Some ISPs are already supporting IPv6. Admittedly, only a handful of residential ISPs are there yet.
Comcast is doing trials now and will probably be adding IPv6 for most customers by the end of the year.
If your ISP isn't doing IPv6 yet, it's time to start asking them about it.
RIRs will be out of IPv4 before the end of the year. That means ISPs that want to keep adding 30-50,000 customers per day to the internet are going to have to do something different from what is being done today. IPv6 is the solution to that problem and it will roll forward rather quickly after IPv4 runs out.
You can plan for it now, be proactive about preparing, and be ahead of your service provider and others, or, you can stand on the tracks waiting until you hear the train coming around the curve. I guess which one you choose depends on how fast you can run and how confident you are in your hearing.
If your ISP or the ISP for the company you work for operates with your attitude, it may be well past the point when you loose connectivity to things you consider important when you stop ignoring IPv6.
I would say that instead, you should be contacting said ISPs and making sure they will be bringing IPv6 to you sooner rather than later.
Otherwise, by the time you stop ignoring IPv6, the modern IPv6 internet may be already ignoring your legacy IPv4 environment.
First, it's not really IPv6 brokenness so much as it is an issue with hosts that think they have IPv6 connectivity, but, really don't.
Second, in most cases, affected users will see long page load times, not complete inability to access the site.
The 0.05% number is probably pretty accurate. Several sites have used embedded tests to measure this and come to the same number. However, the good news is that a year ago, this was 0.1% and it is continuing to trend downward.
With IANA running out of IPv4 this month, it's not surprising that Yahoo is moving forward. It's disturbing that so many others appear not to be.
I did not get my addresses from a tunnel broker. I got mine from ARIN. I can use them outside of a tunnel, just as my IPv4 addresses. However, there is not a cost-effective non-tunnel way to get BGP based IP transit services into a house, so, my IPv4 and IPv6 BGP sessions are handled over GRE tunnels.
If you sign up for IPv6 service with an ISP you should be able to get at least a/48 from the ISP. If you are multihomed, you should easily be able to get at least a/48 from your local Regional Internet Registry.
There are many options for obtaining IPv6 addresses today. There will be more in the near future.
I disagree. I was easily able to obtain 1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176 of them and so can anyone else from various internet tunnelbrokers* or from several other sources.
*Full disclosure: I work for the company that provides the largest tunnel broker, but since it is a free service and I have not named the particular tunnelbroker, hopefully this is not regarded as a promotional message. It is intended as informative only.
Nope... I deliberately chose one that was even beyond Peta because the scale is really much much larger. Peta wouldn't cut it. Exa is probably even short, but, I don't know what the term is for exa *10^11.
Bottom line, the claim "640k ought to be enough" was based on 10x standard memory of the day.
IPv6 ought to be enough is based on 8.5 * 10^28 times the IPv4 address space, so an accurate memory comparison would be the claim:
85 brontobytes ought to be enough memory for everyone
Do you know any one who is likely to even be able to conceive of 85 brontobytes in the lifetime of anyone now living, let alone actually procure it or address it in a system?
I have no idea of any meaningful measurement of Library of Congress for comparison, sorry.
It takes 39 digits to define the number of addresses in IPv6. Only 10 digits to define the number of addresses in IPv4.
If you treat each address as a unit of mass and consider IPv4 to have mass equivalent of 7 liters of water, then, IPv6 would have mass equivalent roughly to Earth. (The whole earth, including all the oceans, lakes, land masses, people, buildings, etc.)
In IPv4, there are more than 1.5 people alive today for every address.
In IPv6, there are 50,041,524,547,196,832,862,260,971,681 addresses for each person alive today.
Or, perhaps consider the following:
The US public debt is 13,848,000.000,000. If IP addresses were pennies, we would need 3,462 IPv4 internets to pay it off. The IPv6 address space, converted to pennies, OTOH, would pay the public debt more than 24,572,672,365,752,344,270,896,491 times. (If anyone wants to send me even a single IPv6/64 network worth of pennies, please email me for contact information.);-)
There is a difference here. IPv6 would be the equivalent of IBM saying something more like:
640 exabytes ought to be enough for anyone.
(note by exabyte I mean 1000 terabytes, not Exabyte the brand name of many 8mm digital video tape drives).
340*10^36 (the IPv6 address space) is more than 10^26 times the current demand for addresses. Compare to 640k which was roughly 10^1 times the standard memory size for machines of the day.
In fact, today, I doubt you can identify many (any?) machines with more than a terabyte of RAM. In fact, it's rare to find more than 128GB of RAM capacity in most machines. (64GB is roughly 100,000 times the original 640KB number, so 128GB would be 2*10^5 times 640KB).
To put the comparison in some perspectives you might be able to wrap your head around...
If you were to allocate an almond M&M for every 256 IPv4 addresses, the resulting amount of almond M&Ms laid out in a 1-M&M thick layer would cover only 70 yards of an american regulation football field (NFL, not FIFA). (16.7 million M&Ms, 1 for each IPv4/24 prefix)
Contrast that with the number of IPv6/64 prefixes (a bit more than 18 quintillion) which would provide enough M&Ms to fill all of the great lakes.
Where each/24 can accommodate a single router and up to 253 other hosts, each IPv6/64 can accommodate more hosts than you could ever physically put on any conceivable scale of network gear (18 quintillion+ hosts).
There will not be a likely shortage of IPv6 addresses in any of our lifetimes.
Based on the current trends and even the most liberal theories of allocation being even proposed, in about 50 years, we MAY have allocated as much as 0.5% (yes, 1 half of one percent) of the IPv6 address space.
Variable length schemes are impractical at backbone forwarding rates. Hardware to support a variable length scheme would be incredibly expensive.
While the transition to IPv6 does involve some effort, it is not nearly as bad as many have claimed it will be. My employer operates a three-continent dual-stack backbone. I run fully dual-stack at home (except for an amplifier, some TiVO boxes and an old terminal server which are not IPv6 capable).
Transitioning my network took a total of less than 12 man hours with an elapsed time of approximately 7 days.
Turning IPv6 off now just means you have to turn it on in a few months. I would rather avoid making two changes to all the hosts in my network.
The simpler solution for the basic network where IPv6 doesn't matter yet is to make sure your router null routes the IPv6 default (::/0), get valid IPv6 addresses, build a basic subnetting plan and put it in place on your routers with appropriate RAs. That will prevent hosts from trying to build 6to4 or Teredo or ISATAP or other bizarre kinds of autotunnels and give quick negative responses to attempts to reach IPv6 hosts resulting in timely fallback to IPv4. Simple, efficient, and, when you do actually need IPv6 connectivity, you just need to change the configuration on your routers (which you'd have to do anyway).
As to when to deploy IPv6, if you're running a network full of end users behind an IPv4 NAT using RFC-1918 space, then, no, you probably don't need to convert that network over right away, but, you will want to deal with all those systems that are now shipping with IPv6 on by default as I have described above or you will see user complaints as a result of their attempts to reach a growing mass of IPv6 content.
However, if you have any public facing content or services (as most businesses do at this point), then, you're going to want to make sure that those are reachable via IPv6 as well as IPv4 as soon as possible. Certainly within the next 12 months or so.
The people depending on the current address calculators and an 18-month clock to RIR runout after IANA exhaustion are in for some rude awakenings.
First, the clocks are wrong. They don't seem to correctly account for current utilization rates, nor do they account for the fact that 5 of the 14 remaining IPv4/8s are reserved to be distributed one to each regional internet registry when the others are exhausted.
At the beginning of 2010, there were 21 IPv4/8s in the IANA IPv4 free pool and 5 in the reserved section described in the last paragraph. Today, less than 9 months later, there are only 9/8s remaining in the IANA free pool and 5 still in the reserved section. (Note that the clocks all talk about 14/224 which is 9+5). At the current rate of consumption, we're not talking about 285 days to IANA runout, we're talking January or February of 2011. Feb. 28, 2011 is 194 days from now in my current timezone (Thursday, 20 September, 2010). (Notice the 91 day (or more) error in the countdown clock).
Additionally, once IANA runs out of IPv4, the RIRs aren't going to simply coast for 18 moths. APNIC, RIPE, and ARIN will likely be in a race to see who runs out first. I think the smart money is on APNIC. However, whichever one runs out first, you can bet that the multinationals (i.e. the largest consumers of IPv4 addresses) in any one of those three regions will start pulling space from the other regions too. As a result, whichever one runs out first will accelerate the other two rather abruptly. I predict that the first RIR will run out on a timeframe more like 6 months after IANA exhaustion rather than 18.
It's less clear what will happen with space in the AfriNIC and LACNIC regions due to unique circumstances.
IPv6 is no longer an option, it is a requirement. Time to stop with the FUD and misinformation and start facing the cold hard facts staring us in the face.
Yes, the earliest predictions of runout turned out to be wrong (only because NAT was developed _AFTER_ those predictions were issued, btw).
However, the predictions today are mostly wrong too, but, not in the direction you want and certainly not as far off.
Failure to deploy IPv6 at least to your public content and services within the next 12 months will place you at a competitive disadvantage against other companies that do. That disadvantage will only increase with time. It is also critical to deploy IPv6 capabilities to your support staff and your IT departments so that they can become familiar with it and learn to trou
For VOIP to provide any 911 service, there has to be recognition
that there are two principle forms of VOIP. While there is
no meaningful technology distinction between the two, there are
substantial implementation distinctions for 911 purposes.
The easy category which should be the target of FCC and other
requirements is the traditional fixed-location telephone replacement. This service is a device (hardware or software)
which is not generally mobile, and, which operates from a fixed
location like a traditional land-line phone. Registration of the
location and appropriate 911 connectivity for these devices
should be a simple matter and isn't an unreasonable
requirement for VOIP service providers.
The other category is location-independent VOIP. This could be
an 802.11 based SIP cordless handset, a laptop running a soft
phone, or any number of other such VOIP devices which can
and often do change location on a regular device. These devices
present multiple nearly insurmountable challenges for providing
911 service over VOIP, and, should not be required to do so
until a practical alternative to them can be determined.
It should be up to the consumer to determine which category
their particular VOIP account will fall under, but, providers
should be required to make full disclosure of the tradeoffs
prior to the consumer making such a decision.
To highlight the challenges presented, consider the following:
Without any location data, it is virtually impossible to correctly route the call to an appropriate 911 provider. Afterall, my billing address may be in San Jose, my VOIP service may be based in Virginia, with a Virginia telephone number, and, I could be placing calls from that service while sitting at a Cafe in South Africa. What good is the dispatch center in San Jose or Virginia going to do me? Instead, the VOIP provider should route me to a recording that informs me I need to obtain local assistance and reminding me that 911 isn't available from this phone.
It is hard (so far, impossible) to reliably obtain location data from such devices.
There is no provision in the VOIP protocol for a standard way in which to provide location data even if it were available.
GPS does not work indoors.
Not all countries actually have 911 service. What does a VOIP provider based in Virginia do when they know their customer is trying to call 911 from South Africa?
Any method of reliably generating location data has much worse privacy implications
I am curious as to how the Canadian requirements address these issues. If anyone knows, an email to owen at delong dot com would be appreciated.
Anyone from a 5 year old to a WWI veteran can sit down at a Gnome Desktop and browse the internet and check email in no time if someone sets up their email for them. (The same is true of Windows).
The differences come in when you start wanting to do things like change the appearance of the UI, tweak mouse scroll rates, set up printers, etc. Windows is not simpler than OSS or easier to use in these ares, it's just more familiar.
Further, it's never been easier to use Windows than OSS or *NIX. However, it's always been easier to START using Windows than OSS. This is because OSS is usually written by people who need to use the software, so, the UI is designed from the angle of how do I make it easy to do what I need lots of times. Windows was not written by people who needed the software. It was written to make money. When that's the goal, the question shifts from "how do I make it easy to do common tasks lots of times" to how do I make it relatively easy to figure out how to do most common tasks once.
Windows and windows applications are generally optimized so that if you poke around long enough, you can usually eventually find the feature you want. Windows apps. are also written so that it's not really important to the initial end result if you think about or plan the structure of what you are doing.
For example, in Frame Maker, it's virtually impossible to get the result you want without understanding the paradigm used for formatting paragraphs and how that is incorporated into the document. You have to understand master pages, templates, etc. or you have to work REALLY hard to get your document to look the way you want, and, it becomes virtually impossible to change.
In Word, structured document styles are an afterthought, and, they're actually pretty difficult to use, often having far from intuitive side effects until you fully understand them. However, it's easy to create and edit a document that looks exactly how you want it without using any structure. If the document develops any length, then global formatting changes become a major PITA, but, that's not something people look at _BEFORE_ they buy the software.
I'm sure there are lots of other examples, but, the bottom line is that the primary difference in the UI between OSS and Windows is whether it is engineered for efficient completion of repetitive tasks, or, whether it is optimized for easy-to-understand initial usage to drive sales.
I think Apple has done an amazingly good job in addressing the tradeoffs between these two important goals. I think the OSS community could learn alot from Apples UI design, especially in Quartz and Aqua (I didn't actually like the OS=9 interface, as I think they ignored the efficient task completion side all together in that UI).
Actually, in the certified (store-bought) category, TRA limits motors to O (40,960 newton seconds max), with a limitation on rockets to a total installed impulse of P (81,920 newton seconds max). Rockets that go 60 miles are outside the scope of TRA and NAR because both TRA and NAR require that rockets be launched within 5 degrees of vertical. However, if you were to put an Aerotech O-2000 in a 30 foot long minimum diameter fiberglass or carbon fiber airframe, I'm betting you could get that to go 60 miles with appropriate aerodynamic design and a non-vertical launch. However, it wouldn't do so with any meaningful degree of accuracy, and, at that distance, you'd be lucky if it got within 15 miles of your "target". Heck, at most launches I've been to, there are always a few rockets that can't even get straight up right.
I gree with you that truly large motors should be regulated, but, they aren't really regulated at this time. If you want a really large motor, you can build it yourself without any concern for the regulations (if you know enough to use a really large motor, the research necessary to build one probably isn't that much more effort), and, at the price of the commercial really large motors, the cost delta between buy and build isn't as big as it is on the smaller stuff.
Another interesting artifact is that a gun enthusiast can purchase and store 50 pounds of black powder under his bed with no permit, and no magazine, but, if a rocketeer is caught with 2 pounds of black powder for ejection charges and no LEUP or magazine, he's got a serious problem with the BATFE.
Bottom line, the BATFE rules are truly arbitrary and capricious, and, as such, I hope eventually the court and/or congress will intervene and inflict some sanity in the process.
It's not just the background check, and, it's not about pretending to be a kid. Many of the rocketeers that I have encountered work in the aerospace field in their real life.
The problem here is the combination of truly burdensome regulation (more on this later) _AND_ it's complete lack of effectiveness. While the BATFE has people focused on hobby rocketry, real terrorists are laughing their ass off making real bombs that really explode out of things that still aren't regulated (ammonium nitrate, diesel fuel, gasoline, alcohol just to name a few of the unregulated materials). Further, the raw materials for APCP are not regulated, and, it is quite easy to learn to make your own motors. It requires some machining resources, and, the mixing process is nowhere near as safe as the final product. As such, most hobbyists prefer to buy their motors rather than build them. I'm betting that the obstacle of building your own motor would not be a significant hurdle to a terrorist. Just so you know, the basic ingredients of APCP are Ammonium Perchlorate (this is the only item that takes some searching to find a place you can buy it, but, it is readily available, and, if you were desperate you could substitute Ammonium Nitrate, although it is not as safe and the mixture becomes more critical), Rubber, Metal (usually iron if you want a red flame, copper for a blue flame, aluminum for a white flame, but, also affects the rate of combustion), a small amount of black powder, and a plasticizer (essentially an epoxy or resin). All of these things are easily purchased annonymously.
Now about how burdensome the regulation is... Prior to this regulation, I could go to a launch, buy motors, launch them in rockets at the launch, and I didn't need to worry about federal paperwork, regulation, etc. Now, I have to present my LEUP, provide a copy of my LEUP and clearance letter to each dealer (a signed copy), maintain records of each and every motor I buy, burn, return, destroy, store (wait, I'm not allowed to store any more), or otherwise dispose of for a period of at least 3 years. I have to allow the BATFE to inspect my home at any time of their choosing (even though I have a non-storage permit and don't store any explosives), had to submit an FBI fingerprint card, and had to be subjected to a federal background check. For this privilege, I also have to pay the BATFE $100 and go through the whole process all over again every three years. I can no longer trade motors or sell them to other rocketeers at launches (instead, sometimes we'll loan rockets -- he'll fly his motor in my rocket and I'll fly my motor in his rocket), but, usually, we both have to find a friendly dealer, then, we both "return" our motors to the dealer who then sellse them back to us. All because to sell to each other, under the new regulations, at least one of us would have to have a Dealer permit instead of a User permit.
This is not the inconvenience of having to deal with DMV to get a drivers license. This is a much more burdensome regulation. Imagine if gasoline (which is far more explosive than APCP) were regulated in this manner. I bet you wouldn't be saying "it's a small price and smaller burden for the greater good of automotive regulations".
Finally, kids come into this in that alot of launches have kids present. They fly low power stuff (A-G) and have a great time doing it, but, one of the things that inspires them to fly the low power stuff and learn about rocketry is watching the higher power stuff. Also, kids like to hang around and learn from the adults that are flying the higher power stuff. They get not only theoretical lessons, but, they actually get to see lessons in applied physics, mathematics, structural engineering. They actually start to see the application of what they're being taught, and, that makes them much more interested. Kids at launches start actually asking questions and listening to answers about gravity, acceleration, mass, Newton's laws of motion, etc. They see what happe
Something has changed. The Safe Explosives act prohibits anyone with an LEDP (Low Explosives Dealier Permit) from selling to anyone who is not a cleared person or who does not posess an LEUP (Low Explosives User Permit) or LEDP.
In fact, it generally prohibits anyone at all from placing any of thse things in the hands of anyone who isn't a cleared person listed on an appropriate permit. That's why you can't ship these things UPS any more. UPS doesn't want to have to get all their employees "cleared". It's massively expensive and unlikely all of them would get "cleared".
So, no, you can not buy anything at a launch any more outside of the Easy Access (.9# or less propellant) category unless you have at least a LEUP.
There is a lot of FUD out there on this subject. Some promulgated by the government, some by people who aren't fully aware of what is happening.
Here is some data I hope folks will consider. This comes from my time as a hobby rocketeer and my knowledge of the current regulations.
Rocket fuel is not an explosive. Multiple independent laboratories, including the New Hampshire State Police have tried to make APCP (standard solid rocket fuel) explode and have been unable to do so. It burns, and, it has it's own oxidizer, but, it does not explode.
The BATFE and the UN have classified it as an explosive under a definition of the term which encompasses anything which burns and includes it's own oxidizer (can't be extinguished by smothering). As such, this definition would also cover road flares.
Prior to the safe explosives act, I could buy rocket fuel, which, as others have pointed out is less dangerous (and less explosive) than gasoline or fertilizer and diesel in the form of pre-made motors and store it in my house without need for any federal permit. As a result of the regulations, I cannot store rocket motors in my house, and, I have had to get a federal permit which cost me $100, required me to submit an FBI fingerprint card to be kept on file by DOJ, sumit to a DOJ background check, virtually waive my 4th amendment rights (that's right, BATFE can inspect my house anytime they choose even though I have a non-storage permit), and, requires substantial record keeping for all motors I buy, store, expend, or sell.
Used to be if I went to a launch and someone had a motor I needed and I had a motor they needed, we'd trade. Under the new regulations, he and I need to record returning it to a vendor who then sells them to us. We aren't allowed to trade or sell the motors to each other without an explosives dealer permit.
The problem is the BATFE has no procedures for regulating hobbies. The regulations are all written to cover people that blow up buildings for a living or blast tunnels for railroads and the like.
While most of us in the hobby don't think any regulation is warranted and that the hobbies own process of self regulation has demonstrated a long history of excellent safety, we are mainly objecting to the fact that these regulations are so overly burdensome that they are eliminating participants from the hobby.
As to the memberships in NAR and TRA, yes, many people who used to fly rockets are continuing to pay their dues to these organizations to help them continue the fight against these unreasonable regulations. But, if you go to launches, you will see fewer flyers and fewer rockets being launched on less power. The regulations are putting a damper on the hobby. Vendors are feeling the crunch, including Aerotech. Yes, they're doing better now than immediately after the fire, but, they're nowhere near their pre-fire business levels.
Finally, even without the federal regulations, there are requirements to gain access to high power motors. TRA and NAR both have procedures and checkouts required for people to attain certifications for various levels of motors. Up to a G motor, there are few limitations. H and I motors require a level 1 certification. J, K, and L motors are level 2 which requires not only building, flying, and successfully recovering a level 2 rocket, but, requires a written test on rocket regulations and safety procedures. To fly an M, N, or O motor requires a level 3 certification which involves significant review and substantial expense to achieve.
Further, to launch rockets over a certain amount, one must first obtain permission from the FAA in the form of a waiver. The FAA will not grant a waiver to launch a 300 pound rocket downtown or next to the local airport. General public safety is adequately addrsesed by the regulations prior to the Safe Explosives Act.
Another consequence of the SEA is that most shippers are no longer able to transport rocket motors (it would require them to get every
Sorry... Maybe the only application you use on the intenet is Web Browsing, and, so you aren't effected by the things they broke. Lucky you.
However, for those of us that use other applications (email, ssh, IPSEC, etc.), which are suffering incorrect error messages at best, and, significant malfunctions at worst as a result of this action by Verisign, it's not a good thing. If you get a 404 page, you're welcome to go to sitefinder yourself. You're welcome to go to google or any other search engine.
This isn't knee-jerk reactionism, it's response to painful stimuli. Additionally, Verisign made this change without public review, without public comment, without public notice, and, without approval from any of the governing bodies (IETF, IAB, ICANN) or the operational communities. Further, when the governing body that owns their contract (ICANN) asked them nicely, they refused to fix it. They had to resort to threatening legal action.
I hope this will help you understand the issue a little better and realize that most of the people making the most vocal reaction are responding to real pain in trying to keep their networks running. Most of us don't have time to be chicken little.
With all due respect, this could be very problematic if Verisign is allowed to continue it. Not only because of all the technical implications, but, more importantly because it sets the precedent that the.com and.net domains essentially belong to Verisign to do whatever they choose with. If ICANN cannot stop this, then ICANN truly has no power to manage it's resources in the public interest. If ICANN cannot do that, there is noone elase with the public mandate to do so. This could be very bad going forward.
Given how hard Verisign is working on the PR engine against this, we should make it as clear as possible that this is a significant operational issue with significant impact to the community. We should stand united that this is a bad thing first and foremost, and worry about the infighting about how bad later.
Dr. JJJ -- An N motor is between 20,480.01 and 40,960 newton seconds. Slightly stronger would be something more than that and probably at the low end of the O (40,960.01 - 81,920 newton seconds) range. If I remember correctly, the ML launches with a full N staging to an M. I don't remember the total installed impluse, but I'll ask JP next time I see him.
Slashdot Mirror
Some ISPs are already supporting IPv6. Admittedly, only a handful of residential ISPs are there yet.
Comcast is doing trials now and will probably be adding IPv6 for most customers by the end of the year.
If your ISP isn't doing IPv6 yet, it's time to start asking them about it.
RIRs will be out of IPv4 before the end of the year. That means ISPs that want to keep adding 30-50,000 customers per day to the internet are going to have to do something different from what is being done today. IPv6 is the solution to that problem and it will roll forward rather quickly after IPv4 runs out.
You can plan for it now, be proactive about preparing, and be ahead of your service provider and others, or, you can stand on the tracks waiting until you hear the train coming around the curve. I guess which one you choose depends on how fast you can run and how confident you are in your hearing.
Um, that depends.
If your ISP or the ISP for the company you work for operates with your attitude, it may be well past the point when you loose connectivity to things you consider important when you stop ignoring IPv6.
I would say that instead, you should be contacting said ISPs and making sure they will be bringing IPv6 to you sooner rather than later.
Otherwise, by the time you stop ignoring IPv6, the modern IPv6 internet may be already ignoring your legacy IPv4 environment.
First, it's not really IPv6 brokenness so much as it is an issue with hosts that think they have IPv6 connectivity, but, really don't.
Second, in most cases, affected users will see long page load times, not complete inability to access the site.
The 0.05% number is probably pretty accurate. Several sites have used embedded tests to measure this and come to the same number. However, the good news is that a year ago, this was 0.1% and it is continuing to trend downward.
With IANA running out of IPv4 this month, it's not surprising that Yahoo is moving forward. It's disturbing that so many others appear not to be.
I did not get my addresses from a tunnel broker. I got mine from ARIN. I can use them outside of a tunnel, just as my IPv4 addresses. However, there is not a cost-effective non-tunnel way to get BGP based IP transit services into a house, so, my IPv4 and IPv6 BGP sessions are handled over GRE tunnels.
If you sign up for IPv6 service with an ISP you should be able to get at least a /48 from the ISP. If you are multihomed, you should easily be able to get at least a /48 from your local Regional Internet Registry.
There are many options for obtaining IPv6 addresses today. There will be more in the near future.
I disagree. I was easily able to obtain 1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176 of them and so can anyone else from various internet tunnelbrokers* or from several other sources.
*Full disclosure: I work for the company that provides the largest tunnel broker, but since it is a free service and I have not named the particular tunnelbroker, hopefully this is not regarded as a promotional message. It is intended as informative only.
Nope... I deliberately chose one that was even beyond Peta because the scale is really much much larger. Peta wouldn't cut it. Exa is probably even short, but, I don't know what the term is for exa *10^11.
IPv4 = 4.2*10^9
IPv6 = 3.4*10^38 (or almost IPv4 * 10^29)
Exa = 10^18
So, IPv6 = IPv4 * Exa * 10 ^ 11.
Bottom line, the claim "640k ought to be enough" was based on 10x standard memory of the day.
IPv6 ought to be enough is based on 8.5 * 10^28 times the IPv4 address space, so an accurate memory comparison would be the claim:
85 brontobytes ought to be enough memory for everyone
Do you know any one who is likely to even be able to conceive of 85 brontobytes in the lifetime of anyone now living, let alone actually procure it or address it in a system?
Didn't think so.
I'll try...
I have no idea of any meaningful measurement of Library of Congress for comparison, sorry.
It takes 39 digits to define the number of addresses in IPv6. Only 10 digits to define the number of addresses in IPv4.
If you treat each address as a unit of mass and consider IPv4 to have mass equivalent of 7 liters of water, then, IPv6 would have mass equivalent roughly to Earth. (The whole earth, including all the oceans, lakes, land masses, people, buildings, etc.)
In IPv4, there are more than 1.5 people alive today for every address.
In IPv6, there are 50,041,524,547,196,832,862,260,971,681 addresses for each person alive today.
Or, perhaps consider the following:
The US public debt is 13,848,000.000,000. If IP addresses were pennies, we would need 3,462 IPv4 internets to pay it off. The IPv6 address space, converted to pennies, OTOH, would pay the public debt more than 24,572,672,365,752,344,270,896,491 times. /64 network worth of pennies, please ;-)
(If anyone wants to send me even a single IPv6
email me for contact information.)
Hope that helps.
There is a difference here. IPv6 would be the equivalent of IBM saying something more like:
640 exabytes ought to be enough for anyone.
(note by exabyte I mean 1000 terabytes, not Exabyte the brand name of many 8mm digital video tape drives).
340*10^36 (the IPv6 address space) is more than 10^26 times the current demand for addresses.
Compare to 640k which was roughly 10^1 times the standard memory size for machines of the day.
In fact, today, I doubt you can identify many (any?) machines with more than a terabyte of RAM.
In fact, it's rare to find more than 128GB of RAM capacity in most machines. (64GB is roughly
100,000 times the original 640KB number, so 128GB would be 2*10^5 times 640KB).
To put the comparison in some perspectives you might be able to wrap your head around...
If you were to allocate an almond M&M for every 256 IPv4 addresses, the resulting amount /24 prefix)
of almond M&Ms laid out in a 1-M&M thick layer would cover only 70 yards of an american
regulation football field (NFL, not FIFA). (16.7 million M&Ms, 1 for each IPv4
Contrast that with the number of IPv6 /64 prefixes (a bit more than 18 quintillion) which
would provide enough M&Ms to fill all of the great lakes.
Where each /24 can accommodate a single router and up to 253 other hosts, each /64 can accommodate more hosts than you could ever physically put on any
IPv6
conceivable scale of network gear (18 quintillion+ hosts).
There will not be a likely shortage of IPv6 addresses in any of our lifetimes.
Based on the current trends and even the most liberal theories of allocation being even proposed, in about 50 years, we MAY have allocated as much as 0.5% (yes, 1 half of one percent) of the IPv6 address space.
Variable length schemes are impractical at backbone forwarding rates. Hardware to support a variable length scheme would be incredibly expensive.
While the transition to IPv6 does involve some effort, it is not nearly as bad as many have claimed it will be. My employer operates a three-continent
dual-stack backbone. I run fully dual-stack at home (except for an amplifier, some TiVO boxes and an old terminal server which are not IPv6
capable).
Transitioning my network took a total of less than 12 man hours with an elapsed time of approximately 7 days.
Turning IPv6 off now just means you have to turn it on in a few months. I would rather avoid making two changes to all the hosts in my network.
The simpler solution for the basic network where IPv6 doesn't matter yet is to make sure your router null routes the IPv6 default (::/0), get valid IPv6 addresses, build a basic subnetting plan and put it in place on your routers with appropriate RAs. That will prevent hosts from trying to build 6to4 or Teredo or ISATAP or other bizarre kinds of autotunnels and give quick negative responses to attempts to reach IPv6 hosts resulting in timely fallback to IPv4. Simple, efficient, and, when you do actually need IPv6 connectivity, you just need to change the configuration on your routers (which you'd have to do anyway).
As to when to deploy IPv6, if you're running a network full of end users behind an IPv4 NAT using RFC-1918 space, then, no, you probably don't need to convert that network over right away, but, you will want to deal with all those systems that are now shipping with IPv6 on by default as I have described above or you will see user complaints as a result of their attempts to reach a growing mass of IPv6 content.
However, if you have any public facing content or services (as most businesses do at this point), then, you're going to want to make sure that those are reachable via IPv6 as well as IPv4 as soon as possible. Certainly within the next 12 months or so.
The people depending on the current address calculators and an 18-month clock to RIR runout after IANA exhaustion are in for some rude awakenings.
First, the clocks are wrong. They don't seem to correctly account for current utilization rates, nor do they account for the fact that 5 of the 14 remaining /8s are reserved to be distributed one to each regional internet registry when the others are exhausted.
IPv4
At the beginning of 2010, there were 21 IPv4 /8s in the IANA IPv4 free pool and 5 in the reserved section described in the last paragraph. Today, less than 9 months later, there are only 9 /8s remaining in the IANA free pool and 5 still in the reserved section. (Note that the clocks all talk about 14/224 which is 9+5).
At the current rate of consumption, we're not talking about 285 days to IANA runout, we're talking January or February of 2011. Feb. 28, 2011 is 194 days from now in my current timezone (Thursday, 20 September, 2010). (Notice the 91 day (or more) error in the countdown clock).
Additionally, once IANA runs out of IPv4, the RIRs aren't going to simply coast for 18 moths. APNIC, RIPE, and ARIN will likely be in a race to see who runs out first. I think the smart money is on APNIC. However, whichever one runs out first, you can bet that the multinationals (i.e. the largest consumers of IPv4 addresses) in any one of those three regions will start pulling space from the other regions too. As a result, whichever one runs out first will accelerate the other two rather abruptly. I predict that the first RIR will run out on a timeframe more like 6 months after IANA exhaustion rather than 18.
It's less clear what will happen with space in the AfriNIC and LACNIC regions due to unique circumstances.
IPv6 is no longer an option, it is a requirement. Time to stop with the FUD and misinformation and start facing the cold hard facts staring us in the face.
Yes, the earliest predictions of runout turned out to be wrong (only because NAT was developed _AFTER_ those predictions were issued, btw).
However, the predictions today are mostly wrong too, but, not in the direction you want and certainly not as far off.
Failure to deploy IPv6 at least to your public content and services within the next 12 months will place you at a competitive disadvantage against other companies that do. That disadvantage will only increase with time. It is also critical to deploy IPv6 capabilities to your support staff and your IT
departments so that they can become familiar with it and learn to trou
For VOIP to provide any 911 service, there has to be recognition that there are two principle forms of VOIP. While there is no meaningful technology distinction between the two, there are substantial implementation distinctions for 911 purposes.
The easy category which should be the target of FCC and other requirements is the traditional fixed-location telephone replacement. This service is a device (hardware or software) which is not generally mobile, and, which operates from a fixed location like a traditional land-line phone. Registration of the location and appropriate 911 connectivity for these devices should be a simple matter and isn't an unreasonable requirement for VOIP service providers.
The other category is location-independent VOIP. This could be an 802.11 based SIP cordless handset, a laptop running a soft phone, or any number of other such VOIP devices which can and often do change location on a regular device. These devices present multiple nearly insurmountable challenges for providing 911 service over VOIP, and, should not be required to do so until a practical alternative to them can be determined.
It should be up to the consumer to determine which category their particular VOIP account will fall under, but, providers should be required to make full disclosure of the tradeoffs prior to the consumer making such a decision.
To highlight the challenges presented, consider the following:
- Without any location data, it is virtually impossible to correctly route the call to an appropriate 911 provider. Afterall, my billing address may be in San Jose, my VOIP service may be based in Virginia, with a Virginia telephone number, and, I could be placing calls from that service while sitting at a Cafe in South Africa. What good is the dispatch center in San Jose or Virginia going to do me? Instead, the VOIP provider should route me to a recording that informs me I need to obtain local assistance and reminding me that 911 isn't available from this phone.
- It is hard (so far, impossible) to reliably obtain location data from such devices.
- There is no provision in the VOIP protocol for a standard way in which to provide location data even if it were available.
- GPS does not work indoors.
- Not all countries actually have 911 service. What does a VOIP provider based in Virginia do when they know their customer is trying to call 911 from South Africa?
- Any method of reliably generating location data has much worse privacy implications
I am curious as to how the Canadian requirements address these issues. If anyone knows, an email to owen at delong dot com would be appreciated.Anyone from a 5 year old to a WWI veteran can sit down at a Gnome
Desktop and browse the internet and check email in no time if someone
sets up their email for them. (The same is true of Windows).
The differences come in when you start wanting to do things like change
the appearance of the UI, tweak mouse scroll rates, set up printers,
etc. Windows is not simpler than OSS or easier to use in these ares,
it's just more familiar.
Further, it's never been easier to use Windows than OSS or *NIX. However,
it's always been easier to START using Windows than OSS. This is because
OSS is usually written by people who need to use the software, so, the
UI is designed from the angle of how do I make it easy to do what I need
lots of times. Windows was not written by people who needed the software.
It was written to make money. When that's the goal, the question shifts
from "how do I make it easy to do common tasks lots of times" to how do
I make it relatively easy to figure out how to do most common tasks once.
Windows and windows applications are generally optimized so that if you
poke around long enough, you can usually eventually find the feature you
want. Windows apps. are also written so that it's not really important
to the initial end result if you think about or plan the structure of
what you are doing.
For example, in Frame Maker, it's virtually impossible to get the result
you want without understanding the paradigm used for formatting paragraphs
and how that is incorporated into the document. You have to understand
master pages, templates, etc. or you have to work REALLY hard to get your
document to look the way you want, and, it becomes virtually impossible
to change.
In Word, structured document styles are an afterthought, and, they're
actually pretty difficult to use, often having far from intuitive
side effects until you fully understand them. However, it's easy to
create and edit a document that looks exactly how you want it without
using any structure. If the document develops any length, then global
formatting changes become a major PITA, but, that's not something people
look at _BEFORE_ they buy the software.
I'm sure there are lots of other examples, but, the bottom line is that
the primary difference in the UI between OSS and Windows is whether it
is engineered for efficient completion of repetitive tasks, or, whether
it is optimized for easy-to-understand initial usage to drive sales.
I think Apple has done an amazingly good job in addressing the tradeoffs
between these two important goals. I think the OSS community could learn
alot from Apples UI design, especially in Quartz and Aqua (I didn't
actually like the OS=9 interface, as I think they ignored the efficient
task completion side all together in that UI).
Actually, in the certified (store-bought) category, TRA limits motors to O (40,960 newton seconds max), with a limitation on rockets to a total installed impulse of P (81,920 newton seconds max). Rockets that go 60 miles are outside the scope of TRA and NAR because both TRA and NAR require that rockets be launched within 5 degrees of vertical. However, if you were to put an Aerotech O-2000 in a 30 foot long minimum diameter fiberglass or carbon fiber airframe, I'm betting you could get that to go 60 miles with appropriate aerodynamic design and a non-vertical launch. However, it wouldn't do so with any meaningful degree of accuracy, and, at that distance, you'd be lucky if it got within 15 miles of your "target". Heck, at most launches I've been to, there are always a few rockets that can't even get straight up right.
I gree with you that truly large motors should be regulated, but, they aren't really regulated at this time. If you want a really large motor, you can build it yourself without any concern for the regulations (if you know enough to use a really large motor, the research necessary to build one probably isn't that much more effort), and, at the price of the commercial really large motors, the cost delta between buy and build isn't as big as it is on the smaller stuff.
Another interesting artifact is that a gun enthusiast can purchase and store 50 pounds of black powder under his bed with no permit, and no magazine, but, if a rocketeer is caught with 2 pounds of black powder for ejection charges and no LEUP or magazine, he's got a serious problem with the BATFE.
Bottom line, the BATFE rules are truly arbitrary and capricious, and, as such, I hope eventually the court and/or congress will intervene and inflict some sanity in the process.
It's not just the background check, and, it's not about pretending to be a kid. Many of the rocketeers that I have encountered work in the aerospace field in their real life.
The problem here is the combination of truly burdensome regulation (more on this later) _AND_ it's complete lack of effectiveness. While the BATFE has people focused on hobby rocketry, real terrorists are laughing their ass off making real bombs that really explode out of things that still aren't regulated (ammonium nitrate, diesel fuel, gasoline, alcohol just to name a few of the unregulated materials). Further, the raw materials for APCP are not regulated, and, it is quite easy to learn to make your own motors. It requires some machining resources, and, the mixing process is nowhere near as safe as the final product. As such, most hobbyists prefer to buy their motors rather than build them. I'm betting that the obstacle of building your own motor would not be a significant hurdle to a terrorist. Just so you know, the basic ingredients of APCP are Ammonium Perchlorate (this is the only item that takes some searching to find a place you can buy it, but, it is readily available, and, if you were desperate you could substitute Ammonium Nitrate, although it is not as safe and the mixture becomes more critical), Rubber, Metal (usually iron if you want a red flame, copper for a blue flame, aluminum for a white flame, but, also affects the rate of combustion), a small amount of black powder, and
a plasticizer (essentially an epoxy or resin). All of these things are
easily purchased annonymously.
Now about how burdensome the regulation is... Prior to this regulation, I could go to a launch, buy motors, launch them in rockets at the launch, and I didn't need to worry about federal paperwork, regulation, etc. Now, I have to present my LEUP, provide a copy of my LEUP and clearance letter to each dealer (a signed copy), maintain records of each and every motor I buy, burn, return, destroy, store (wait, I'm not allowed to store any more), or otherwise dispose of for a period of at least 3 years. I have to allow the BATFE to inspect my home at any time of their choosing (even though I have a non-storage permit and don't store any explosives), had
to submit an FBI fingerprint card, and had to be subjected to a federal background check. For this privilege, I also have to pay the BATFE $100 and go through the whole process all over again every three years. I can no longer trade motors or sell them to other rocketeers at launches (instead, sometimes we'll loan rockets -- he'll fly his motor in my rocket and I'll fly my motor in his rocket), but, usually, we both have to find a friendly dealer, then, we both "return" our motors to the dealer who then sellse them back to us. All because to sell to each other, under the new regulations, at least one of us would have to have a Dealer permit instead of a User permit.
This is not the inconvenience of having to deal with DMV to get a drivers license. This is a much more burdensome regulation. Imagine if gasoline (which is far more explosive than APCP) were regulated in this manner. I bet you wouldn't be saying "it's a small price and smaller burden for the greater good of automotive regulations".
Finally, kids come into this in that alot of launches have kids present. They fly low power stuff (A-G) and have a great time doing it, but, one of the things that inspires them to fly the low power stuff and learn about rocketry is watching the higher power stuff. Also, kids like to hang around and learn from the adults that are flying the higher power stuff. They get not only theoretical lessons, but, they actually get to see lessons in applied physics, mathematics, structural engineering. They
actually start to see the application of what they're being taught, and,
that makes them much more interested. Kids at launches start actually asking questions and listening to answers about gravity, acceleration,
mass, Newton's laws of motion, etc. They see what happe
Something has changed. The Safe Explosives act prohibits anyone with an
LEDP (Low Explosives Dealier Permit) from selling to anyone who is not a cleared person or who does not posess an LEUP (Low Explosives User Permit)
or LEDP.
In fact, it generally prohibits anyone at all from placing any of thse things in the hands of anyone who isn't a cleared person listed on an appropriate permit. That's why you can't ship these things UPS any more. UPS doesn't want to have to get all their employees "cleared". It's massively expensive and unlikely all of them would get "cleared".
So, no, you can not buy anything at a launch any more outside of the Easy Access (.9# or less propellant) category unless you have at least a LEUP.
There is a lot of FUD out there on this subject. Some promulgated by the government, some by people who aren't fully aware of what is happening.
Here is some data I hope folks will consider. This comes from my time as a hobby rocketeer and my knowledge of the current regulations.
Rocket fuel is not an explosive. Multiple independent laboratories, including the New Hampshire State Police have tried to make APCP (standard solid rocket fuel) explode and have been unable to do so. It burns, and, it has it's own oxidizer, but, it does not explode.
The BATFE and the UN have classified it as an explosive under a definition of the term which encompasses anything which burns and includes it's own oxidizer (can't be extinguished by smothering). As such, this definition would also cover road flares.
Prior to the safe explosives act, I could buy rocket fuel, which, as others have pointed out is less dangerous (and less explosive) than gasoline or fertilizer and diesel in the form of pre-made motors and store it in my house without need for any federal permit. As a result of the regulations, I cannot store rocket motors in my house, and, I have had to get a federal permit which cost me $100, required me to submit an FBI fingerprint card to be kept on file by DOJ, sumit to a DOJ background check, virtually waive my 4th amendment rights (that's right, BATFE can inspect my house anytime they choose even though I have a non-storage permit), and, requires substantial record keeping for all motors I buy, store, expend, or sell.
Used to be if I went to a launch and someone had a motor I needed and I had a motor they needed, we'd trade. Under the new regulations, he and I need to record returning it to a vendor who then sells them to us. We aren't allowed to trade or sell the motors to each other without an explosives dealer permit.
The problem is the BATFE has no procedures for regulating hobbies. The regulations are all written to cover people that blow up buildings for a living or blast tunnels for railroads and the
like.
While most of us in the hobby don't think any regulation is warranted and that the hobbies own process of self regulation has demonstrated a long history of excellent safety, we are mainly objecting to the fact that these regulations are so overly burdensome that they are eliminating participants from the hobby.
As to the memberships in NAR and TRA, yes, many people who used to fly rockets are continuing to pay their dues to these organizations to help them continue the fight against these unreasonable regulations. But, if you go to launches, you will see fewer flyers and fewer rockets being launched on less power. The regulations are putting a damper on the hobby. Vendors are feeling the crunch, including Aerotech. Yes, they're doing better now than immediately after the fire, but, they're nowhere near their pre-fire business levels.
Finally, even without the federal regulations, there are requirements to gain access to high power motors. TRA and NAR both have procedures and checkouts required for people to attain certifications for various levels of motors. Up to a G motor, there are few limitations. H and I motors require a level 1 certification. J, K, and L motors are level 2 which requires not only building, flying, and successfully recovering a level 2 rocket, but, requires a written test on rocket regulations and safety procedures. To fly an M, N, or O motor requires a level 3 certification which involves significant review and substantial expense to achieve.
Further, to launch rockets over a certain amount, one must first obtain permission from the FAA in the form of a waiver. The FAA will not grant a waiver to launch a 300 pound rocket downtown or next to the local airport. General public safety is adequately addrsesed by the regulations prior to the Safe Explosives Act.
Another consequence of the SEA is that most shippers are no longer able to transport rocket motors (it would require them to get every
Sorry... Maybe the only application you use on the intenet is Web Browsing, and, so you
aren't effected by the things they broke. Lucky you.
However, for those of us that use other applications (email, ssh, IPSEC, etc.), which are suffering
incorrect error messages at best, and, significant malfunctions at worst as a result of this
action by Verisign, it's not a good thing. If you get a 404 page, you're welcome to go to
sitefinder yourself. You're welcome to go to google or any other search engine.
This isn't knee-jerk reactionism, it's response to painful stimuli. Additionally, Verisign made
this change without public review, without public comment, without public notice, and, without
approval from any of the governing bodies (IETF, IAB, ICANN) or the operational communities.
Further, when the governing body that owns their contract (ICANN) asked them nicely, they
refused to fix it. They had to resort to threatening legal action.
I hope this will help you understand the issue a little better and realize that most of the people
making the most vocal reaction are responding to real pain in trying to keep their networks
running. Most of us don't have time to be chicken little.
Owen
With all due respect, this could be very problematic if Verisign is allowed to continue it. .com and .net domains essentially belong to Verisign to do whatever
Not only because of all the technical implications, but, more importantly because it sets
the precedent that the
they choose with. If ICANN cannot stop this, then ICANN truly has no power to manage
it's resources in the public interest. If ICANN cannot do that, there is noone elase with
the public mandate to do so. This could be very bad going forward.
Given how hard Verisign is working on the PR engine against this, we should make it
as clear as possible that this is a significant operational issue with significant impact
to the community. We should stand united that this is a bad thing first and foremost,
and worry about the infighting about how bad later.
Owen
Dr. JJJ -- An N motor is between 20,480.01 and 40,960 newton seconds. Slightly stronger would be something more than that and probably at the low end of the O (40,960.01 - 81,920 newton seconds) range. If I remember correctly, the ML launches with a full N staging to an M. I don't remember the total installed impluse, but I'll ask JP next time I see him.