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Worldwide IPv6 Adoption: Where Do We Stand Today?
skade88 writes "IPv4 is much like a limited natural resource; it can't last forever. The well of new IPv4 addresses is already running dry in many parts of the world. The solution to this problem, which was presented decades ago, is to switch to IPv6. With peak IPv4 far behind us, why do we still see limited IPv6 adoption? Ars takes a good look at where we are and where we are going with the future of IP addresses, the internet and you. Quoting: 'As with all technology, IPv6 gets better and cheaper over time. And just like with houses, people prefer waiting rather than buying when prices are dropping. To make matters worse, if you're the only one adopting IPv6, this buys you very little. You can only use the new protocol once the people you communicate with have upgraded as well. Worse still, you can't get rid of IPv4 until everyone you communicate with has adopted IPv6. And the pain of the shrinking IPv4 supplies versus the pain of having to upgrade equipment and software varies for different groups of Internet users. So some people want to move to IPv6 and leave IPv4 behind sooner rather than later, but others plan on sticking with IPv4 until the bitter end. As a result, we have a nasty Nash equilibrium: nobody can improve their own situation by unilaterally adopting IPv6.'"
I have a native, public, non-tunneled IPv6 address at home through my non-business Comcast cable Internet service. My computer and phone automatically use IPv6 whenever available.
I can use IPv6 at work too.
It's already here and adoption seems to be accelerating.
>Many (if not most) end system addresses have the MAC address embedded in the v6 host address,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6#Privacy
Privacy extensions are enabled by default in Windows, Mac OS X (since 10.7), and iOS (since version 4.3).[39] Some Linux distributions have enabled privacy extensions as well.[40]
For example, you can omit segments that are 0, and collapse consecutive such segments, which is why you can write the loopback address as ::1.
To be fair, you can do that with IPv4 too. Using 127.1 for the loopback address or 192.168.1 for a typical NAT gw address works just fine.
That address is a link-local address. The number following the percent sign is the zone index, which specifies which network interface the address is on. If it were not there, the address may be ambiguous with multiple interfaces (imagine if two hosts on two different network segments had the same IP address; neither host can talk to the other but the machine you're on can talk to both through separate interfaces). I don't think IPv4 handles this case at all. Indeed, RFC 3927 discusses address ambiguity but provides no real solution for it. IPv6 provides a solution in the form of zone indices.
It was a really good paper.
Give me a good reason why someone shouldn't be using DNS instead of direct IP address
Here's 4. Not trying to be a wiseass, but there are times when bypassing DNS is preferable.
1) When you cannot trust your DNS source
2) DNS is not working or too slow
3) You didn't want to/need to spend $$ registering a domain
4) Your IP changes but DNS hasn't updated yet
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The right-most octet in the abbreviated address substitutes for the right-most octets of the full address.
e.g.:
127.1 -> 127.0.0.1
192.168.1 -> 192.168.0.1
192.168.257 -> 192.168.1.1
10.65536 -> 10.1.0.0