Slashdot Mirror
IPv6 Achieves 50% Reach On Major US Carriers (worldipv6launch.org)
Long-time Slashdot reader dyork brings new from The Internet Society: IPv6 deployment hit a milestone this month related to the four major US providers (Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile USA, Sprint, AT&T): "IPv6 is the dominant protocol for traffic from those mobile networks to major IPv6-capable content providers."
A graph on their "World IPv6 Launch" site shows those carriers are now delivering close to 55% of their traffic over IPv6 to major IPv6-capable content providers -- up from just 37.59% in December. "This is really remarkable progress in the four years since World IPv6 Launch in 2012, and the growth of IPv6 deployment in 2016 is showing no signs of abating." In fact, the NTIA is now requesting feedback from organizations that have already implemented IPv6, noting that while we've used up all the 4.3 billion IPv4 addresses, IPv6 offers 340 undecillion IP addresses -- that is, 340 followed by 36 digits.
A graph on their "World IPv6 Launch" site shows those carriers are now delivering close to 55% of their traffic over IPv6 to major IPv6-capable content providers -- up from just 37.59% in December. "This is really remarkable progress in the four years since World IPv6 Launch in 2012, and the growth of IPv6 deployment in 2016 is showing no signs of abating." In fact, the NTIA is now requesting feedback from organizations that have already implemented IPv6, noting that while we've used up all the 4.3 billion IPv4 addresses, IPv6 offers 340 undecillion IP addresses -- that is, 340 followed by 36 digits.
Here, let's get the resistance out of the way:
"But, but, if we can't have NAT then we'll be h4xx0r3d! And I can't remember all those hex digits LOL."
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
IPv6 = 256^6 = ... 340x10^36 ???
Not sure if bad attempt at joke or not, but in case it isn't: the 6 in IPv6 isn't the number of octets used in the addresses, it's a version number. IPv6 uses 128 bit addresses, and 2^128 = 3.4 * 10^38.
IPv6 has five TRILLION /56 blocks.
There are enough /64 to give every person on earth 2,635,249,153 of them.
128 bits allows for HUGE numbers.
Long ago, when we were developing IPv6, I was part of the group who argued for 128 bit addresses rather than 64 bit. I've decided I was wrong. 64 bits would have been more than enough, and could be processed on 64-bit processors, in standard databases, without hassle. Since my side won the argument, we have 128-bit addresses, which are so big they are a pain in the ass in Microsoft SQL Server and elsewhere.
You recall xkcd 865.
Still frustrated that the ISPs in Canada are still lagging on getting IPv6. The biggest failing ISP is Bell, with no publicly announced plans.
There has been the "Call Your ISP for IPv6" campaign by the guys over at Sixxs:
https://www.sixxs.net/wiki/Cal...
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I just think it's cool that the Internet Society's Dan York is posting to Slashdot (and has a six-digit UID).
You'll still see intrinsic difficulties that aren't there for V4. For example, if I set my AP wide open, you'll have all kinds of fun finding the 5 out of 4 billion addresses in my prefix that have anything on them.
I suspect malware will continue more or less as is in the form of drive bys and trojans. v4 or v6 won't matter much. The router won't matter much.
What you say is not wrong, but many people will interpret it incorrectly as suggesting that there is a "switchover" from IPv4 involved. That's not how IPv6 was designed and planned at all. IPv6 was designed right from the start to run alongside IPv4, and "migration" or "transition" are poor words for what will mainly be an expansion of IPv6 use, and it may have very little early effect on IPv4.
Nothing will stop IPv4 from continuing to run other than the failure of old IPv4-only equipment and its replacement by IPv6-only gear, which will be uncommon (most replacements will be dual stack). IPv4 is quite likely to remain with us for many decades ahead, even if consumer ISPs cut it off earlier to save costs. IPv6 adoption may not even decrease IPv4 usage much at all, with the full 32 bits of IPv4 address space continuing to be used right up until the bitter end until it's stopped wholesale simply out of embarrassment. But that would be a long way off.
Short version: IPv6 merely expands IP use. It will be seen as a (very drawn-out) "switchover" only by individual users as their communication involves more and more IPv6, because single users don't scale. But on the Internet as a whole the rising adoption of IPv6 doesn't require a decrease in IPv4 use at all.
It is NOT a zero-sum game, but a growth of IP because the IPv4 bucket is too small.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
You're right that hierarchy in address allocation increases the address space requirements (you could say "wastes" addresses, but they're not wasted, they're being used to reduce routing table fragmentation). But it doesn't follow that v6 exhaustion is actually plausible as a result. v6 is really damn big (for precisely this reason!) and we're only allocating from one /3; over 60% of the total space is outright reserved at the moment.
Your example allocations are all shifted to the right a bit. ISPs are generally getting /32s, companies should be getting /48s, their internal departments could be getting /56s (so they'd need 256 departments before having a problem). But even /32s to ISPs isn't problematically big -- 4 billion ISPs would be a lot, given that there's only 7 billion humans.
While I do think IPv6 addresses are wasted, I don't think the wastage happens in the global prefix. Rather, it happens in the Interface ID area. 64 bits is way overkill for an interface ID, since no subnet will have anywhere close to even 4 billion nodes, much less 2^64. In the meantime, in the global prefix side, things are squished w/o getting into a hierarchical routing, which would have been a real godsend, had it been implemented.
Yeah, my example probably shifted things, due to my use of documentation's 2001:db8::/32, and your scenario would be the more likely one. Still, I believe that the upper 4 words should have been strictly global prefixes, not including subneting: it should have been used to hierarchically route from IANA to RIR to country to ISP to organization/families/individuals. At a gateway, allow for either a /64 or a /96 (w/ 4 billion subnets), depending on the need. So if a home router needs 2 network addresses for 2 SSIDs, either get 2 /64s or subnet 1 /64 into /96s.
The reason that is given for the 64 bit interface ID is auto-configuration, but that's a lame excuse. First of all, even w/ 64 bits, it's unlikely, but not guaranteed that there won't be an address conflict, and at any rate, there is DAD to resolve that in IPv6. Then, using things like MAC addresses or IMEA numbers to obtain these addresses creates a potential for spoofing agents to deduce a target address, assuming that a network wants those things either hidden, or difficult to find w/o initiating from the user's end. 32 bits would easily have been enough for any subnet - even in the most crowded spot in Guangzhou, I doubt that there would be anything close to 4 billion devices that would be under a subnet, and even if there was, that network would grind to a halt w/o redundant APs, repeaters and other signal enhancing agents. So the IETF could have designed IPv6 to have the first 64 bits strictly the global prefix, then either have a 16:48 or 32:32 split b/w subnets and nodes.