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Worldwide IPv6 Adoption: Where Do We Stand Today?

Posted by Soulskill on from the very-slightly-ahead-of-where-we-stood-several-years-ago dept.

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.'"

7 of 327 comments (clear)

  1. IP6 addresses are a pain by Viol8 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    We have so many test VMs appearing and disappearing on our network that we don't bother putting them in DNS, we just give out the IP4 192.168... address for the testers and devs. I dread to think what would happen if we had to give them the line noise that is an IP6 address. Whatever other merits IP6 has, the designers REALLY didn't think it through at the manual address entry level.

    1. Re:IP6 addresses are a pain by Aqualung812 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      the designers REALLY didn't think it through at the manual address entry level.

      Yeah, they did, and they decided that the only servers that need a manual address are DNS servers and DHCP servers (if you choose to run DHCP).
      Outside of those, the only other things that need manual addresses are routers.

      Everything else should use Dynamic DNS.

      Give me a good reason why someone shouldn't be using DNS instead of direct IP address, other than lazy programmers.

      --
      Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
    2. Re:IP6 addresses are a pain by gclef · · Score: 5, Insightful

      One good reason why *servers* shouldn't be using DynamicDNS? I'll give you two.

      First scenario: your server isn't responding. How do you tell the difference between a failure of the server itself and a Dynamic DNS registration failure? If you don't know it's IPv6 address, how can you tell if its fine, just not registering in DNS properly? Heck, if it's not registering properly, how do you find it at all?

      Or, more fun: the server reboots & ends up with a different dynamic IPv6 address....even if it registers the new address to its name properly, clients don't always honor DNS cache times, and will keep trying the old address for a while. You've now created an outage for no good reason.

      If you said that desktops don't need static DNS, I'd agree with you completely. But making server infrastructure totally reliant on a middle layer is asking for trouble...things'll work fine until you have a problem & need to troubleshoot. Then your reliance on an external system will bite you in the ass.

  2. Still not working... by bartjan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    bartjan@ix:~$ ping6 slashdot.org
    unknown host
    bartjan@ix:~$

    Maybe about time to update this story from 2003??

    1. Re:Still not working... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No-one at Slashdot knows very much about this technology stuff. It's more about maintaining a nerd image by wearing weird glasses.

  3. Re:That's easy. by MajroMax · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That won't work in the long-term. The problem with carrier-grade NAT is that the ISPs have to... maintain carrier-grade NAT.

    Network Address Translation is a stateful protocol, and it's orders of magnitude more expensive to maintain connection tracking on a per-connection basis for your customers than it is to simply route packets between networks. Even ISPs that use Deep Packet Inspection have the luxury of looking at selected traffic flows; carrier-grade NAT has to cover everything or it doesn't work.

    --
    "Evil company X is threatening to restrict our rights! Let's all get together to stop--OOOH! SHINEY!!!" -- AC
  4. Re:IPv6 isn't the solution by Dagger2 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You've pretty much just described 6to4. We have it already.