz so features A, B, and C will not get tested lets yank them.

      It will get worse as time goes on.

    2. Re:Battery life. by xyourfacekillerx · · Score: 1

      I believe you. The loss of Steve Jobs, sadly, impacted the dedication to quality and that sense of pride surrounding their commitment to truly technically inspiring Apple products. QA is there which means untested or essentially unnecessary features can't ship, and that's good, but the fact they can't take the time to test them when it means a more beautiful and worthwhile product, that's bad.

      I was obviously joking about battery life because they've used that claim to dismiss a half dozen technologies even under Steve Jobs, I was being sardonic, I think that's the word...

  11. ipv4 is dead, long live ipv4! by itzdandy · · Score: 0

    I don't anticipate that ipv4 dies off as slowly as many people suggest. ipv4 is easy to understand, and addresses fit within the average technicians short term memory. Just try to remember ipv6 addresses, you brain will melt!

    Soo many services are now becoming NAT compatible, and many ISPs are now NATing their customers and handing out private ipv4 addresses.

    I do expect enterprise networks to migrate first. Microsoft has done a good job at making ipv6 a desirable thing in it's enterprise environment. Each computer gets a public ipv6 address and ipsec encrypts any domain related traffic for a VPN-free anywhere corporate network.

    At home? probably ipv4 for a very long time and some 4to6 NATing either on the router side or way up at the ISP side as the server world goes ipv6..

    just my thoughts.

    1. Re:ipv4 is dead, long live ipv4! by WaffleMonster · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I don't anticipate that ipv4 dies off as slowly as many people suggest. ipv4 is easy to understand, and addresses fit within the average technicians short term memory. Just try to remember ipv6 addresses, you brain will melt!

      IPv4 never has to go away. It can be used forever in internal networks.

      IPv6 Addresses can be remembered if you select your local bits rather than let the slaac monster pick them for you. Google via IPv6 for example: 2001:4860:8005::68 ... Almost the same length as an IPv4 address!!

      IPv6 lets you have some hexsp33k fun..

      Face book:
      2620:0:1cfe:face:b00c::3

      cisco dog food ipv6 day:
      2001:420:80:1:c:15:c0:d07:f00d

      SPRINT!!! OMFG...
      2600::

    2. Re:ipv4 is dead, long live ipv4! by ericloewe · · Score: 1

      I don't anticipate that ipv4 dies off as slowly as many people suggest. ipv4 is easy to understand, and addresses fit within the average technicians short term memory. Just try to remember ipv6 addresses, you brain will melt!

      That's what DNS is for. DNS never really caught on in small private networks, but network equipment is increasingly making use of it. WHS 2011 can be accessed as "http://homeserver", most routers/APs support it as well... It's by far the least of anyone's worries

    3. Re:ipv4 is dead, long live ipv4! by jroysdon · · Score: 5, Informative

      IPv6 is actually very easy to remember when done right. Further, we have DNS for address resolution - how many of the websites you visited today do you know the IPv4 address for?

      For an enterprise, once they get their allocation, it's really not that bad. I will make up an allocation as an example:

      2600:123:b000::/48

      With 5 more octets left (octets isn't the right term, but divisions seperated by colons), you can do a large amount of intelligent numbering, and even just reuse all of your VLAN and IPv4 numbering right inside your IPv6 addressing.

      For instance, if you have a server network at 172.16.2.0/24 and it is vlan 203, you can assign 2600:123:b000:203::/64 (with the nodes getting ::172:16:2:yyy), so a given server node with 172.16.2.105 would be 2600:123:b000:203:172:16:2:105 . It's wasteful, but with IPv6, who cares?

      If you have more than one site, then each site should get you your own /48. When applying for addreses, you should do so for all sites at once. We have a /44 (x:x:b000 - x:x:b00f) as we have 9 sites. We can then assign each site based on their site numbers (2600:123:b001 - 2600:123:b009). We use 2600:123:b000 for infrastructure, and still have 2600:123:b00a - 2600:123:b00f left over.

      So, site 3, vlan 405, network 172.24.5.0/24 would be assigned 2600:123:b003:405::/64 with nodes having 2600:123:b003:405:172:24:5:yyy. For workstations that use SLAAC and/or DHCPv6, you don't care about the last 64 bits and you rely on DNS. But you still know the site and VLAN if you use the same numbering. 2600:123:b002:464::/64, which is site 2, vlan 464.

      All the IT staff has to do is learn that 2600:123:b000 - b00f is our assignment and explain the rest of our addressing plan. It's actually rather natural to do it this way and makes a ton of sense.

      Oh, and personally I would skip doing any decimal to hex conversion where it can be avoided. For instance, I would not make vlan 165 be A5 (the hex value), but rather just 165. This does mean you'll "waste" something like 37.5% of your address space - but again, who cares? I'll take readability over maximum use any day.

    4. Re:ipv4 is dead, long live ipv4! by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      mDNS is quite common on small LANs now. Each computer can advertise its own name, so there is no need for central configuration.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    5. Re:ipv4 is dead, long live ipv4! by swalve · · Score: 1

      Part of the point of ipv6 is that technicians won't have to remember addresses at all. It works basically like having a well configured DHCP and DNS server on ipv4. IPv6 just forces that on you. I think.

    6. Re:ipv4 is dead, long live ipv4! by roman_mir · · Score: 1

      Easy peasy.

    7. Re:ipv4 is dead, long live ipv4! by ericloewe · · Score: 1

      Precisely, even my relatively ancient D-Link routers support it (though they don't advertise it much), as does pretty much everything I've bought/assembled recently

    8. Re:ipv4 is dead, long live ipv4! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "This does mean you'll "waste" something like 37.5% of your address space - but again, who cares? I'll take readability over maximum use any day."

      Gee, that sounds like a good plan. I guess this means that, if everyone did that, IPv6 really only needed to use 48 bit addressing.

    9. Re:ipv4 is dead, long live ipv4! by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 1

      IPv4 never has to go away. It can be used forever in internal networks.

      Exactly this. I remember routing IPX over IPv4 in the 90s so we could play Quake at LAN parties. IPv4 won't go away for a long, long time. It doesn't need to. That doesn't mean we can't start using something better in the mean time.

      --
      Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
    10. Re:ipv4 is dead, long live ipv4! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      whilst what you say is true, any decent dhcp server should be poking the ips it gives out, with the name the host puts in its request, into the local dns server anyhow. most consumer routers already do this (or at least the ones running dnsmasq certainly do) - enabling dhcp (if it's not already, which in most cases it is) certainly doesn't really count as much in the way of 'central configuration'.

      the biggest problem with mDNS is that they decided to use the local. domain as their default - which is already used by most consumer gear as the default domain. this is a shame, because avahi just seems to disable itself if it detects that local. is already in use, i guess the intention is to prevent a clash with existing services, but the end result is that all of the clever 'service advertisement' stuff gets nuked at the same time.

    11. Re:ipv4 is dead, long live ipv4! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The difference is that the "wasted" IPv6 address space can actually be reclaimed and used for further expansion and assigned in a more austere manner.

      Also, if we ever develop our networks to such an extent that we start bumping into limits when using these addressing practices, we can simply change our practices, analogous to the way CIDR was rolled out for IPv4, without having to upgrade every host on the internet to a new version of IP.

  12. peer-to-peer = loss of control by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Every big firm wants, above all, to get rid of the quaint notion that the Internet is a network of intelligent peers. Much better to have dumb terminals all locked in to your service.

    Sticking with IPv4 and the resultant multi-NAT hell is a good technical step in this direction.

    It's like Google pretending to champion IPv6 then setting absurd conditions for their IPv6 services. So ISPs which offer native IPv6 by default, such as England's Andrews&Arnold, have to jump through artificial hoops before they're "supported". And it's no coincidence that half of abusive SixXS is half-run by a Google employee.

    Oddly enough - and this'll get me the mod to oblivion - only MS has historically shown neutral support for IPv6, neither trying to control it nor eschewing it. That's because, I expect, Microsoft was traditionally about the powerful desktop and local server (running NT, of course). Now it's jumped on the cloud bandwagon, who knows?

    1. Re:peer-to-peer = loss of control by slimjim8094 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Every big firm wants, above all, to get rid of the quaint notion that the Internet is a network of intelligent peers. Much better to have dumb terminals all locked in to your service.

      While this does seem to be the general trend, companies like Comcast are surprisingly actually pretty good about v6.

      It's like Google pretending to champion IPv6 then setting absurd conditions for their IPv6 services. So ISPs which offer native IPv6 by default, such as England's Andrews&Arnold, have to jump through artificial hoops before they're "supported".

      Bullshit. From their website:

      To qualify for Google over IPv6, your network must meet a number of requirements. These include:
              Low latency, redundant paths to Google using direct peering or reliable transit
              Production-quality IPv6 support and reliability
              Separate DNS servers for your IPv6 users (not shared with IPv4-only users)
              Users who have opted in to IPv6 services and know how to opt out if they experience problems with Google services

      Google damn sure doesn't want provider's shitty v6 implementation to cause people problems with their service. Seems like a pretty reasonable desire to me, and pretty reasonable conditions to meet to prove you don't have a shitty implementation.

      And it's no coincidence that half of abusive SixXS is half-run by a Google employee.

      Um what? Care to provide any support for "abusive SixXS"? I did a quick search and couldn't find anything suggesting it, aside from people who were pissed that they got cut off for abuse. They actually seem to be more responsive than HE about abuse complaints, so I don't get it. Plus, I've never had any trouble with SixXS - at least not in the 3 years or so that I've had a tunnel with them.

      Oddly enough - and this'll get me the mod to oblivion - only MS has historically shown neutral support for IPv6, neither trying to control it nor eschewing it. That's because, I expect, Microsoft was traditionally about the powerful desktop and local server (running NT, of course). Now it's jumped on the cloud bandwagon, who knows?

      While MSFT has admittedly been pretty decent about v6 support (at least Vista+, their v6 implementation for XP worked, but was lukewarm), Apple had some of the earliest consumer routers that really supported v6 properly. Their phones, tablets, OS, all do as well. As noted before, this utility is a rewrite, and lacking several features that will (presumably) be added back in. The hardware still supports it; if you need v6, just keep the older utility for now.

      I don't know why you were modded up.

      --
      I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
    2. Re:peer-to-peer = loss of control by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Um what? Care to provide any support for "abusive SixXS"? I did a quick search and couldn't find anything suggesting it, aside from people who were pissed that they got cut off for abuse. They actually seem to be more responsive than HE about abuse complaints, so I don't get it. Plus, I've never had any trouble with SixXS - at least not in the 3 years or so that I've had a tunnel with them.

      There's a lot of examples of "abusive SixXS", some of them can be found from http://www.sixxs.info/ if you wish. Banning people from IPv6 service for forking their connectivity software seems quite abusive to me.

    3. Re:peer-to-peer = loss of control by rs79 · · Score: 1

      There's major cognitive dissonence going on here with the "V6 is wonderful!" crowd. Consider: last years "V6 test" day caused problems with V4 transit. In fact the link from HE to ISC was cut in the middle of it so V4 would work again. The probems began at the beginnin of v6 test days and ended when it was over.

      Now, because this was done under the aegis of ISOC/IETF it was sanctioned. But if somebofy else had done it and caused the same problems, well, Kashpureff went to prison for far far far far far less.

      Look for yourself, the internet weather report has all the details. I saved a copy if they don't have it any more.

      "Internet people don't think U.S. laws apply to them when they go to other countries. Also, history has shown that anything done in concert with the ISOC is viewed as a mission from God."

        " Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth " - J.F.K

      --
      Need Mercedes parts ?
    4. Re:peer-to-peer = loss of control by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bullshit. From their website [google.com]:

      Way to disprove your own argument.

      IPv6: Low latency, redundant paths to Google using direct peering or reliable transit
      Meaning: Google can require arbitrary network performance characteristics, even if they're not relevant to or expected by the end user; otherwise they will require the ISP to pay for equipment installation in the appropriate racks for peering.
      IPv4: at least one route of any quality to Google's servers.

      IPv6: Production-quality IPv6 support and reliability
      Meaning: better quality IPv6 support and reliability than Google provides.
      IPv4: any IPv4 support.

      IPv6: Separate DNS servers for your IPv6 users (not shared with IPv4-only users)
      Meaning: assume IPv6 is experimental, just because it is for Google
      IPv4: no rules on DNS servers

      IPv6: Users who have opted in to IPv6 services and know how to opt out if they experience problems with Google services

      Meaning: not even sure. IPv6-only service provision is not permitted, perhaps?
      IPv4: no rule that one can opt out of IPv4, unfortunately.

      Google damn sure doesn't want provider's shitty v6 implementation to cause people problems with their service. Seems like a pretty reasonable desire to me,

      Yes. But it's not for random providers on the 'net to set ISP transit conditions, is it? They certianly don't set the same rules for IPv4, do they?

      and pretty reasonable conditions to meet to prove you don't have a shitty implementation.

      Not at all. See above.

      AAISP's done a fine job of wading through the bullshit, though, following the overgrown baby's rules to keep up with providing the native IPv6 support it's provided to regular residential+business customers for a good decade now.

      Um what? Care to provide any support for "abusive SixXS"?

      Wow, either you're trolling or you're clueless. I've used SixXS for eight years now, and while they've only demonstrated their inability to respond to a simple problem report with rudeness once, their forum and various sites across the net make it completely fucking clear what pricks they can be to users. The weird thing is that they don't seem to even realise how their behaviour harms their supposed cause.

      (*) was fun when to watch over the next few days a couple dozen others raised the same issue.

    5. Re:peer-to-peer = loss of control by fuzzel · · Score: 1

      > And it's no coincidence that half of abusive SixXS is half-run by a Google employee.

      What you mean with "abusive" here is the "half" that cuts people off when they abuse the service. That "half" would be me, not the "half" that you try to implicate.
      There are actually even websites dedicated to this about it which only name me. The other "half" is a true voice of reason, so don't say bad things about him that have no backing at all.

      Thus really the 'co-incidence' seems to be merely in the fact that you are an anonymous poster, who likely was abusive him/her/itself, got cut off yourself and likely that is why he/she/it cannot even post on slashdot with a real account as here you also got kicked out already.

    6. Re:peer-to-peer = loss of control by fuzzel · · Score: 1

      Banning people from IPv6 service for forking their connectivity software seems quite abusive to me.

      You mean relicensing SixXS software (AICCU) under a more restrictive license? Yes, that is indeed quite abusive, be happy that the copyright enforcers are not coming down your neck for that.

      It is great to make websites with all kinds of 'facts' but without actually showing both sides of a story and including all the details, they are not facts and they are effectively just biased statements from a pissed off person.

      To quote slimjim8094:

      aside from people who were pissed that they got cut off for abuse.

      As that is what those "true stories" are about, nothing else.

      Dear anonymous poster, please move along or get an account with your real name and details instead of just posting fact-less and out of context inflammatory remarks. Kthx!

  13. It will be back as a "new" feature by emolitor · · Score: 1

    Watch carefully as I suspect Apple will "magically" add this as a bullet point feature to help sell a new iteration of the product. (Failing to mention that it was previously supported) Wankers

    1. Re:It will be back as a "new" feature by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And it'll have an odd quirk whereby it'll only work with other Apple products.

  14. Airport Utility 6.0 is awful by Moridineas · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm sure the functionality will be added back in.

    Airport Utility 6.0 follows the recent trend of Apple making all of their software neutered versions of iOS versions (Lion to a certain extent, iCal, Address Book, etc)--so the comments here http://www.macrumors.com/2012/01/30/apple-releases-redesigned-ios-like-airport-utility-6-0-and-an-airport-base-station-bug-fix/. So, they went from a useful program with a standard interface (old version) to one with a pretty UI that lacks major features.

    The trend has been for Apple to add MOST features back in at some point, so hopefully it continues. I can't imagine Airport Utility will stay this way forever.

    I just keep an old binary around...

    1. Re:Airport Utility 6.0 is awful by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Yet another reason I'm glad I didn't "upgrade" to OS X Vista, aka Lion.

    2. Re:Airport Utility 6.0 is awful by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Indeed, they still offer the download for previous version (5.6) which happily coexists with version 6.0. I can only imagine they wanted to get the new version out fast, and extend it with non-essential features over time.

      PS: The download link for those interested: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1482

    3. Re:Airport Utility 6.0 is awful by bogie · · Score: 1

      Snow Leopard will go down in history as the last great Apple OS. Everything after it is complete crap from a design standpoint. They are absolutely ruining what imho was the best designed OS from a GUI standpoint. What they are doing is just as bad as Microsoft's shitty metro UI for Windows 8. I guess I'm running Snow Leopard until my computer dies. Then I don't know what I'll do. I suppose Windows 7 on a "ultrabook". At least that will be supported for many years to come.

      DOS was an OS nobody could love from a UI standpoint. Now we are diving into the deep end going the other way and making everything as close to an iPad as possible. I suppose 10 years from now when the dust settles we will be fine and all wonder what the fuss was about, but this changeover absolutely sucks ass.

      --
      If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
    4. Re:Airport Utility 6.0 is awful by Moridineas · · Score: 2

      I completely agree.

      I upgraded my Mac Pro at work to Lion and can't say there's a single changed feature that I prefer over Snow Leopard. Not one thing. Mission Control is a regression, the removal of Save As / Duplicate is just confusing and annoying, Launchpad utterly useless, buggy (time machine backups, notably), annoying flat, monochrome, greyscale interface change throughout the system (finder sidebars, itunes, etc). Address Book is awful. iCal is awful. It's possible there's SOME new feature I prefer, but I can't think of one (iPhoto/Address book iCloud support is nice, but hardly an "OS" feature).

      My personal laptop is just shy of 5 years old (still running very well after getting the Nvidia bug fixed) and I had been really hoping to upgrade when the next revision of laptops come out. I'm really not sure I want to at this point...

    5. Re:Airport Utility 6.0 is awful by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So it's Airplane Unity? Is that the 4 th movie in the series? They can't afford the fancy props or CGI so they go with a balloon full of hot air and several aging decrepit stars desperate for the 10 grand fee they'll get if it becomes a smash hit?

      It seems it's safer to be anonymous. IMAAOO troll points should be applied to the real account of AC's.

    6. Re:Airport Utility 6.0 is awful by Elbart · · Score: 1

      I heard IE10 will come without support for displaying pictures. But don't worry, it will come with a cumulative update later on.

    7. Re:Airport Utility 6.0 is awful by kthreadd · · Score: 1

      Well, their network devices can still use IPv6 just fine. It's the new administration interface that don't support it yet. That's why keep the old version updated in parallel until the new one is complete. Frankly, I don't get what the fuzz is all about.

    8. Re:Airport Utility 6.0 is awful by Above · · Score: 1

      You're right, but you left out why they went in this direction.

      Apple is trying to support users with no PC. They keep talking about the "Post-PC" era. They have customers (although perhaps a small number) who have an iPhone and iPad, but no laptop/desktop and an Airport (or Time Capsule, same thing with hard drive). They aren't to where this is a fully working platform yet (for instance you need a PC to initialize the phone), but the iCloud road map and what they roll out point in this direction.

      One of the puzzle pieces was making a configuration client for the iPhone/iPad to configure the Airport. It further makes sense that there would be only one program / interface across both platforms, so OSX got the same thing. I suspect they realized the left out and dumbed down features, hence leaving the old version around, I suspect the next version will put many of them back on both iOS and OSX devices.

      One of the interesting things from talking to Apple folks is they feel, for most users, IPv6 should need no configuration. For instance there's no way in OSX to configure IPv6 DHCP on or off, if the RA says to do DHCP, it does, if not, it doesn't. For the Airport it should look for RA's from the ISP, if they are there it should do DHCP (probably with Prefix Delegation), if that works it should configure IPv6 on the LAN side. Apple will likely have to make a nod to static addressing and provide manual configuration; but the defaults will be automatic configuration when available I'm sure. I suspect this will come out with the next rev of hardware (since they don't do new software features on older hardware for Airports), and actually make IPv6 as easy as well, doing nothing for Apple users with the newest hardware.

      Note, I don't think this is the most customer or network friendly thing Apple could be doing and so they do lose some points with me for their stance. That said, understanding why they do what they do is the key to planning ahead for their next move...

    9. Re:Airport Utility 6.0 is awful by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You do realize that you can still pick windows classic look in windows 8, right? You do realize that don't you? And get being a drama queen, you aren't going to use snow leopard until you die unless you're an 80 year old retiree.

    10. Re:Airport Utility 6.0 is awful by Moridineas · · Score: 1

      You're right, but you left out why they went in this direction.

      Apple is trying to support users with no PC. They keep talking about the "Post-PC" era. They have customers (although perhaps a small number) who have an iPhone and iPad, but no laptop/desktop and an Airport (or Time Capsule, same thing with hard drive). They aren't to where this is a fully working platform yet (for instance you need a PC to initialize the phone), but the iCloud road map and what they roll out point in this direction.

      You no longer need a PC to initialize the phone/ipad/ipod as of iOS 5.0. I absolutely agree that the direction they're headed--the post-PC or non-PC-centric world. Unfortunately they have primarily come at it from the angle of dumbing down the desktop, not making the non-PC devices more powerful.

      One of the puzzle pieces was making a configuration client for the iPhone/iPad to configure the Airport. It further makes sense that there would be only one program / interface across both platforms, so OSX got the same thing. I suspect they realized the left out and dumbed down features, hence leaving the old version around, I suspect the next version will put many of them back on both iOS and OSX devices.

      Here is where I disagree. I DON'T think it makes sense to have only one program for all platforms. More exactly, I don't agree that there should be only on interface for each platform. Gmail is one program that displays differently (with different capabilities) on a phone, a tablet, and a desktop.

      One of the interesting things from talking to Apple folks is they feel, for most users, IPv6 should need no configuration. For instance there's no way in OSX to configure IPv6 DHCP on or off, if the RA says to do DHCP, it does, if not, it doesn't. For the Airport it should look for RA's from the ISP, if they are there it should do DHCP (probably with Prefix Delegation), if that works it should configure IPv6 on the LAN side. Apple will likely have to make a nod to static addressing and provide manual configuration; but the defaults will be automatic configuration when available I'm sure. I suspect this will come out with the next rev of hardware (since they don't do new software features on older hardware for Airports), and actually make IPv6 as easy as well, doing nothing for Apple users with the newest hardware.

      I have never played with IPv6, but is this true? In my Snow Leopard settings for Adapter TCP/IP there's an IPv6 section to configure "Automatically", "Manually", or "Off".

    11. Re:Airport Utility 6.0 is awful by arkane1234 · · Score: 1

      You realize that the Airport Utility is not Lion specific, right?

      Lion is by far nowhere near Vista in decapitation.

      --
      -- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
    12. Re:Airport Utility 6.0 is awful by gl4ss · · Score: 1

      You realize that the Airport Utility is not Lion specific, right?

      Lion is by far nowhere near Vista in decapitation.

      that's right, vista actually added features. it's just that it was butt ugly and people didn't like those features..

      lion on the other hand cut out legacy sw and left people with no way to run them. which is sort of funny since there's pretty good sw to run legacy ms dos sw for osx available for free...

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    13. Re:Airport Utility 6.0 is awful by Yaztromo · · Score: 1

      Indeed, they still offer the download for previous version (5.6) which happily coexists with version 6.0.

      I just want to point out the mischaracterization of 5.6 as "the previous version". The true previous version was 5.5. Version 5.6 was released on the same day as version 6.0 specifically to provide a much more full-featured tool for network administrators.

      Other than this, the article is spot-on; Apple deserves to be properly chastised for removing a LOT of functionality from their new 6.0 utility, particularly anything related to IPv6.

      Yaz

  15. This is non-sense by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    They did not remove IPV6 at all. They new confit utility (v.6) doesn't let you configure it, but they say so right in the docs that it is one of th feature the new version does not yet support. They also give you a download link the previous 5.6 version if you want to configure those rarely used features. IPV6 is even enabled by default.

    1. Re:This is non-sense by FooGoddess · · Score: 1

      Indeed. My Airport Extreme, and my Expresses (Expressae?) haven't changed. Airport utility 6.0 is simply dumbed down for the average consumer. Simply download Airport Utility 5.6 from http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1482 and presto, IPv6 "magically reappears". Along with syslog and a few other useful utilities.

  16. I hate ipv6 by Sir_Real · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There I said it. The lack of adoption and the lack of knowledge have made it a tremendous burden with absolutely zero benefit to our organization. I'm fine with running ipv4 into the ground. I just don't care anymore. I hate ipv6.

    1. Re:I hate ipv6 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      And I absolutely hate IPv4. NAT, port forwarding, lack of address space, ever increase price per IP, fuck it!

      Getting an IPv4 address that is then flooded with random shit traffic, what a mess.

      PS. based on your comment, it seems you do not have IPv6 - you hate ignorance.

    2. Re:I hate ipv6 by rssrss · · Score: 2

      That's funny. I talked to ipv6, and she said she still likes you.

      --
      In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
    3. Re:I hate ipv6 by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 2

      nah, ipv6 has been dating DECnet phase V for the last few decades.

      they have their differences, but their neighborhoods are similarly gated and their kids all share the same bus to school.

      --

      --
      "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
    4. Re:I hate ipv6 by rs79 · · Score: 1

      And it only works over thick wire.

      Don't scrimp on that crimping tool!

      --
      Need Mercedes parts ?
    5. Re:I hate ipv6 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh. Apple says ipv6 is bad. Fanboi confirms it.

    6. Re:I hate ipv6 by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 1

      absolutely zero benefit to our organization. I'm fine with running ipv4 into the ground. I just don't care anymore. I hate ipv6.

      Is your organization an ISP? A multi-national corporation? If not, you jumped in too early. When it's not really expensive to get a routed IPv6 network then you should start to pay attention.

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
  17. Re:Good for them! PRIVACY gone in 128bits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Uhm,

    You do know, that IP addresses were originally designed to be assigned to a computer statically, right?
    Each computer used to get an address, and the host file would be updated to include that computer's host name and IP address. Passing host files around got to be a nightmare, so DNS was invented, but IPs were still static for everyone except dial-up modem users.

    NAT is here and it works for some things, but it is a shitty solution that causes all kinds of problems. NAT and dynamic IPs were not invented for privacy or anonymity, and they don't really do a good job at either. Having your computer have a globally routable IP address is a good thing, not a bad thing, and a lot of people pay extra for that "extra" feature (including people who want to run a server).

  18. apple net by dirty_ghost · · Score: 0

    apple is no doubt creating its own network. no more worry about DRM, or how apple will get your money into their pocket!

    1. Re:apple net by unixisc · · Score: 1

      If that's what they wanted to do, why not revive Appletalk?

  19. Re:Good for them! PRIVACY gone in 128bits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    On a further note, MS has put some level of annonymity into their adaption of the MAC address into IPv6 addressing.

  20. PEBKAC flaw in logic by sjbe · · Score: 1

    Not only is this a significant increase in packet overhead, but it is highly likely that some portion will identify a person.

    Without additional corroborating information all you can do with IPV4 or IPV6 is identify the originating computer. It is impossible to be 100% certain of who the person actually sitting at that computer is unless they transmit other uniquely identifying information or can be identified by third party sources such as security cameras. IPv6 is not meaningfully more useful for personal identification than IPv4.

    1. Re:PEBKAC flaw in logic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      IPv6 is not meaningfully more useful for personal identification than IPv4.

      No one but me uses my laptop. Currently, my IP address changes every time my ADSL modem is switched off/on (I switch it off when I'm not at home). Right now, my IP address only indicates which ISP I use. That will change with IPv6. An IP address will basically become a super cookie I can't delete in any way.

    2. Re:PEBKAC flaw in logic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Without additional corroborating information all you can do with IPV4 or IPV6 is identify the originating computer. It is impossible to be 100% certain of who the person actually sitting at that computer is

      Why is 100% certainty relevant to a discussion of privacy? If I am 95% certain that you are the user of your home computer, I know that computer's IP address, and I see network traffic between that adress and site X, do you feel that your interaction with site X was private?

    3. Re:PEBKAC flaw in logic by Tacvek · · Score: 1

      Let's assume your provider gives you a /64 address space, which is the minimum size allocation that supports auto-configuration via SLAAC.
      It would be easy enough for the provider to offer dynamic IP block service, where your modem/router gets assigned a different /64 address space each time.

      Then all you need to do is turn on privacy SLAAC addresses, which prevents using just the local part to identify you.

      I fully expect that by default ISPs will provide dynamic blocks to most consumer clients, if for no other reason than to discourage hosting servers.

      --
      Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
    4. Re:PEBKAC flaw in logic by redelm · · Score: 1

      The person identified will be the service subscriber, and by recording IPs are identifiable without access to DHCP logs, potentially long afterwards. This might not be enough for a criminal conviction, but will be damning in the court of public opinion and more than sufficient for extra-legal enforcement (Gitmo).

    5. Re:PEBKAC flaw in logic by rs79 · · Score: 1

      Pro: "Then all you need to do is turn on privacy SLAAC addresses"

      Con: you buy a laptop set up for V6 and find out some pedo had it last and the mac address portion of V6 hasn't changed.

      Good luck with that.

      --
      Need Mercedes parts ?
    6. Re:PEBKAC flaw in logic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I fully expect that by default ISPs will provide dynamic blocks to most consumer clients, if for no other reason than to discourage hosting servers.

      In other words, the end-to-end principle will be just as broken as it was with NAT. So explain again why the consumer needs IPv6?

    7. Re:PEBKAC flaw in logic by Electricity+Likes+Me · · Score: 1

      And with that comment it becomes apparent you've no idea what you're talking about.

      You should consider just accepting your role as "dumb consumer" and not worry about this at all.

    8. Re:PEBKAC flaw in logic by Tacvek · · Score: 1

      Why would end-to-end be broken?

      Just because your IP address might change every week or so does not prevent a remote computer from connecting to yours. And you can always use dynamic DNS to host a server.

      --
      Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
  21. Re:Good for them! PRIVACY gone in 128bits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You're a moron.

  22. Re:Good for them! PRIVACY gone in 128bits by Concerned+Onlooker · · Score: 0

    "Having your computer have a globally routable IP address is a good thing, not a bad thing..."

    Not from a security perspective.

    --
    http://www.rootstrikers.org/
  23. Re:Good for them! PRIVACY gone in 128bits by kwark · · Score: 1

    "Not only is this a significant increase in packet overhead, but it is highly likely that some portion will identify a person.
    Yes, yes, I know there are lots of things the ISPs _can_ do to under IPv6 preserve anonymity. Most will not"

    It isn't the job of the ISP do generate random ipv6 addresses, it is pu to the user:
    http://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4941.txt (nearly 5 years old though)

  24. In other news.... by gstrickler · · Score: 5, Insightful

    MS seen as backpedaling on it's support for 64-bit computing over Windows 8 only supporting 32-bit CPUs in tablets.

    Come on people, this isn't backpedaling, it's a completely new version of a utility that in it's initial release supports what's in use in 99% of installations. Those who are actually using IPv6 can use the older version until this one adds support (probably in the next release).

    --
    make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
    1. Re:In other news.... by ericloewe · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Windows 8 isn't limited to 32-bit processors in tablets. The processors themselves lack 64-bit instructions, but the support is there. Nothing is preventing anyone from sticking an x64 processor in a tablet, like they've done quite a few times (Asus EP121, Samsung Series 7 Tablet).

      Apple on the other hand, is not allowing users to configure IPv6 - even if it is present and enabled, what good does it do if it can't be configured? Less features is not something you should want or tolerate. That's what pre-release builds are for.

    2. Re:In other news.... by gstrickler · · Score: 0

      Woosh!!!

      --
      make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
    3. Re:In other news.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ARMv8 is 64-bit, too, so we just have to wait for the OEMs to start shipping ARMv8 cores.

    4. Re:In other news.... by gcerullo · · Score: 0

      I don't even think he understands the significance of your "Woosh!" comment. I think you should spell it out for him before his head explodes.

    5. Re:In other news.... by gstrickler · · Score: 1, Informative

      Apple on the other hand, is not allowing users to configure IPv6 - even if it is present and enabled, what good does it do if it can't be configured?

      Wrong. Fundamentally wrong. As I explained in my first post, the first release of this new version of the utility doesn't allow you to configure it, but the old version does, and it still works. It's a non-issue for 99% of users because most people can't yet get IPv6 support from their ISP. The device still fully supports IPv6, but if you need it right now, you have to use the older version of the configuration utility, that's all.

      --
      make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
    6. Re:In other news.... by ToasterMonkey · · Score: 1

      Apple on the other hand, is not allowing users to configure IPv6 - even if it is present and enabled, what good does it do if it can't be configured? Less features is not something you should want or tolerate. That's what pre-release builds are for.

      That isn't true, you can download the previous version easily and install it alongside the new. Instead of getting all butthurt over nothing, why don't you ask people who are actually affected by this in some meaningful way?

      *chirp* *chirp*

    7. Re:In other news.... by ericloewe · · Score: 1

      So Apple has once again passed off a beta version as a finished product "to be updated later". Excusing such behavior only serves to justify it, since you (and others) seemingly accept all kinds of PR nonsense.

  25. Re:Good for them! PRIVACY gone in 128bits by syncrotic · · Score: 1

    Would you maybe care to explain just what it is that you're on about? Seriously, not a single thing you've written makes any sense.

  26. Re:Good for them! PRIVACY gone in 128bits by xous · · Score: 2

    I'm getting really tired of idiots that think NAT is a security solution. It's not. It's a hack that breaks end-to-end connectivity.

    The only way IPv6 can be a security issue is because incompetent fucks don't understand security.

  27. Maybe Apple thinks the Republicans will win? by ibsteve2u · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    And so the number of people who can afford internet access - and, consequentially, the need to enlarge the range of available addresses - is about to plunge dramatically?

    (Yeah, you may think that is trolling, but anybody who runs a big corporation will tell you that the corporation that doesn't keep a finger to the political winds has already seen its best days.)

    --
    Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
  28. IMEI by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I suppose Apple could do a software update for the Airport to support V6. I wonder if Apple is going to AUID and IMEI rather than IP so they have an intermediate mapping server to funnel through?

    JJ

  29. Re:Good for them! PRIVACY gone in 128bits by jroysdon · · Score: 3, Informative

    That's bunk. NAT doesn't provide real security, and in fact a false sense of security. Your firewall should always deny/drop traffic by default, except where permitted otherwise, either explicitly or by a stateful connection originating from the inside.

    If you want pseudo anonymity on the level of what you have with IPv4, then leave the global randomize identifiers on. It's on by default in Windows. You actually have to disable it with netsh interface ipv6 set global randomizeidentifiers=disabled.

  30. Re:Good for them! PRIVACY gone in 128bits by magamiako1 · · Score: 3, Informative

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stateful_firewall

    Time to learn some networking, bro.

  31. Re:Good for them! PRIVACY gone in 128bits by jroysdon · · Score: 2

    You have the same ability to be "anonymous" as with IPv4. With IPv4, they can track it down to your gateway, but have no idea what PC inside originated the traffic. I doubt you get a unique IPv4 address each time your gateway restarts. My Comcast connection has had the same one for 8 years, through two cablemodems, because my MAC address on my router stayed the same (or rather, I told my newer routers to use the one my older one had). Even if it is different each time, like with many PPPoE implimentations, your ISP has logs where each account-to-IP-assignment is known.

    With IPv6, if you leave the global randomize identifier option enabled (default in Windows), then all they can do is track it down to your network /64 which is assigned to your gateway, and not to the individual PC.

    Not sure about other OS, but if being "anonymous" is important to you, you might look into it.

  32. Re:Good for them! PRIVACY gone in 128bits by magamiako1 · · Score: 2

    So here's the deal.

    Your ISP will provide you with say, a /60 network via a mechanism called DHCP-PD using what's called a DUID.

    Your router will then provide you with a /64 (or multiple /64's, depending on the features of the device, I suspect just one by default unless you go into some advanced networking config), which will be used to connect your home network.

    Your end devices, such as your PC, will have the option of what's called "temporary addresses". These addresses by default on Windows are preferred for 1 day (meaning, all new connections are made using that address), and available for 7 days (as in, it will accept incoming connections on that address, but not create new ones from it).

    This mechanism provides a level of anonymity because the address generation has nothing to do with any identifiable components on the device itself.

    This is also something you control on your client, not controlled on the routers. If controlled on the router, one would merely use DHCP, offering the same level of "anonymity" that we have today.

  33. Re:Good for them! PRIVACY gone in 128bits by jroysdon · · Score: 1

    I think what they were referring to is that the ISP presently gives out dynamic IPv4 addresses. The correlation in this case would giving out a dynamic IPv6 /64 to each network that connects. While this could be done, there are many reasons not to do so as it would require constant renumbering (which can be done, but it's confusing for the end-user).

    Either way, it's all bunk, as the ISP will keep track of the address assignments to the network level either way. Both IPv4 and IPv6 have a way to "anonymize" the end-PC (IPv4 NAT, IPv6 random IPv6 addressing) - but it's very easy to fingerprint the PC without the IP address.

  34. Re:Good for them! PRIVACY gone in 128bits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What you want is a firewall.

  35. Steve Jobs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    IPv6 who would ever want that?

  36. Re:Good for them! PRIVACY gone in 128bits by redelm · · Score: 1
    Of course you control your machines. But why would an ISP be so generous as to give you a /60 ? Most people won't need it and won't know what to do. More likely they will keep the bits for themselves (routing) and may be required by telecoms police to use some for userid.

    More likely you will get a /96 at best. In those fixed 96 bits, there can easily be static UID portions. Right now with IPv4, the "tightness" of addr space means very few users have static bits in their addr, and most pay heavily for the privilige because they need it for incoming traffic.

  37. Re:Good for them! PRIVACY gone in 128bits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You block ping too? God, you're two kind of idiots at once.

  38. You'd think IPV6 people would be smarter... by Alrescha · · Score: 5, Informative

    Apple didn't back off on anything. The version of Airport Utility discussed is the pretty, dumbed-down version of the application intended for folks who just barely understand what a router is about. It matches the similar version deployed on iOS.

    The "previous version" isn't. The feature-complete 5.6 was released at the same time as the simple version, and has the same support for IPv6 as it ever did.

    A.

    --
    ...bringing you cynical quips since 1998
    1. Re:You'd think IPV6 people would be smarter... by Tore+S+B · · Score: 1

      But the idea that IPv6 is supposed to be an "advanced extra feature" is as patently ludicrous as it would be for DNS or HTTP. It's a core technology and must be treated as such by all vendors if we are to have any hope to escape from NAT and address shortages.

      --
      toresbe
    2. Re:You'd think IPV6 people would be smarter... by Alrescha · · Score: 1

      "advanced extra feature"

      Nice straw man. Nobody used those words except for you.

      The Airport Extreme base station supports IPv6 (and DNS) out of the box*. As much as you might like to pretend otherwise, *configuring* such things *is* an advanced task for 99% of the users out there. People need elevators, not airplanes.

      A.

      * maybe not always configured the way you would like, but it's there. OS X and Apple devices (Airport, Apple TV, etc.) talk to each other via IPv6 by default.

      --
      ...bringing you cynical quips since 1998
    3. Re:You'd think IPV6 people would be smarter... by Tore+S+B · · Score: 1

      "advanced extra feature"

      Nice straw man. Nobody used those words except for you.

      I simply clarified what you are implying, both in the parent post and in the following paragraph. I do not believe my clarification contradicts your statements.

      The Airport Extreme base station supports IPv6 (and DNS) out of the box*. As much as you might like to pretend otherwise, *configuring* such things *is* an advanced task for 99% of the users out there.

      Of course configuring IPv6 is a task for an advanced user. So is configuring IPv4! They are both supposed to Just Work and that is not the case if support for it is optional.

      --
      toresbe
    4. Re:You'd think IPV6 people would be smarter... by Alrescha · · Score: 1

      So to boil it down, you object to someone having to download the 'advanced' version of the configuration utility in order to make 'advanced' changes to the configuration.

      I wish the IPv6 problems of the world were all so simple.

      A.

      --
      ...bringing you cynical quips since 1998
    5. Re:You'd think IPV6 people would be smarter... by Tore+S+B · · Score: 2

      I'd object to that because that would be plain stupid. Why not simply have a "Show advanced..." button, rather than forcing users to download an alternative utility to access them?

      But AFAICT, the issue is not one of interface visibility of IPv6 settings, it is one of IPv6 support in general. The utility does not support IPv6, which is not only a UI issue but a functional issue.

      --
      toresbe
    6. Re:You'd think IPV6 people would be smarter... by sl3xd · · Score: 2

      The Airport devices (and their firmware) have IPv6 support - that has never changed.

      The changes sound very "Apple", actually. There's a famous story of the iDVD team having a whole set of slides ready to show user interaction. Steve Jobs walks in, doesn't take a single look at their presentation, and draws a window on the chalkboard. "This is your interface. You drag movies to the window, you click 'burn.' That's it."

      There are two "latest" Airport Configuration Utiltities right now - 5.6 and 6.0. 6.0 is the "This is your interface, you click a button. That's it." interface. IPv6 "just works" if the Airport device is actually given IPv6 subnets & routes.

      I'm personally not a fan of 6.0, but having actually used it, I'll share what I've found:

      I've configured a network that provides full "Native" IPv6 and IPv4. I've hooked up the Airport in the network, so that it receives native IPv6 and IPv4 addresses & routing from an upstream router. Everything - both IPv6 and IPv4 "just work" with zero modification needed. As dual-stack native IPv6 & IPv4 is the model most ISP's have targeted; it seems that the Airport devices will "Just work" when ISP's decide to actually provide IPv6.

      This also exposes the real issue: Nearly all of us only get native IPv4 from our ISP's - we have to use a 6to4 tunnel to get IPv6.

      6to4 tunnels are best though as not food, but an alternative to starving - Some ISP's provide their own 6to4 routers; they are oversubscribed, and aren't 'network-local' - with packets often crossing the country a few times within the ISP's internal network just to get to their sole 6to4 router. Others use external 6to4 tunnel providers - and packets then must cross oversubscribed ISP peering points. In both cases, the result is similar: much higher latencies, much lower bandwidths, and less reliability.

      All in all, it's a bad user experience, and 6to4 is a hack that normal users shouldn't have to deal with - it's a transition mechanism for early adopters like us, after all.

      Nearly every other user, however, shouldn't care about IPv6, nor should they be forced to learn. A 6to4 tunnel should be (and is) unnecessary for nearly everyone. What is necessary is that when the ISP deploy native IPv6, their networking hardware should "just work". The user shouldn't ever know anything has changed.

      From my own testing, that's exactly what will happen with the Airport devices.

      --
      -- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
    7. Re:You'd think IPV6 people would be smarter... by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      How about the real issue, that you shouldn't need a whole fucking program just to configure an AP which is a computer and has the ability to run a webserver?

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    8. Re:You'd think IPV6 people would be smarter... by Yaztromo · · Score: 1

      Nearly every other user, however, shouldn't care about IPv6, nor should they be forced to learn.

      Agreed -- but the most important part that is missing from 6.0 is the ability to manage the IPv6 firewall. The Airport routers are fortunately sane in that they block all IPv6 incoming traffic by default, but a lot of people do find the need to open ports for various services (in my case, SSH), and the Airport Utility 6.0 doesn't expose any interface to do so for IPv6 (which is unfortunate, as the IPv6 firewall is significantly easier to deal with than IPv4, particularly if you have multiple systems with services on the same port you want to open to the world).

      Yes, we do have that facility in v5.6 -- I still use v5.6 for managing my network, and use the iPad Airport Utility (which has the same interface as 6.0) generally just to check on network topology (we have three Apple Airport devices on our network, and the network topography diagram is quite nice to quickly verify if a device is online or not). However, Apple should be at the very least exposing the IPv6 firewall in Airport Utility v6.

      Count me as one of those who is looking forward to an update with IPv6 management added back in.

      Yaz

  39. Re:Good for them! PRIVACY gone in 128bits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    NAT is a security solution just as much as disconnecting or shutting off your computer is a security solution.

  40. 5.6 *is* the latest version by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    5.6 is not the previous version! 6.0 and 5.6 were released simultaneously! The problem lies with their product naming, not versioning. That is, 6.0 really should have been called Airport Utility Lite or something like that. 5.6 could have been Airport Utility Pro or something like that. 5.6 is very much the latest version. Want all the features? Use 5.6. Want a simplified interface? Use 6.0.

  41. Re:Good for them! PRIVACY gone in 128bits by Dagger2 · · Score: 2

    Why wouldn't they? ISPs get blocks in the /20 to /32 range, and end-users get /48s. That's plenty enough bits to do routing with, for both the ISP and for the end-user.

    A /60 isn't generous, it's downright stingy. Not quite as bad as the ISPs that only give a single /64 (or the ones that fail to understand routing and don't give you anything at all), but there's plenty of space to give everyone /48s. Why go smaller? Especially all the way down to /96; you'd end up breaking SLAAC and subnetting for your users for no gain whatsoever.

    Any argument revolving around what most people understand or need is silly in IPv6. Some people will need it or understand what to do with it, and the address space is large enough to allocate the same large block size to everyone, including the people who won't use it. What advantage is there in not doing that?

  42. Re:Good for them! PRIVACY gone in 128bits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "But why would an ISP be so generous as to give you a /60"

    Why wouldn't they? There aren't enought customers and equipment in the world to justify restricting customers to something smaller then /64.(bits reserved for local identifiers). Hell, the guy in charge of rolling out ipv6 to our customers is contemplating to just give all customers a /48 "because we can".

  43. If it wasn't clear before, it should be now by erroneus · · Score: 2

    Apple is not in the "serious business" business. They aren't. They make "consumer gear" now. I love the Mac Pro. I love the Mac Mini. I think they are great machines. The problem? They aren't focusing on those any more. They care about iThings for people to throw away in favor of the next one.

    And when some great F/OSS stuff makes implementing IPv6 easier, they will absorb it and pretend they invented it like they always have.

    1. Re:If it wasn't clear before, it should be now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      When have they ever been considered a "serious" business competitor.

      They have always been a cutesy gadget manufacturer.

  44. Apple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Apple users have multiple devices connected to the internet in their home. More so than pc users I believe.
    Apple users are taking more ipv4 addresses, so when they run out of v4 addresses, what then?

    Bad move on apples part

  45. Re:Good for them! PRIVACY gone in 128bits by WaffleMonster · · Score: 1

    Not only is this a significant increase in packet overhead, but it is highly likely that some portion will identify a person.

    Theres an RFC for that... RFC 3041. On windows hosts privacy addresses are enabled by default. Apple users have to switch it on manually if they want it.

    Yes, yes, I know there are lots of things the ISPs _can_ do to under IPv6 preserve anonymity. Most will not, and of the few remaining, a few unfriendly chats from the telecommunication regulators will persuade most.

    ISPs will have more prefixes to play with.. very reasonable to assume users will end up keeping their IPv6 prefixes longer or even have them statically attached to their accounts. My current ISP is dynamically assigning IPv4 addresses but I've had the same one for more than a year.

    Broadband and "always on" put an end to dialup era short term assignment.

  46. You have no freaking clue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I love it when idiots post stupid things pretending that they know stuff. They come out looking like complete morons.

    Here is a hint, go home and "google" home network and then come back and talk about what you learned and about how much of an ignorant you were before.

    1. Re:You have no freaking clue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      NAT is security by obscurity. The whole idea of a separate "home network" is bass-ackwards.

  47. Re:Good for them! PRIVACY gone in 128bits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A /64 is the abolute largest prefix you will get.

    Currently, those with ideas about this are debating between end-sites getting a /48 or a /56.

  48. Spaces is better by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

    I like Spaces better in Lion. At first I was annoyed that my precious 4x4 grid was now a line, but I like better how the spaces and windows within them are combined with exposed and displayed.

    I also really like full-screen support, I don't use it all the time but it's better than not having it.

    Mail is also better.

    Time Machine is, for me, less buggy.

    I agree with iCal being terrible though, and the odd shift from Save As to Duplicate is rough - but that one I can chalk up to my having been used to how things are, and I'm willing to ride out that change to see if it's really better. The CS person in me thinks it is better because it's Apple baking version control into every document, which is pretty compelling if support becomes widespread.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:Spaces is better by Moridineas · · Score: 1

      I like Spaces better in Lion. At first I was annoyed that my precious 4x4 grid was now a line, but I like better how the spaces and windows within them are combined with exposed and displayed.

      I mostly miss the "all windows" expose view (since each application's windows are now stacked on top of each other). I find it--for me--less functional. I no longer use the Spaces part, but one of my colleagues says the ordering of his Screen desktops frequently gets changed around. Not sure exactly of the details.

      I agree with iCal being terrible though, and the odd shift from Save As to Duplicate is rough - but that one I can chalk up to my having been used to how things are, and I'm willing to ride out that change to see if it's really better. The CS person in me thinks it is better because it's Apple baking version control into every document, which is pretty compelling if support becomes widespread.

      I'm willing to give it a chance as well. The versioning is a nice feature, I agree. Can't say I've used it a single time other than when testing.

  49. Trivialities by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

    Even if you could, it's trivial to block ping scans at the firewall in the same way as unsolicited connections

    You have five minutes to have your mom accomplish that task, it being trivial and all.

    Go.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:Trivialities by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 2

      "OK, Mom, now click the 'Block ICMP' checkbox. Yep, with the left mouse button. Great! All set."

      --
      Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
    2. Re:Trivialities by Bobakitoo · · Score: 1

      Even if you could, it's trivial to block ping scans at the firewall in the same way as unsolicited connections

      You have five minutes to have your mom accomplish that task, it being trivial and all.

      Go.

      Easy. Mom, open the configuration panel of the router and click on "block ping scans". It just just under the "reject unsolicited connections" option.

      inb4, Mom can't use the configuration panel. Then go upstairs and do it yourself... that would also make your complain moot.

    3. Re:Trivialities by Soporific · · Score: 1

      I'm just doing this for fun, but wouldn't it be a couple clicks and 'disable ICMP' radio button in DD-WRT? :)

      ~S

    4. Re:Trivialities by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 1

      1. Unpack an IPv6-enabled router and plug it in.

      There's no reason why this can't be working out of the box. And Apple, of all companies, shouldn't be shy to actually make it so.

    5. Re:Trivialities by Electricity+Likes+Me · · Score: 1

      Well I guess it's done since a good consumer router will default to this?

    6. Re:Trivialities by bn-7bc · · Score: 0

      Very bad idea, you just broke every site that heppens to have a lover path mtu than her local lan (which probably uses 1500 bytes) remember ipv6 does not fragment packets in transit it sends icmpv6 "pakcet to big" (type 2 code 0), so at a minimum you need to allow that before the denying of icmp am alternative solution is to set the mtu on the local lan to 1280 (minimum mtu allowed in ipv6 (can be done with ra or dhvpv6).

  50. Local addressing vs NAT by unixisc · · Score: 1

    Hosts which are not supposed to be (publicly?) addressable can just remain within a LAN. In case of IPv4, they'll have private addresses like 192.168.0.1, while under IPv6, they'll have a link-local address like fe80::1. NAT is just an address translation from the public internet to a private network. But if a host is not supposed to be addressable, why connect it to the public internet via a NAT?

    If any host needs to connect to the internet, it ought to get a routable address. Let the firewall have its rules for which addresses are allowed and which are disallowed, be it via IPtables or PF. But making it jump through hoops via a NAT is ridiculous - either make it publicly accessable end to end, or don't make it publicly accessable at all.

    Too many people are conflating NAT w/ private addresses. Any host can exist within a private network - no problems there. But if it needs to be a part of a public network, don't use the private network to connect the host to the public one - connect it directly, but w/ all the firewall rules in place.

  51. static vs dynamic addresses by unixisc · · Score: 1

    This is something that would be easily achieved w/ the use of static vs dynamic addresses. For things like websites or ftp servers which one may want others to connect to from outside, use static addresses. For things that you don't want enumerated by hosts, use dynamic addresses. It's easier w/ IPv6, since you now have 2^64 - s, where s is the #static addresses you'll want/need.

    To set all that up, in IPv4, you need DHCP, and in IPv6, you need DHCP6. Set up your address assignment configuration rules, and you're good to go.

  52. NAT by unixisc · · Score: 1

    IPv6 NAT only exists for links b/w IPv4 and IPv6 nodes. There is no such thing as NAT66 or NAT666.

  53. Re:Good for them! PRIVACY gone in 128bits by Tacvek · · Score: 1

    Actually the value being widely recommended is a /56. See RFC 6177. That allows the user quite a few subnets, more than most homes and small businesses will likely use. Those with larger requirements should have no problem requesting a larger block.

    --
    Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
  54. Human Memory Abides by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    An ipv4 address isn't much different than a phone number and fits into human short-term memory well. An ipv6 address is tough to keep in mind and harder to look at. The human factor.

    1. Re:Human Memory Abides by petteyg359 · · Score: 1

      190.7.206.220 is no easier to remember than 2a01:4f8:130:9101::

  55. Re:Good for them! PRIVACY gone in 128bits by Soporific · · Score: 1

    That's why I double NAT.

    ~S

  56. Yep "That's all it is" by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

    I'm just doing this for fun, but wouldn't it be a couple clicks and 'disable ICMP' radio button in DD-WRT? :)

    Yes of course.

    Now think of a real person attempting to do this. Without your input. They are screwed.

    NOW think of a real person attempting to do this, with your input, YOU are screwed, and I can almost certainly guarantee a home visit by yourself to do this in the end.

    I myself like to enjoy the company of people I visit, not the company of their router interfaces (which very rarely serve cheeses I enjoy).

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:Yep "That's all it is" by ericloewe · · Score: 1

      Easy. Make the option be on by default. Those who need/want to allow ping scans can just enable it, since they know how to do it anyway, since they need it.

  57. Re:Good for them! PRIVACY gone in 128bits by redelm · · Score: 1

    You've never heard of bait'n'switch? Get you lusting after a /48 and all hot-to-go, then get a /72 or less? Tell me -- if you were Big Sis and wanted to clamp down on the Internet, what would you do? Do you think Crisco and other router mfrs are gonna complain with more routing bits?

  58. I'll cop to ignorance... by jvonk · · Score: 1

    I have one use case that I haven't seen addressed yet (ha, ha): reverse proxy for high availability.

    Okay, let's say I have two internal servers that I want to expose externally via a single IP in order to facilitate reachability in a scenario where one server goes down. I am aware of round-robin DNS for load balancing, but that doesn't address the scenario wherein a client has a previously-established end-to-end connection and the server they are explicitly addressing goes offline. For simplicity's sake, we can assume we are discussing a stateless app server, but the concept applies the same in application clusters that share session state among the cluster.

    With v4, I can have the NAT device handle failover so that subsequent requests from the client are seamlessly rerouted to the other server at the network layer—all behind the abstraction layer that NAT provides.

    I've read a little about RFC 6296 (NPT), but it's not entirely clear to me that this would solve my use case. As far as I know, the simplest/best solution is to insinuate a proxy between the public IP and the private IP, because interface bonding doesn't fix the scenario where the app server has gone down but the server host is still up. In an interface-bonding configuration traffic can still be sent to the host with the downed app server (FAIL).

    I have read that some people are attempting to hack NAT on top of IPv6, but I have seen many posts over the past few years claiming that "NAT is never the solution/breaks the internet/causes cancer/etc"; therefore, I am wondering what the best practice actual solution is in this case.

    1. Re:I'll cop to ignorance... by jroysdon · · Score: 1

      You don't need NAT for HA. Your LBs float the virtual IP and redirect traffic to the real IPs on the real servers behind. Return traffic from the real servers' real IPs come back to the LBs and the LBs pass it on as the original virtual IP that was accessed by the original request.

    2. Re:I'll cop to ignorance... by bsane · · Score: 1

      Theres nothing different with ipv6 in this regard. Reverse proxies work the same under v6 and v4.

    3. Re:I'll cop to ignorance... by jvonk · · Score: 2

      Thanks for the reply. However, what you described appears to be effectively identical to basic NAT inasmuch as it provides address translation/rewriting behind a router and serves as an abstraction layer between external & internal IPs.

      Have I merely misunderstood the semantics in the v6 NAT debate?

    4. Re:I'll cop to ignorance... by Electricity+Likes+Me · · Score: 1

      NAT on IPv4 wouldn't provide you with single IP failover anyway - it's default mode of operation is to uniquely map ports on a single external IP to multiple IPs and ports on the internal side.

      To do HA you're already using a special case configuration. I mean, yes, it's NAT, but not as it's commonly used.

    5. Re:I'll cop to ignorance... by jvonk · · Score: 1

      NAT on IPv4 wouldn't provide you with single IP failover anyway

      Yes, granted, unless the v4 NAT were being performed by a load balancer (I was talking about a load balancer scenario). I just didn't want to get caught up in discussing the load balancing aspects vs. the... "network address translation" (*cough*) that is necessary for the LB to work in the first place.

      To do HA you're already using a special case configuration. I mean, yes, it's NAT, but not as it's commonly used.

      Cool. My primary concern was the claim that "NAT is evil and endpoint-to-endpoint IP addressablility is the One True Way", when NAT is requisite for HA. The way some v6 zealots have been ranting about NAT and addressability, I thought perhaps there was some new approach to HA in v6 that didn't require NAT.

    6. Re:I'll cop to ignorance... by SkimTony · · Score: 1

      I would hope that even the v6 zealots would have to admit the usefulness of load balancing. However, it's useful to note that while this sort of LB is technically Network Address Translation, it's not dependent on using RFC 1918 un-routable addresses; you can set up a load balancer and have it split one end-to-end routable address out to two or more other end-to-end routable addresses. Your DNS will point end-users to the front-end virtual interface on the LB, but your balanced resources can just as easily have legit IP addresses.
              I think the anti-NAT ranting comes up as a backlash against all the "But we can just use NAT, we don't need IPv6," comments. When the internet was first designed, it was meant to be a network of peer devices, which each device capable of being a client and a server. NAT (in the standard home cable/dsl gateway sense) breaks that model, which in the view of many, turns the internet back into another cable TV infrastructure (consumers consume, big studios who can afford hosting produce - I realize this is a bit simplified).

    7. Re:I'll cop to ignorance... by jvonk · · Score: 1

      However, it's useful to note that while this sort of LB is technically Network Address Translation, it's not dependent on using RFC 1918 un-routable addresses

      Excellent point. However, in addition to the obvious & necessary firewall configuration to protect/prevent direct access to the server via direct IP, I would probably consider using site-local v6 addresses for those servers' services.

      Since v6 site-local addresses are not expected to be publicly routable, it would provide yet another layer of sanity check against future edge-router misconfiguration by admins. I mean, why *not* have the server's Apache instance bind to just a single, site-local IP and configure the server's own firewall to only allow traffic on that IP from the LB and designated internal testing hosts? Yes, all of this is doable via end-to-end routable addresses, but I'm paranoid and prefer to enable the minimum accessibility configuration.

      I perceive no downside to this approach, except the slightly increased possibility that network reconfigurations might render the server's services unreachable. However, I consider that to be a forcing device that ensures the reconfiguring admins will review/update the server's configuration (like they should have done regardless). Either way, all of this should come out during testing before go-live on a network topology migration ("you have tested this, right?" — haha).

      I think the anti-NAT ranting comes up as a backlash against all the "But we can just use NAT, we don't need IPv6," comments.

      v6 is cool, and I have no problem with its eventual adoption. I just wanted to ensure that I can keep my abstraction/indirection layer for scenarios like this. However, you've seen that many of these debates have taken on "holy war" status and it's hard to glean any useful information once both sides rapidly & inevitably resort to ad hominem.

  59. Re:Good for them! PRIVACY gone in 128bits by amorsen · · Score: 1

    /48 was the originally envisioned minimum end user allocation. It has been changed to /56 because some ISP's are afraid of running out of addresses. A typical ISP is assigned a /32 unless they ask for more, so that is "only" 65000 customers. However, large ISP's have been assigned up to /19, which leaves room for half a billion subscribers, even with /48 assignments. Going to /56 bumps that to 137 billion subscribers...

    --
    Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
  60. Apple Making the Same Misstep as Microsoft? by EmagGeek · · Score: 1

    Because 4,294,967,296 addresses ought to be enough for everybody,.

  61. Prediction: by rs79 · · Score: 1

    V6 is Betamax and will never be adopted.

    Some other really clever protocol will pop up and gain widespread commercial acceptance. It will not come from the IETF.

    Mark my words.

    --
    Need Mercedes parts ?
    1. Re:Prediction: by WaffleMonster · · Score: 1

      V6 is Betamax and will never be adopted.

      Some other really clever protocol will pop up and gain widespread commercial acceptance. It will not come from the IETF.

      Every major ISP and content provider in the US is in the process of testing IPv6 for deployment. Asia is going batshit...

      Mark my words.

      I'm sorry but it is too late for this shit. The world IS moving on to IPv6 out of necessity with or without you.

      I used to be the poster child for hating IPv6 and thinking IETF was stupid until I looked into the problem and questioned my own assumptions.

      You speak about protocols...inventing clever protocols... The core problem is not a protocol issue at all. Get your minds out of the IP header. It is an ADDRESSING issue.

    2. Re:Prediction: by rs79 · · Score: 1

      "Every major ISP and content provider in the US is in the process of testing IPv6 for deployment. Asia is going batshit..."

      Every video store had Betamax tapes. V6 has been shoved down their throats. They don't particularly like it.

      "I'm sorry but it is too late for this shit. The world IS moving on to IPv6 out of necessity with or without you."

      The world hasn't even heard of it for the most part.

      Point is, V6 isn't an extension to the net, it's an entirely separate parallel network. Some people are going to migrate over to it, but the vasy majority have absolutely no reason to.

      An if you think commercial carriers are going to shut off V4 service to paying customers you have another thing coming.

      "It is an ADDRESSING issue."

      Gosh, you don't say.

      --
      Need Mercedes parts ?
    3. Re:Prediction: by WaffleMonster · · Score: 1

      Every major ISP and content provider in the US is in the process of testing IPv6 for deployment. Asia is going batshit..."

      Every video store had Betamax tapes. V6 has been shoved down their throats. They don't particularly like it.

      Shoved down their throats by who? The depletion of IPv4 address space? Without ISPs and content who is doing the shoving?

      The world hasn't even heard of it for the most part.

      The people who matter certainly have.

      Most people have never heard of IPv4 and don't know what an IP Address is. When their systems start passing IPv6 packets they will be as oblivious to that as they are to IPv4 today.

      Point is, V6 isn't an extension to the net, it's an entirely separate parallel network. Some people are going to migrate over to it, but the vasy majority have absolutely no reason to.

      Most people have no reason to care because it will happen automatically at some point. Either instantly when their ISP turns up IPv6 or at some point in the future when their CPE craps out or is obsoleted they will go get a new one.

      "It is an ADDRESSING issue."
      Gosh, you don't say.

      It sure sounds obvious but the implications seem not to be. I see too many people saying IETF screwed up without themselves offering a better workable solution. The alternate solutions I see people talking about seem to be missing very basic points of what it means to be out of addresses or what is operationally viable.

  62. ipv6 sucks anyway by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ipv6 sucks anyway

  63. Configuration vs device firmware; Native vs tunnel by sl3xd · · Score: 1

    There is a lot of confusion here from people who have obviously never configured Airport devices.

    Most routers provide a web interface. The configuration interface is part of the router's firmware, and it can be assumed that if the configuration interface doesn't have a setting, it doesn't exist.

    This is not the case with Airport devices.

    Airport devices do not provide a web interface; the only way to configure them is through the "Airport Configuration Utility" which runs as an application on your PC, Mac, or iOS device. The Airport device's firmware hasn't changed - it still provides the same functionality it always has.

    Second, there is a difference between between native IPv6 and running a 6to4 tunnel. One is "real" IPv6, the other is a hack for early adopters who want to gain experience with IPv6, even though their ISP doesn't provide it.

    The Airport firmware hasn't removed any IPv6 support at all. As far as I can tell (and I've set it up on my home network), if an Airport device is given native IPv6 addresses & routing, it uses them and passes them along to devices that connect to the Airport network. "It just works."

    The catch is that you cannot configure a 6to4 tunnel using Airport Configuration Utility 6. A 6to4 tunnel is the only way to get IPv6 for most of us, so many cry that the sky falling, etc. (Even though Apple released a new version of ACU - 5.6 - the same day as 6.0 - and 5.6 still has 6to4 tunnel configuration)

    For those of us geeks that want IPv6, 6to4 is fine; we're using it for exactly the purpose it was designed for: a mechanism for early adoption.

    But let's face it: 6to4 has some ugly warts: packets typically have to travel as IPv4 packets far farther than the local ISP office. A typical 6to4 packet traversal is along the lines of:

    • IPv6 from your computer to your home router
    • IPv4 from your home router to either your tunnel broker or anycast 6to4 endpoint
      • (This step usually involves either an oversubscribed 6to4 endpoint, or an oversubscribed peering between ISP's.)
    • IPv6 from the 6to4 provider to an entirely different 6to4 router>
    • The destination 6to4 router then converts the packets back to IPv4, and shoots them to the destination home router.
      • (This step usually involves either an oversubscribed 6to4 endpoint, or an oversubscribed peering between ISP's.)
    • The destination home router then converts the packets from IPv4 back to IPv6, and onto the target machine

    Not only does 6to4 add many unnecessary (and time-consuming steps), but network routing is much less efficient, which makes it even slower. I've yet to see a single 6to4 tunnel that had anything approaching the latency and bandwidth of the native IPv4. Having double (or more) of the latency, and considerably less bandwidth is a pretty poor user experience. In my mind, 6to4 tunnels are a hack that I'll be glad to be rid of, and one that normal users should never have to put up with.

    Normal users shouldn't know or care about IPv6. Only we few should even have to think of a 6to4 tunnel, let alone use one.

    For the "general case" internet user, the correct path is for the ISP's to provide native IPv6.

    The real question is whether Apple is premature or simply "ahead of the curve" in deprecating 6to4 tunnels. I honestly feel the vast majority of users will never use 6to4 or its ilk - the transition will be from IPv4 only to a native dual stack - at which point the "removal" of 6to4 configuration is a moot point.

    --
    -- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
  64. At a home network ..... yes it is by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Here is a problem with idiots .... they don't think before posting stupid thing.

    FACT: We are talking about a home network. Not the internet. Or are you going to tell us that somebody needs 4+ million web enable devices at home??

    And BTW, I'm not defending Apple. Just making sure other uneducated people don't learn bad information from stupid people.

    1. Re:At a home network ..... yes it is by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      are you going to tell us that somebody needs 4+ million web enable devices at home?

      And how is my gray goo supposed to take over the world, you insensitive clod?

  65. is ipv6 for Nerds or Home users... by Your+Average+Joe · · Score: 1

    Come on guys....

    How many home users know that if they have an IPv6 setup at home that it will travel with them when they take their notebook to Starbucks? Did Starbucks or any other WIFI site had IPv6 setup wrong, guess what!?!? The bad guys can poke you at any hot spot that is setup wrong, once they have your IPv6 they can just have the malware reply back to the controller node when it has a valid IPv6 address. Now how is it that these Home users understand how the Internet was suppose to work.

    BAM!

    Is your AV software also IPv6 compatible to understand these new exploits and connectivity?

    Home users expect that when they are at a hotspot they are protected. ALL the hot spot operators I know barely know hot to turn the damn thing on or when it needs to be reset.

    --
    Your Average Joe
  66. Shortage my ass - misuse. by AWoroch · · Score: 1

    13.0.0.0/8 Xerox Corporation
    15.0.0.0/8 Hewlett-Packard Company
    16.0.0.0/8 Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation, then Compaq, then Hewlett-Packard.
    17.0.0.0/8 Apple Inc.
    19.0.0.0/8 Ford Motor Company
    48.0.0.0/8 Prudential Securities Inc.
    47.0.0.0/8 Bell-Northern Research Bell-Northern Research, now absorbed into Nortel.

    I'll believe there's a shortage, when those companies explain to me why they need 16.7 million addresses. Each. With a publically reachable IP.

    1. Re:Shortage my ass - misuse. by WaffleMonster · · Score: 1

      I'll believe there's a shortage, when those companies explain to me why they need 16.7 million addresses. Each. With a publically reachable IP.

      Allocation statistics globally and details at each RIR are PUBLIC knowledge. There is no need to take anyones word for it or draw conclusions not based on avaliable data.

      APNIC by itself burnt thru >10 class As in a single year. Even if all of these companies returned ALL of their addresses to the free pool it does not mean shit.

    2. Re:Shortage my ass - misuse. by rdebath · · Score: 1

      It doesn't matter; even if they put those addresses back into the pool now it would last about 6 months top. The "burn rate" for IP addresses when they ran out at the top level was three /8 networks per month; think about that at the peak rate what you're proposing would last about 80 days!

      The thing is you really don't have any concept of the number of IP capable mobile phones being made in the world.

    3. Re:Shortage my ass - misuse. by gl4ss · · Score: 1

      It doesn't matter; even if they put those addresses back into the pool now it would last about 6 months top. The "burn rate" for IP addresses when they ran out at the top level was three /8 networks per month; think about that at the peak rate what you're proposing would last about 80 days!

      The thing is you really don't have any concept of the number of IP capable mobile phones being made in the world.

      which would be really better off sitting behind a boring nat.. no fun receiving bills for getting flooded(or in true flatfee, no fun getting your battery flooded to zero).

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    4. Re:Shortage my ass - misuse. by rdebath · · Score: 1

      3G and similar connections across the phone network are connection based. If you don't send packets the connection drops and takes a substantial fraction of a second to reconnect. Remotes sending you packets (usually) won't bring the connection up so they don't hit either your bill or your battery. (Nor do they waste the very limited shared bandwidth of the network)

      This happens even if you have a global IP address.

  67. VPN addresses by unixisc · · Score: 2

    For an internal network, what would be ideal would be what's called site unique addresses (fc00::/10), whereby every node in the world has a unique, non-routable address. AFAIK, It's never been implemented and the IETF also proposed a site local address (fd00::/10) where the global uniqueness wasn't required. But this is certainly a better solution than public IPv6 addresses - why would one give one's office network printer its own IPv6 address, when the only people authorized to use it are company employees?

    The idea of a VPN is to connect 2 (or more) LANs so that it acts as 1 LAN - something doable using the above IPv6 address scopes. It's a PITA in IPv4, since a lot of groups do use 192.168.x.x, and chances of overlap are high to begin w/. W/ IPv6, chances are that nobody has overlapping IPv6 addresses, which makes networking them w/o using a higher layer to resolve any similarities that much easier.

  68. DHCP6 by unixisc · · Score: 1

    And I'm still not sure what so many people want to do with DHCPv6. Router announcements and default DNS servers cover a very significant portion of DHCP uses under IPv4. There are some things that need additional configuration -- any sort of netboot arrangement for example, probably needs additional configuration data -- but those are all specialized applications, and given self-configured IP networking, quite easy to do without DHCP or at least without DHCP-based address assignment (i.e. just use DHCP for configuration of the non-IP-network parameters). And I have no idea what you mean by "buggy or exploitable" -- both IPv6 stateless autoconfig and DHCPv4 can be disrupted or hijacked by any host on the same broadcast segment, and even at that IPv6 has better recovery modes because the refresh interval is typically orders or magnitude shorter.

    This one is easy - unlike IPv4, DHCP6 is needed if one wants stateful addresses - default DNS servers don't work in IPv6 w/o DHCP6. In IPv4, given that you have DNS and that the fact that every node is allowed only one address, DHCP4 is not as vital. But in IPv6, where a node can have any number of addresses, and where some services require that the addresses be stateful, it's a good idea to use DHCP6 to manage addresses. Using it, one should be able to distribute a link b/w stateful and stateless addresses, static and dynamic addresses and so on. An ideal DHCP6 would allow one to configure each of the segments, so that from the address, someone internally managing that network can tell whether an address is static, dynamic, belongs to a website, and so on.

    Also, EUI 64 embeds the Layer 2 MAC address in a way that would enable anyone to know what it is, which is a bad idea. BSD unfortunately uses that as the default for assigning an address to a desktop. A better idea is to give the user the option of either doing an address fetch using router advertizements, or if the user is more competent, provide one w/ the option of using DHCP6 to assign the addresses of all the devices within the network.

  69. I must have ipv6 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How else can I see that dancing turtle?

  70. Re:Good for them! PRIVACY gone in 128bits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    But why would an ISP be so generous as to give you a /60 ?

    Both native-IPv6 ISPs that I have used in the UK actually allocate a /48.

    Why not? They have a /32 from RIPE and a small customer base.

  71. IPv4 LANs & IPv6 internet by unixisc · · Score: 1

    Given that no LAN is likely to need anything greater than class A addresses, I think that that is probably the last thing that needs to migrate. The only reason to have a LAN IPv6 is that it would seem that having the same protocol for one's public and private networks would make it easier on the OS. Note that by LAN, I'm only talking about networks here that need to be isolated from the internet, not networks that form VPNs.

    The thing that confuses this issue is people conflating NAT w/ a wide variety of things, from LANs, firewalls, reverse proxys and what have you. Very simply, if internet connection is needed, NAT is not the way to go about it. Firewalls do not break end to end connections. Load balancing is the only legit reason I've seen argued so far for having NAT, and even there, there's the question of whether a disruption in the continuity is required.

    But yeah, even as an IPv6 advocate, I don't advocate that organizations move their LANs to IPv6 - except if they need to use them to connect VPNs.

  72. Wrong. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is all asssuming you are behind a NAT. But one of the good things of IPV6 is that it does away with all this NAT stupidity.
    And Apple isn't giving their users this awesome user experience.

  73. Re:Good for them! PRIVACY gone in 128bits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    But I'm still not sure you are an idiot or just very bitter due to mistreatment by ISPs (or just trolling).
    But IPv6 addresses have no value, there are just to many of them. And larger prefixes only mean more micromanagement for ISPs.

  74. Re:Good for them! PRIVACY gone in 128bits by Electricity+Likes+Me · · Score: 1

    Also, if being anonymous is important to you, you should be using Tor.

    Otherwise most notions of "anonymity" that you have are a joke.

  75. They split the packages up for compiling by bigtrike · · Score: 1

    The command line tools needed for ports/fink/etc can be installed without all of the rest of the stuff. So now instead of your 4-8GB download, you only need a 170MB download.

  76. No worries... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They force their users to upgrade every year anyways so maybe in 12 months it will be back.

  77. Re:Configuration vs device firmware; Native vs tun by Yaztromo · · Score: 1

    The catch is that you cannot configure a 6to4 tunnel using Airport Configuration Utility 6.

    So far as I can see, you can't configure the IPv6 firewall with Airport Utility v6.0. That is something that is far more important, and which also impacts those who can get a real auto-configured IPv6 address range and routing.

    Yaz

  78. Guys, it's just the utility. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The router still supports IPv6. Just use the 5.6 utility to set it up until some subsequent version of 6.0 supports it. Geez.

    Backing off IPv6? Apple isn't doing anything of the sort. How absurd.

  79. Re:Good for them! PRIVACY gone in 128bits by Anomalyst · · Score: 1

    The only way IPv6 can be a security issue is because incompetent fucks don't understand security.

    You just described 99.9999% of the people with an internet connection.
    They want to see the DANCING BUNNIES!

    --
    There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
  80. handy IPv6 factoids by Anomalyst · · Score: 1


    # http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc783049(v=ws.10).aspx
    # default site local (FEC0) DNS server anycast addresses are:
    # FEC0:0:0:FFFF::1
    # FEC0:0:0:FFFF::2
    # FEC0:0:0:FFFF::3
    #
    # IPv6 Host Address Block prefix
    #sorry for the obfuscation, stupid /. filters
    #XXXusingfwewerjunkcharactersusingfewerju-1
    #-usingfewr-1-aa-3-bb-4-cc-6-dd-8-ee-9-ff-1
    #-usingfewr-6-ee-2-ff-8-gg-4-hh-0-ii-6-jj-2
    V6HABP=FDFD:DEAD:BEEF:CAFE:DEAD:BEEF:CAFE:0::

    --
    There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
  81. We need to worry, Apple killed Flash mobile by Frank+T.+Lofaro+Jr. · · Score: 1

    When Steve Jobs decided to not support Flash on iPhones, Adobe said it will not longer develop Flash on any mobile platform, Apple or otherwise (e.g. Android).

    Steve Jobs managed to make Flash on mobile essentially die, right before he did.

    And even though he is dead, his little tantrum and bullshit about Flash being a battery hog has hurt Android.

    Spread enough FUD and you don't need to worry about your competitors supporting something you won't or can't, the vendor will just quit, and now no one
    supports it so you win (and the people lose).

    Flash had its problems, but it was opening up and getting better, and HTML 5 is not yet ready, and now there will be no way to play Flash games, etc on Android, since Adobe's abandonment means security holes won't get fixed and people will have to either remove it or get hacked.

    IPv6 could lose support, now the The Flawless Almighty Apple (when will members of Steve Jobs cult wake up - the leader is dead!) has decreed it. Then we will all be stuck with NAT as ISPs revoke even dynamic routable IPs from customers.

    --
    Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
  82. Nice! A variation of the "Air Crushes Can" by Dareth · · Score: 1

    Nice! A variation of the "Air Crushes Can"

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVayky_b-6U

    --

    I only look human.
    My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling