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.'"

Comments

IPv6 Internet is "here" for some of us

[insecuritiez]

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.

Re:IPv6 Internet is "here" for some of us

[insecuritiez]

It's very nice. I was in the process of setting up a tunnel between my home gateway and a Linode machine (Linode provides native v6) and making Linode my publicly visible exit point to the Internet. A few weeks into the project Comcast implimented v6 making my tunneling efforts redundant.

Comcast currently allocates a /64 to each customer but they say they'll hand out shorter prefixes later.

I currently use "privacy addressing" with my Linux machine which I do with:
# IPv6 privacy stuff
echo 209600 > /proc/sys/net/ipv6/conf/wlan0/temp_valid_lft
echo 10800 > /proc/sys/net/ipv6/conf/wlan0/temp_prefered_lft
echo 128 > /proc/sys/net/ipv6/conf/wlan0/max_addresses
echo 2 > /proc/sys/net/ipv6/conf/wlan0/use_tempaddr

This is mostly so that I'm trying out the most extreme end of IPv6 where I'm going through addresses quickly and have up to 128 at a time.

Re:That's easy.

[Ultra64]

>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]

Still not working...

[bartjan]

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

Maybe about time to update this story from 2003??

Re:That's easy.

[MajroMax]

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.

Re:IP6 addresses are a pain

[gclef]

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.

Re:IP6 addresses are a pain

[arth1]

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.

Re:That's easy.

[MajroMax]

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.

Re:IP6 addresses are a pain

[Fred Foobar]

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.

Re:IP6 addresses are a pain

[sl4shd0rk]

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

Re:That's easy.

[NatasRevol]

They can still find it.

Try IPv9¾

Re:IPv6 isn't the solution

[Dagger2]

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

Re:IP6 addresses are a pain

[Dagger2]

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

Re:That's easy.

[firewrought]

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.