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US IPv6 Usage Grows To 3 Million Users

Posted by samzenpus on from the growing-and-growing dept.

darthcamaro writes "There is a myth that IPv6 is only for those in Asia, but that's not true. According to new data discussed this week at an IETF conference, there are more IPv6 users in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world — coming in at 3 million. From the article: 'George Michaelson, senior R&D scientist at APNIC (Asia Pacific Network Information Centre) has a reasonable idea of what the current levels are globally for IPv6 adoption, thanks to some statistical research he has been doing. In his view, IPv6 is now a reality in terms of adoption. "I think you're used to us standing up and saying 'woe is me, woe is me, v6 isn't happening,'" George Michaelson, senior R&D scientist at APNIC (Asia Pacific Network Information Centre) said. "But it is actually happening, these are not trivial numbers of people that are now using IPv6 on a routine basis."'"

33 of 155 comments (clear)

  1. IPV6 on AT&T Residential DSL by arnoldo.j.nunez · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As of June 2012, I noticed I had an IPV6 IP address. The MAC address of my wireless card was used in the actual IPV6 address itself. However, I am not sure what I can really do with this. The IPV6 address is more cumbersome to remember. Can I reasonably expect any tangible benefits as a guy who doesn't really do much IT related activities (i.e. web surfing, email, etc.)?

    1. Re:IPV6 on AT&T Residential DSL by Severus+Snape · · Score: 2

      I would just be lucky you have an IPV6 address, very surprised AT&T are that far forward in giving ordinary users one. Kudos to them I guess.

    2. Re:IPV6 on AT&T Residential DSL by fm6 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Why do you need to remember it at all? I certainly don't have any of my IP addresses memorized. When I need it, I usually end up cutting and pasting.

      The whole point of this DNS thing is that you're not supposed to need to IP address day-to-day. Anything else is sloppy administration.

    3. Re:IPV6 on AT&T Residential DSL by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 2

      Probably not, for you. For companies that host complex websites, and that go through complex load balancing and proxy setups, it's invaluable for assigning SSL keys to particular IP addresses and using IP based virtual hosting instead. This solves an enormous number of complex and subtle configuration conflicts with web servers and load balancers.

    4. Re:IPV6 on AT&T Residential DSL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      I suspect you're just seeing a link local address, like fe80::f6ce:46ff:fe30:12c5. This isn't routable. It's much like a 169.254.x.x link local address. You can talk to other nodes on your wireless, but nothing beyond a router.

      Most likely you will have to replace your CPE device(s). Your DSL modem and/or your router (if they're two different devices) will have to be replaced as the manufacturer doesn't support it anymore and won't release an update to add IPv6 support.

      This is the case for Comcast - you have to replace your cablemodem. If you have a router (and you should), you'll most likely have to replace it as well.

      Hardware vendors should be massively promoting IPv6 as it means more sales.

    5. Re:IPV6 on AT&T Residential DSL by SammyIAm · · Score: 3, Informative

      Actually, I can confirm that at least with AT&T's U-Verse service that I've had a routable IPv6 address since probably February or March. They'e been rather quiet about the roll-out (I found out through some forums), but it seems to be legitimate.

    6. Re:IPV6 on AT&T Residential DSL by fm6 · · Score: 2

      Slashdot needs a "sniping": downmod for people who write a nasty rebuttal without bothering to explain why they disagree. In this case, you might consider sharing why it's so difficult to manage a network so that nobody needs to know IP addresses.

    7. Re:IPV6 on AT&T Residential DSL by bbn · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The IP address of your gateway is always fe80::%eth0. Like this:

      ~$ ping6 -c1 fe80::%eth0
      PING fe80::%eth0(fe80::) 56 data bytes
      64 bytes from fe80::216:3eff:fe36:5f25: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.798 ms

      --- fe80::%eth0 ping statistics ---
      1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms
      rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.798/0.798/0.798/0.000 ms

      (slightly different syntax on windows)

      Not that hard eh?

      And nothing stops you from assigning easy to remember addresses to your stuff. In fact since you have little to no constraints, you can make up schemes to your liking. Your webserver could be 2001:db8:531::1. Your decide the ::1 part. You quickly learn that first three parts as it never changes it is "you". The prefix is also usually not any longer than a IPv4 address.

    8. Re:IPV6 on AT&T Residential DSL by pspahn · · Score: 2

      Congrats on your most recent +5 comment.

      I don't deal with IP6 yet, but I do know that the day is coming.... likely to be determined by the powers at Century Link. I will never remember the specifics of your post, but I will remember that there are "localhost" type defaults and my Google search time will be reduced from 10 minutes to 1 minute.

      Time is money and money is beer... so I guess I owe you a cold one. Swing by Denver (GABF is coming in October) to collect.

      --
      Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
    9. Re:IPV6 on AT&T Residential DSL by Jeremi · · Score: 2

      I see no reason for internal servers to be using IPv6.

      You're probably right, but I have to say that fe80::foo link-local addresses are really handy for auto-configuring devices on a LAN, since they are guaranteed unique and also guaranteed never to change. The IPv4 equivalent (169.254.*.* self-assigned addresses) is a can of worms by comparison.

      --


      I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
    10. Re:IPV6 on AT&T Residential DSL by dissy · · Score: 4, Informative

      Why don't you have the IP entered in your connection bookmark? Both puTTY and SecurCRT store connection profiles, where you can put the IP instead of hostname for critical servers.

      Bash has aliases and shell scripts to call ssh. Even windows CLI has batch scripts.
      If "ssh ns1" doesn't resolve, I can run "~/.ssh/ns1.sh" easily enough, which contains the "ssh <ip>" command.

      Also if your DNS regularly goes down, I'd guess remembering addresses is the least of your network troubles.

      You can already use the alias fe80::%eth0 for your gateway. Best part is you only need to remember that single address, unlike IPv4 which requires me remembering many different "x.x.x.1" addresses used as the gateways right now.

      You can even organize it identically to your IPv4 layout. You still only need to really remember 1-2 numbers that will change depending if you use a /24 or /16, and a single prefix that never changes.
      Anyone managing larger than a /16 is already going to have the entire thing documented in a management system or at worse a wiki. Excel will not cut it at that size.
      Basically put, if you have an IPv4 /12 or larger network, you already have software that manages the addresses for you. Nothing will change there with IPv6.

      At home I have a /24. That means 3 octets are assigned and fixed already. Gives 253 usable addresses. Most of your IPv6 address will also be assigned.
      Instead of x.x.x.1 you have yyyy::1
      Instead of x.x.x.10 you have yyyy::10
      Instead of x.x.x.100 you have yyyy::100
      See the pattern here?

      You can even avoid using the hex digits A-F and stick to 0-9 only.
      Sure, per "group" you only get 9999 IPs instead of 65534 IPs, but either is better than 253 or less.

      At work I manage a /16. That means 2 octets are fixed. I grouped that into 255 blocks of roughly 253 addresses each. Each block is a logical division.
      x.x.0.y is routers/switches. x.x.1.y is servers. x.x.4.y are static IPs, and x.x.5.y are dynamic ones.
      Instead, you can use yyyy::1:z and yyyy::2:z and so on. .

      The best part, my IPv4 and IPv6 suffixes pretty much match for my "dot zero" infrastructure and "dot one" servers blocks. Learning the IPv6 prefix took no longer than remembering a brand new /28 allocated from an ISP.

      Your fixed prefix will likely be 8 hex characters. Even a chimp can memorize 8 hex numbers they work with every day :P

      The absolute worst situation is going to be having a post-it note in your wallet/purse with the prefixes on it... Pretty much what most of us network admins do anyway for any IPs assigned by upstream providers or other 3rd parties.

      I have my entire internal /16 memorized fully. It's the 10ish tiny /29 and smaller blocks from my 4 ISPs that are the bitch to remember! Growing my internal IP blocks with IPv6 took literally less than one full day to memorize the prefix. Just because I waste most of my /64 allocation by padding it with zeros on the left doesn't matter now.
      Once I get more than 20k network devices, they will be added slowly over time just like right now. You only have to learn new subnets individually as you add them in at the time they are created, and IPv6 will not change that.

    11. Re:IPV6 on AT&T Residential DSL by Dagger2 · · Score: 2

      The unique part about his equipment is that it's actually working like it's supposed to. The all-zeros address is the subnet-router anycast address, and if you attempt to talk to it, you should receive a reply from one of the routers on the subnet.

      Linux implements this. If forwarding is enabled for an interface, then it will respond to traffic to the all-zeros address on any subnets on that interface.

      (I'm not quite sure what happens for internal traffic if you have multiple routers on a single subnet. Maybe you'll end up sending packets to whichever one responds to NDP first? It's not an issue for traffic from outside the subnet, since that will just naturally hit one of the routers, which will handle the response.)

    12. Re:IPV6 on AT&T Residential DSL by bbn · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I'm not quite sure what happens for internal traffic if you have multiple routers on a single subnet. Maybe you'll end up sending packets to whichever one responds to NDP first?

      No this is well defined. Your computer will record all the NDP replies and put them in a list. It will then pick the first one in the list and stay with that one until it fails. If it fails it will move to the next entry in the list.

      IPv6 has active monitoring of peers. If 30 seconds passes without any inbound traffic from the selected peer it will send three probes. If the probes goes unanswered the peer has failed and your computer goes to the next entry in the list.

      This means having multiple routers "just works". With IPv4 having more than one router requires advanced setup of the routers and basic home routers simply can't do it. With IPv6 you just connect multiple routers and its done. Your computer will select one of them. If your current selected router fails, your computer will move on to the other within approximately 30 seconds. It even works if the two routers are from different ISPs.

  2. Yet Slashdot remains IPv6 Free by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Slashdot has no IPv6. Boo, hiss. Some nerd website you are.

    host www.slashdot.org
    www.slashdot.org has address 216.34.181.48

    1. Re:Yet Slashdot remains IPv6 Free by Omnifarious · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I agree. I've been disappointed in Slashdot over this for years. I've had a publicly routable IPv6 address since 2002 or so. :-)

      --
      Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
    2. Re:Yet Slashdot remains IPv6 Free by artor3 · · Score: 5, Funny

      You mean to tell me that an almost-entirely text site with no unicode support is slow to adopt new standards?!

    3. Re:Yet Slashdot remains IPv6 Free by bertok · · Score: 2

      They're in good company, like: www.nortel.com, www.juniper.com, www.alcatel-lucent.com

      If some of the world's biggest network equipment manufacturers don't have IPv6 enabled, why would you expect a mere "news" site to be any better?

    4. Re:Yet Slashdot remains IPv6 Free by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Nortel is bankrupt, Juniper is juniper.net (with IPv6 support), and ipv6.alcatel-lucent.com works, although not ipv6 for www.alcatel-lucent.com

    5. Re:Yet Slashdot remains IPv6 Free by bbn · · Score: 3, Funny

      You just need to enter this into your /etc/hosts file:

      2001:778:0:ffff:64::216.34.181.48 slashdot.org

      Then slashdot.org is IPv6 enabled:

      baldur@neaira:~$ curl -v -s http://slashdot.org/ | head
      * About to connect() to slashdot.org port 80 (#0)
      * Trying 2001:778:0:ffff:64:0:d822:b530... connected
      > GET / HTTP/1.1
      > User-Agent: curl/7.22.0 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) libcurl/7.22.0 OpenSSL/1.0.1 zlib/1.2.3.4 libidn/1.23 librtmp/2.3
      > Host: slashdot.org
      > Accept: */*
      >
      http://slashdot.org/slashdot.xrds
        Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
        Content-Length: 100410
        Date: Fri, 03 Aug 2012 02:52:51 GMT
        X-Varnish: 830176495 830176249
        Age: 15
        Connection: keep-alive ...

    6. Re:Yet Slashdot remains IPv6 Free by bbn · · Score: 2

      You will find it here: http://ipv6.lt/nat64_en.php

      It is not some official prefix. Anyone can run a NAT64 server. In this case it is some university in Lithuania that has a public accessible NAT64 server with the prefix 2001:778:0:ffff:64::/96.

      Using a public NAT64 is fine for testing but you should not use it for your production setup. However setting up your own is trivial.

      If the slashdot team thinks it is too hard or too much work or their hosting provider does not support IPv6, they could install NAT64 on a server somewhere and put the NAT64 address as a AAAA on slashdot.org. For now one server would definitely be adequate for the expected IPv6 traffic.

  3. Verizon 4G by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    A large portion of the 3 million are probably Verizon 4G devices.

    We had to upgrade one of the software packages we use solely because it logs IP addresses of web site visitors and it was crashing every time someone visited from a Verizon 4G smartphone.

  4. While only ~1% of top websites are IPv6 capable by hackertarget · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I did this analysis of the Alexa Top 1 million before World IPv6 day.
    * 1.1% of sites in the top 1 million had AAAA records
    * Only 4 of the top 50 tech companies websites were IPv6 capable

    http://hackertarget.com/ipv6-in-top-sites-infographic/

    Post World IPv6 day version to be released soon.

  5. Re:Asia? by desertfool · · Score: 2

    I am holding off putting v6 in the network I manage because there is a severe lack of feature parity with v4. Sure, some of the stuff runs in software, but until the routers and switches actually start running the stuff in hardware and have all the features that are available with v4, then maybe we'll put it in.

    Yes, we are putting in some workarounds to allow v6 only clients to get to our external resources. But even then, their ISP's are doing some 6to4 NAT to allow their customers to get to things like, I don't know, Slashdot.

    --
    Just a dude. Stuck in IT.
  6. The real power of IPv6 by WML+MUNSON · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The real power of IPv6 is that it allows us to eliminate NAT. Because of the size of the IPv6 address pool, every mobile device can have a publicly routable address and thus function as a server.

    Facebook was originally developed and hosted in a college dorm room. With IPv6, the next "big thing" could be developed and hosted in someone's pocket.

    1. Re:The real power of IPv6 by kiddygrinder · · Score: 3, Insightful

      just wait till you get double natted and see how you feel

      --
      This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
    2. Re:The real power of IPv6 by FireFury03 · · Score: 2

      I don't know for a fact, but I'm willing to bet that computer in the college dorm room used NAT.

      I'm willing to bet it didn't. Certainly when I was at university, everything had an unfirewalled global scope IP (this was not that long ago, but still before the days of evil on the internet that required everyone to have a firewall).

      Why get rid of NAT?

      Because its an almighty pain in the arse. It breaks all sorts of things, and if you haven't discovered that yet, you presumably have never managed a moderately complex network or done anything other than plain old web browsing.

      I use NAT for my home intranet. It's easy - two lines in my iptables config file. And everything works fine.

      No it doesn't - the things you use it for presumably work fine, but there's all sorts of technologies that really struggle to work through NAT (and for good reason, not just because of a flawed protocol design). Throwing NAT out is a good thing - it makes networks less complex and more reliable.

      --
      http://blog.nexusuk.org
  7. I am surprised by the amount of IPv6 traffic we se by dskoll · · Score: 2

    We (http://www.roaringpenguin.com/) turned on IPv6 for World IPv6 Day and I'm quite surprised by how much IPv6 traffic we see:

    awk '{print $1}' access-2012-08-01 | grep -c ':'
    1298

    awk '{print $1}' access-2012-08-01 | grep -v -c ':'
    16192

    That's about 8% of the hits on our site, which is about eight times what I expected.

  8. Re:Asia? by fm6 · · Score: 2

    Now, that brings back painful memories. I used to work at Sun, and I kept suggesting that the IPMI servers that were embedded in all our servers support IPv6. "No, not until our customers start asking for it." And of course the customers aren't asking for it because it's not widely supported. A vicious cycle.

  9. Re:I am surprised by the amount of IPv6 traffic by dskoll · · Score: 2

    Ah, it's not all roses. A lot of the IPv6 hits are things like this:

    2403:1400:1:2:8185:895b:7f27:4318 - - [01/Aug/2012:14:00:30 -0400] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 9763 "-" "OpenNMS PageSequenceMonitor (Service name: HTTP-v6)"

    2001:8a0:2106:ff:213:13:29:205 - - [31/Jul/2012:15:20:37 -0400] "HEAD / HTTP/1.1" 200 - "-" "curl/7.18.2 (i486-pc-linux-gnu) libcurl/7.18.2 OpenSSL/0.9.8g zlib/1.2.3.3 libidn/1.8 libssh2/0.18"

    The number of "real" IPv6 hits seems depressingly low.

  10. Nearly every phone by phantomfive · · Score: 3, Informative

    Nearly every phone is running IPv6 already. Do an 'adb shell ifconfig' or 'adb shell netstat' on an android phone and you'll see some IPv6 addresses pop up. (Actually I'm not sure about iPhone, I'll check it tomorrow when I get to work).

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  11. Blacklisted IPv4 addresses by sandytaru · · Score: 5, Interesting

    We recently had to move a client over to IPv6 faster than intended because we couldn't get a block of clean IPv4 static addresses from the ISP. That problem is only going to get worse over time.

    --
    Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
  12. NAT is evil by hokeyru · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Widespread acceptance of NAT subverts the egalitarian premise of the internet, that all nodes are created equal, and promotes a two-tier system: providers and consumers.

  13. This can't be true by Yvanhoe · · Score: 2

    One of the biggest French DSL provider, Free Telecom, has IPv6 by default and there are more than 5 millions users here. I don't see how the article's premise could be true.

    --
    The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.