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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.'"
Not really, you just track them by their IPv6 subnet prefix instead of their full IPv4 address
With peak IPv4 far behind us, why do we still see limited IPv6 adoption?
The reason why is simple: because we haven't run out of IPv4 addresses yet.
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.
I'm not taking any chances... I've moved our network to IPv8
How so? Many (if not most) end system addresses have the MAC address embedded in the v6 host address, so you get more information out of a v6 address than you do out of a v4 address (including the ability to trace the same device even if it changes layer-3 networks).
Since most vendors aren't supporting RFC 3972, tracking is probably going to be easier, not harder.
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.
Governements do. ISPs don't.
Without it, they can sell IPs for nice amounts without paying for it themselves. For ISPs it would even be nice to just give everybody a 10.x.x.x address (as they do with phones) so you can not run any server, or with very much work.
It is much better and easier to control on many levels of control.
So why would they go to IPv6, which will cost money, while sticking with IPv4 will bring in money.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
>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]
bartjan@ix:~$ ping6 slashdot.org
unknown host
bartjan@ix:~$
Maybe about time to update this story from 2003??
maybe we should just say "the Internet is full!" and call it a day...there's already too much crap floating around anyway!
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
ISPs don't want to do carrier-grade NAT, because then they have to maintain carrier-grade NAT.
CGN is a stateful protocol, meaning that each of their implementing-boxes needs to maintain and process state for each data flow to or from your devices. That's no big deal for a single home, but it's a problem for a carrier. If the boxes are too far towards the customer-end of their network, they will be small but they will also be numerous, making maintenance more frequent. If the boxes are too far towards the core of their network, an ISP will only need a few, but the hardware requirements are much heftier to provide acceptable performance. (Already, bittorrent can saturate some of the cheaper home routers).
Simply routing packets is technically far, far easier than running network address translation. Even ISPs that use deep-packet inspection have the option of turning it off if things go wrong -- the network fails open. Carrier grade NAT doesn't have that option.
"Evil company X is threatening to restrict our rights! Let's all get together to stop--OOOH! SHINEY!!!" -- AC
A con does not make the number of pros zero. Learn to count.
http://www.startnetworks.info/2011/08/ipv6-and-ipv4-headers.html
"Due to all these reasons, IPv6 headers are more efficient and less CPU intense to Routers than IPv4 headers. "
Don't call us, we'll call you. I actually had an Internet connection like that years back, entire campus hidden behind a single IP and no incoming ports. It was rather crippled but as long as the other half of the connection had a normal connection I could always connect to their servers and up/download. On modern IM services it'll even negotiate so that other people can send you files because under the hood you connect out instead. Worst case if you're both stuck behind such solutions you can always pass files via some third party file host. It's not pretty but it's not useless either, I bet enough people just browse and check their mail to not even notice.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Comment removed based on user account deletion
They can still find it.
Try IPv9¾
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
You've pretty much just described 6to4. We have it already.
I've been waiting for the IPV6 killer application to show its head. Until then I don’t think Joe public will know or care what IPV6 is and why they should use it.
So I mention this here in the hopes that it will light somebodies bulb and somebody will probably correct me on this, but I always thought IPV6 included global multicast, which would make lots of new application possible. Imagine being able to stream content from your home to any number of people without the need for a costly connection. Kinda makes bit torrent look so last century.
6to4 is an extension which is optional as opposed to an intrinsic part of the protocol. This distinction is important.
Moreover the fact that 6to4 was developed at all, after IPv6 was proposed, proves my point and shows that my criticisms of IPv6 were/are shared by many.
Unless we come up with a viable DNS RBL for ipv6, the killer app for ipv6 is going to be spam. Hey mister, wanna buy a Rolex?
I hope someone is working on services like this. I can also imagine one heckofa bot net once we get all those soda machines and
refrigerators online.
dreaded scurrilous bit-twiddler from Oklahoma
Privacy extensions are enabled by default in Windows, Mac OS X (since 10.7), and iOS (since version 4.3).
But it doesn't keep ISP's from moving to permanent, static IP addresses. So privacy extensions will "blur" the PC's within a single household together and keep stalking firms (um "ad agencies") from tracking you as you move between coffee shops*, but, in practice, all household traffic you generate will be branded with the same permanent, unique address.
I'm not poo-pooing IPv6, that's just an unfortunate drawback that comes with all of its advantages.
*Tracking you by IP, that is, there are still cookies, local storage, browser fingerprinting, etc.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
Start removing classes for use in the IPv4 arena.
Right now, ISPs, esp. in America, are not converting because they do not need to. BUT, to speed it up, all that needs to happen is to require that 5% of the IPs be returned every year or so, starting 1 year out. That will pretty much force the situation.
And for those that will scream that this is not right, BS. It is needed. Long needed.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Which is normally a bitch under IPv4, since the same Class C or Class A private addresses are used in the separate networks, and so connecting the 2 and resolving the differences b/w overlapping addresses would give one a migrane. With IPv6, one could either use dedicated routable addresses, or if one needs a VPN, one could use a site-unique address.
IPv6 ain't working. This should pretty much be clear to all, since it is not being widely adopted.
All major ISPs in US are in the process of testing and rolling it out.
Google, Netflix, Akami, Federal government, Facebook all on IPv6.
All major CPE vendors shipping IPv6 enabled gear.
Perhaps you know something they don't?
There will be a long tail and it will take forever to move enough for the plug to be yanked on IPv4. Nobody is saying RFC 801.
A more constructive approach was to take steps to facilitate its adoption, such as tunneling, the IPv6 day and the IPv6 experiment.
All these "steps" did was throw a wrench in the process of adoption. This is 2013 and people demand a production quality network. Tunneling does NOT provide that.
Content is not going to deploy to a shit network with no bandwidth and crappy availability that tunneling provides.
IPv6 day was necessary mostly to identify and fix what went wrong with the tunneling nonsense already deployed.
still only 1% of the internet. At this point we have to believe that nothing short of a completely new protocol will succeed.
We all get to believe what we want. I choose to believe publically available bandwidth charts showing an exponential curve and the interface statistics on my router showing ~30% of my traffic by volume is IPv6.
Well I don't know "why", but many ISPs around here offer or are starting to offer IPv6. None are thinking about doing carrier-grade NAT (with the exception of some of the cheaper mobile phone networks, and frankly, I don't really have a problem with it for phones ... not like I'm running a server on my phone, plus you can usually pay a nominal sum for a 'real' IP if required).
People want real IPs and any decent ISP will offer them. Simpler to administer for them, and not really much of a cost - they just make sure they always buy IPv6-compatible hardware and software over the course of their normal upgrade cycle, and eventually they will be able to offer IPv6.
In England, we are lucky, most geolocation services get the city info wrong,
AIUI the free geolocation services are basically built on freely available data while the pay services supplement that with data from their own research. If the ISPs don't make the data easilly available (I don't think there is any obligation on an ISP to post where in the country and allocation is being used) the free databases won't have it. If the ISPs put users from different places in one subnet then the pay databases won't have it either.
But when I wrote that post I wasn't thinking of publically available geolocation services, I was thinking of the government (who can demand information from your ISP) and possiblly big companies (who can correlate IPs used for one activity with those used for another).
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
ARIN has been pretty clear they don't want carrier grade NAT. The carriers don't want carrier grade NAT. You aren't going to be forced behind a NAT. You'll have a v6 address and pool for v4 outgoing once they roll out v6.
There is still a cost on large ISPs. The holy land of carrier grade NAT would be to NAT the entire ISPs v4 network and route statics for customers who want their own addresses. Even with big iron (think ASR9k) the active translation table can be far beyond the scale of the hardware.
/30 between edges for private networking. Another VRF would carry static routes for customer subnets. Customers would be CGNATed at the PE from a single IP for multiple customers. This makes the router requirements larger at the provider edge but much easier to maintain. Then it would use 2-4 IP addresses (depending on use of /30 or /31 subnets) per PE router and completely free up the pool used for P routers. This means a national scale ISP like Comcast could probably function on a /16.
That said, a more conservative approach would use private IPs for the P routers and internal addresses for the PE routers. Then a VRF would provide a
It is being widely adopted. Virtually every major carrier on the planet has an adoption plan that is underway. In many Asian countries they are almost fully converted. In the USA the cell networks are converted with home / small business likely to be converted by end of 2014. Too slow yes. Not being adopted, no.
I find that anyone that mixes NAT and IPv6 problems usually doesn't administer their own networks.
NAT saves a lot of administration for a small business or home network. You have ONE outside address, and all your Internet traffic goes through ONE machine. That ONE address is unmistakably external, can have several thousand services running over it, and can be your external address for everything all at once. As an admin, you only need to know that one address (or corresponding DNS alias), and you can be fairly sure when setting up your firewalls etc. that you know what's coming in / out, from / to where.
And then all your internal client machines? Well, their numbering is by definition none of anybody else's business, not even your ISP. It absolutely, 100% does not matter. I could be running them over token-ring and IPX for all anyone outside cares, so it honestly does not make any difference whatsoever to anyone else. And 99.99999% of networks will never, ever, ever exhaust the reserved internal ranges of IPv4, so it's easier to keep it simple internally, not have to make ANY internal changes, and have one single machine visible to the outside world handling all the "complex" stuff and horrendous addresses that are a pain to memorise, type, tell others, trace through logs with grep, etc. And if (when) the time comes that IPv4 is unsupported on a machine? You assign the gateway an internal IPv6 address, add a DHCPv6 range, and viola - it all works 100% again.
The trick to most small business network administration is to simplify changes down to their smallest possible set so as to have the least impact. You use your brain to do less work without compromising elsewhere. And using IPv4 internal and NAT'ing that to "whatever" is external is the easiest way to do that without having to risk leaving holes in your configuration for a while to come.
I don't WANT direct-accessibility to internal network ranges, that's why NAT has always been a viable option because it prevents that and that's what I WANT to do anyway. Yes, a firewall is capable of intercepting anything anyway, if I really want to, but having things go through a single machine that sanitises traffic and discards any attempt to communicate directly to machines that may not have the protection they should (e.g. random public devices on an internal Wifi connection offered as a convenience to guests). Instead of administering hundreds of individual machines and their software firewalls, plus an expensive IPv6-capable router at the border with thousands of rules in order to secure the machines, you can just NAT the whole network and secure that one external router/gateway machine to block things that were unsolicited or shouldn't be getting through to any machine.
And, given that most people would have to deploy a non-trivial configuration where they DON'T just pass external traffic direct to internal machines (whether by NAT'ing or by a complicated firewall configuration), people who complain about NAT are complaining about something that will NEVER affect them - a total side-issue that concerns almost no-one.
My networks are IPv6 compatible already. 100%. You can put an IPv6-capable host into it, get an address, and talk to all internal services and externally. You can also access remotely by IPv6, and even access IPv6 websites from an internal IPv4 client that has no support for it. It's literally a handful of lines in your existing configurations. And we have external servers with IPv6 addresses. Nobody uses them but they are there, and work.
The fact is that the entire NAT thing is a diversion to make us think we have to do entire network overhauls and upgrades to make this new-fangled thing work. It's just not true. I will no more allow internal clients to send out on SMTP ports or allow external hosts to access, well anyway internal, over IPv6 than I would over IPv4. It's just a diversion.
And a nice diversion from those sites, like Slashdot, that posts an IPv6 article about once a month
http://meetings.ripe.net/ripe-55/presentations/bush-ipv6-transition.pdf
It's a presentation I keep coming back to again and again (every single time somebody asks me "why don't people deploy more IPv6?").
Yes, the font and colors used will make your eyes water (I really wonder if he actually chose them that way on purpose :) ). But the actual content is just as accurate now as it was in 2007, and it comes from someone who actually has quite a bit of experience working with this stuff...