Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

IPv6 Deployment Picking Up Speed

Posted by Unknown on from the no-ipv4-for-you dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Internet's addressing authority (IANA) ran out of IPv4 Internet addresses in early 2011. The IPv6 protocol (now 15 years old) was designed exactly for this scenario, as it provides many more addresses than our foreseeable addressing needs. However, IPv6 deployment has so far been dismal, accounting for 1% of total traffic (the high-end of estimates). A recent paper by researchers at the Cooperative Association for Internet Data analysis (CAIDA) indicates that IPv6 deployment may be picking up at last. The paper, published at the Internet Measurement Conference (IMC) shows that the IPv6 network shows signs of maturing, with its properties starting to resemble the deployed IPv4 network. Deployment appears to be non-uniform, however; while the 'core' of the network appears to be ready, networks at the 'edges' are lacking. There are geographical differences too — Europe and the Asia Pacific region are ahead of North America."

24 of 158 comments (clear)

  1. Stop the Presses! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    North America fails to take up an International Standard.

    That's NEVER happen. Except with everything.

    1. Re:Stop the Presses! by Creepy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      To be fair, America has adopted standards, but hasn't always standardized on them, and sometimes invents a standard that is outdated by the time the rest of the world adopts it.

      For instance, metric is used in hospitals, at NASA, in many sciences, etc. It was even taught in school until Ronald Reagan in his infinite wisdom and reverence decided America was too f**king stupid to learn it (sorry about the sarcasm injection - it was a REALLY bad time for me to switch, as I was half way into learning metric when it happened and we all of a sudden had to learn these nonsensical English units - I'm still all for switching to metric).

      CDMA predates GSM, and some providers bet big on it early in America. Nothing America can really do about it except wait for it to age and be replaced, hopefully with an international standard. Data already has been merged with LTE.

      Almost all cable providers use DOCSYS international standard.

      IPv6 is supported by some ISPs and CLECs, but many that supported PPPoE like mine bought IPv4 only hardware. The former owner of this hardware, Qwest, said they would never implement IPv6. Their current owner, CenturyLink, is rolling out IPv6 support, but only currently in areas that were not formerly Qwest. Meanwhile, my IPv4 and IPv6 addresses are registered and just waiting for IPv6 to be supported to go live (I hacked the router to get its IPv6 address just in case this is a server only issue - the underlying hardware supports it, just not the PPPoE connection).

  2. 2013 could be... by Bradmont · · Score: 5, Funny

    The year of IPv6 on the desktop!

    1. Re:2013 could be... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      If we make it past December 21st...

    2. Re:2013 could be... by NatasRevol · · Score: 4, Funny

      It looks cool.

      --
      There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
    3. Re:2013 could be... by Kjella · · Score: 2

      Nope. People have IPv6 enabled browsers so they can connect to IPv6 enabled websites, but how many have some sort of legacy software that doesn't in any way understand or support IPv6 - perhaps there's not even an input field for an IPv6 address. Of course people will now chime "dual stack" but it has practically all of the annoyances while not solving the problem since it means pairing every IPv6 address with an IPv4 address. And by annoyance I mean like some stupid software, I don't remember what would prefer the IPv6 address over the IPv4 address then leading to a delay before it would connect via IPv4. I couldn't be arsed to find some other solution, so IPv6 is completely disabled on my machine. And so far I've had zero reason to change that. The only people feeling the hurt are those not getting an IPv4 address.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  3. Come on slashdot ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is not what I expected from you when facebook and google enabled it long ago ...

    1. Re:Come on slashdot ... by canadiannomad · · Score: 5, Informative

      The problem I have faced is that none of my server ISPs will even let me get an IPv6 address even if I know they have it and I beg. That goes for major service providers too. I'm looking at you Amazon Cloud and RackSpace. Amazon kinda has it, but only if you use one of their load balancers.

      --
      Hmm, the humour and sarcasm seem to have been be lost on you.
    2. Re:Come on slashdot ... by mellon · · Score: 2

      I use linode.com. They have IPv6 (and have for quite some time). Now if only voip.ms (and oh, say, /.) would support it...

    3. Re:Come on slashdot ... by dkf · · Score: 2

      The problem I have faced is that none of my server ISPs will even let me get an IPv6 address even if I know they have it and I beg.

      They'll come round once they start having problems getting more IPv4 addresses from their upstream providers, at which point it will start to hit their bottom line (as they need to have all their cloud instances individually direct-routable for configuration and management purposes). We're getting close to that, but aren't there yet.

      I wouldn't base any long term plans on them staying IPv4 only...

      --
      "Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
    4. Re:Come on slashdot ... by marcosdumay · · Score: 2

      They'll come round once they start having problems getting more IPv4 addresses from their upstream providers

      They won't, they'll just put everybody behind a NAT, with the added bonus of breaking bittorrent, VoIP, or any other protocol that actualy uses bandwidth.

      IPv6 will only come later, and just for the places that have any competition between ISPs.

      --
      Rethinking email
  4. New Rule: by ledow · · Score: 4, Interesting

    New Rule:

    Websites are only allowed to try to garner page-views on IPv6 when all the websites that article is posted on are available over IPv6.

  5. IPv6 was no big deal by Cimexus · · Score: 3, Informative

    I've been on native IPv6 for a couple of years on my home DSL connection. It works very well - only thing I had to do was check the 'enable IPv6' option in my modem/router and everything 'just worked'. It is rather nice not having to deal with NAT and port forwarding etc.

    I'm in Australia (so within the Asia-Pacific/APNIC region, which as the summary mentions, is a bit ahead of the curve when it comes to IPv6 adoption. Most of the major sites are fully IPv6 now too (e.g. all the Google sites, Facebook, etc. etc.) But the point is, done properly, it should be a completely seamless transition to enable dual-stack (and eventually to turn off IPv4, though I'm sure that won't happen for decades!). Hell I usually forget I'm even on IPv6, unless I happen to do a ping/tracert to an IPv6 host and see all those long-ass IPs :)

    C:\>tracert www.google.com

    Tracing route to www.google.com [2404:6800:4006:800::1014] over a maximum of 30 hops:

        1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms gateway [2001:44b8:(snip!)]
        2 7 ms 7 ms 7 ms loop0.lns20.cbr1.internode.on.net [2001:44b8:9010::5]
        3 7 ms * 7 ms gi0-0-2.cor3.cbr1.internode.on.net [2001:44b8:9010:14::1]
        4 11 ms 11 ms 11 ms te6-0-0.bdr1.syd4.internode.on.net [2001:44b8:9010:e::2]
        5 11 ms * 11 ms te0-0-0.bdr1.syd7.internode.on.net [2001:44b8:b070:1::11]
        6 11 ms 11 ms 11 ms gi1-2-121.cor2.syd7.internode.on.net [2001:44b8:b060:121::2]
        7 11 ms * 12 ms gi6-0-0-101.bdr1.syd7.internode.on.net [2001:44b8:b070:104::1]
        8 12 ms 11 ms 12 ms 2001:4860:1:1:0:1283:0:4
        9 13 ms 13 ms 12 ms 2001:4860:0:1::1fb
      10 13 ms 12 ms 11 ms 2404:6800:4006:800::1014

    1. Re:IPv6 was no big deal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      > Provided me also with a simple firewall as a nice side effect. ;)

      I rather suspect you're a troll given how often and exhaustively this has been refuted previously on this site, but oh well.

      NAT is not a firewall. The stateful firewall in your home router is a firewall. NAT isn't . There are plenty of technologies to punch holes into NAT, usually developed because NAT is such a fucking pain to deal with for many protocols.

  6. A new apocalypse. by concealment · · Score: 2

    Dear Media,

    Every week, there's a new apocalypse in the news.

    AIDS. Global Warming. Copyright violations. Vodka enemas. Terrorism. ???. Prophet. (I mean... profit.)

    The IPv6 lolocaust is not going to impress us unless there are concrete figures about exactly when and how it's going to devastate us.

    Then, we can plan for it.

    Until then, it reeks of hype.

    Love,
    The consumers

  7. Provider slowness. by PlusFiveTroll · · Score: 5, Insightful

    IPv6 Capable operating systems: check.
    IPv6 Capable router: check.
    IPv6 Capable cable modem: check.
    IPv6 Capable internet service: .........

    Maybe one of these years the cable company will get this figured out, sigh.

    1. Re:Provider slowness. by Alioth · · Score: 2

      Network scanning is much, MUCH harder to do with IPv6. Assuming a reasonably random assignment of v6 addresses, your local subnet has 2^64 possible addresses, in other words twice as many bits as the entirety of the world's IPv4 address space. But remember twice as many bits doesn't mean merely twice the effort, it actually means it would take 4 billion times as long to scan a *single* IPv6 subnet as it would to scan the *entire* IPv4 internet.

      --
      Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
  8. Re:What about Slashdot? by KingMotley · · Score: 2

    You mean like an edit button?

  9. the real game changer: 4G by anarcat · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The game changer here is that US cell phone companies have finally figured out that 4 layers of NAT isn't exactly a great way to manage a growing network, and are switching to IPv6 for their 4G networks. That is millions of customers right there, using IPv6 without even knowing about it.

    Pieces are falling into place, it's just a matter of time now. And if you lobby your ISP instead of complaining about it, you may get it native too soon enough.

    BTW: for those worried about the switch, let me just mention that both ipv6.google.com and www.kame.net (common test IPv6 addresses) are reachable in *less* latency and *less* hops than their ipv4 counterparts. IPv6 rocks.

    --
    Semantics is the gravity of abstraction
  10. Hah! by Shaman · · Score: 3, Informative

    Companies are still shipping network gear that is IPv4 only. Find me a fixed-wireless device that supports IPv6! Sure they're layer 2 devices, but the units themselves don't have IPv6 addressability.

    IPv6 will take a long, long time. Maybe 10 years for major crossover. The fanbois and the advocates get shriller every day, but moving to IPv6 - even dual-stack - from an existing network is currently *hard*.

    --
    ...Steve
  11. Re:Where the heck is IPv7 by FilmedInNoir · · Score: 2

    Excellent! I'll add that as citation for the Wikipedia article and then you can cite that article as proof.

    --
    Sig. Sig. Sputnik
  12. Non-sensical customary units of fail by Artemis3 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I learned under metric, for me those "customary" units of height are very hard to grasp.

    In metric, everything is in tens, you add or subtract zeros, thats it.

    A meter contains 10 decimeters (rarely used), a decimeter contains 10 centimeters, a centimeter contains 10 milliliters, etc.
    http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/prefixes.html

    Customary/Imperial units are a mess, and to make matters worse, you don't use a single unit but TWO different ones for measuring things (feet AND inches?). What the hell is an inch? half a feet? quarter? decimal? no... its freaking 1/12. OF COURSE you don't fit 12 feet in a yard, that would be too easy, its 3... AND you also don't fit 12 pica in an inch, but 6...

    To make sense of your nonsense, we have to convert to a single unit first (eg. inches), and THEN move to metric, that is not a trivial mental operation for many.

    Another American annoyance is paper sheet sizes. But there are many more areas for frustration in those outdated customs.

    Let them sink in their isolation, is what we say here.

    --
    Artix
    Your Linux, your init.
    1. Re:Non-sensical customary units of fail by Zan+Lynx · · Score: 2

      Everyone seems to understand meters, centimeters, millimeters and kilometers; bytes, kilobytes and megabytes.

      Yet when I try to describe the distance from Denver to Chicago in megameters my friends look at me funny.

      I find it especially lame when astronomers describe distances in millions of kilometers. Are they too stupid to understand metric and use gigameters?

    2. Re:Non-sensical customary units of fail by JohnFen · · Score: 2

      I wonder how much of this is just visualization problems.

      I'm an old fart who was taught from a young age to measure things in inches, pounds, etc. I understand metric units just fine and use them almost daily, but still when I'm given a measurement in metric, I don't have an instinctive feel for how much the measurement is. i have to convert to the old units to be able to picture it.

      Same for things like gigameters. Yes, I know what that means, but it's not a unit that is commonly used and so there's no immediate visualization of it. If I hear that a start is 2 million kilometers away, I have (once I roughly convert to miles, anyway) a kind of "feel" for that. If I hear that it's 2 gigameters away, then I have to do an extra conversion -- to kilometers -- before I can get that sense.