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No Business Case For IPv6, Survey Finds
Posted by
timothy
on Sat Mar 21, 2009 04:37 PM
from the what-about-bragging-rights? dept.
from the what-about-bragging-rights? dept.
alphadogg writes "Business incentives are completely lacking today for upgrading to IPv6, the next generation Internet protocol, according to a survey of network operators conducted by the Internet Society (ISOC). In a new report, ISOC says that ISPs, enterprises and network equipment vendors report that there are 'no concrete business drivers for IPv6.' However, survey respondents said customer demand for IPv6 is on the rise and that they are planning or deploying IPv6 because they feel it is the next major development in the evolution of the Internet."
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Ever? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm beginning to find it hard to believe that IPv6 will ever be implemented. It seems to have been on the verge of it for close to a decade now.
Re:Ever? (Score:5, Funny)
The problem is that the guys that were working on the big IPv6 transition quit there jobs to work on the Duke Nukem Forever project.
Parent
Re:Ever? (Score:5, Informative)
As a person who's involved in an implementation of IPv6, let me say that it's difficult to see it implemented without ubiquitous gigabit networks all around, as well as network equipment (routers) that run on the kind of CPUs we don't nowadays expect such hardware to run on. On the one hand, they've made stuff easier (no more checksums on IP level, addresses that tell you something about themselves); on the other they've made it more difficult (potentially quite a lot of headers before you get to ICMP for example, as well as up to seven addresses that any device must listen to, address sizes that don't fit a natural integer), but the network is also busier: network meta-messages fly around all the time - much more so than with IPv4, its ICMP, IGMP and ARP (ARP times out in 20 minutes; link-layer address mapping in IPv6 expires in less than a minute), and don't forget multicast: it's obligatory and used a lot on IPv6, meaning that routers will be so much more busy synchronizing.
Then again; the time that hardware and linespeed catches up, *will* come. It's just not now, and nobody is in a hurry either. But running IPv6 over lines that do 1 Mbps in practice, however doable; it wouldn't make anyone happy.
Parent
Re:Ever? (Score:5, Informative)
Um, what the heck are you talking about? The ARP timeout is two minutes, not twenty. Speaking as someone who's also implemented IPv6 and used it pretty extensively, it sounds like you really don't know what you're talking about.
There is a known failure mode with ICMPv6 if you have a 127-bit prefix, but this is well-known, there's a fix for it in the standards, and the workaround is that you just don't ever use 127-bit prefixes. There's no particular benefit to using 127-bit prefixes, so this is kind of a no-brainer.
As for CPU consumption, again, what are you talking about? On the backbone, the proliferation of micro-routes for IPv4 is a *huge* problem. IPv6 route aggregation makes things *faster*, not slower, and consumes less CPU time as well.
If you are working over low bandwidth links, you might want to take a look at 6lowpan, which allows you to statelessly compress headers down to under twelve bytes.
Bottom line, the conclusions you've drawn are, as far as I am aware, complete nonsense. I'm sure you believe what you've said, and it's the result of real things that you saw, but without a bit more back story, I don't think it contributes any useful knowledge to the discussion.
Parent
Self-defeat. (Score:5, Interesting)
I tell this story all the time, and I'll tell it again.
I *tried* to build up a new fiber network in downtown St. Louis using IPv6. I couldn't get the address space!
It's insane - I could get 3x/24 blocks (non-sequential) assigned to my ASN, but in order to get an IPv6 allotment, I had to show proof that I *already* had utilized a full /24 of IPv6 addresses (which is NOT 256. It's 256*256*256!) They said to get it from my upstream provider - they said they don't do that, get it from ARIN. I go back to ARIN, ARIN says "They're full of it, get it from your upstream provider."
Even more insane? IPv6 allotments are FREE! I had to pay per year for an IPv4 allotment, but the free stuff? Pfft...we have it, we'll never run out of it within your lifetime, but you can't have it.
WTF?
Parent
Re:Self-defeat. (Score:5, Informative)
Instead of getting upset, get smart. ARIN is correct - you're supposed to get your allotment from your upstream provider, unless you're peering on the backbone (which it seems you aren't, since you have a provider). Your provider is probably used to the IPv4 way of doing things; the problem with that is that it produces fragmentation, which produces huge routing tables. In order to keep the routing tables small, the IPv6 allocation policy is to allocate hierarchically, so that you would get your addresses out of your provider's space.
When your provider runs out of space, you either renumber or fragment; renumbering is obviously preferred, and in v6 it's also easy, because you can do a soft transition - deprecate the old addresses, but keep using them for a month; by that time, all existing connections will be using the new addresses, and in the meantime all the connections that used the old addresses have faded away.
This is sufficiently different than the way things are done in IPv6 that it's not surprising that your provider doesn't understand it yet. So you need to help educate them - this isn't a situation where people are deliberately fingerpointing, but rather an opportunity for some education.
Parent
Minor nit - ARP cache timeout (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a minor nit - ARP cache timeouts are normally on the order of 300 seconds, not two minutes.
A less minor nit is this: IPv6 does not help decrease the size of routing tables as seen by major providers. Nor does IPv6 reduce the burden of sending routing updates so that routing updates are propagated faster than the underlying rate of change of usable net paths. (Enterprise subnets, whether IPv4 or IPv6, don't generally propagate into the routing announcements as seen by the big carriers.)
The compelling argument, for me at least, is that IPv6 is really a new internet that runs along side of the existing IPv4 net - there is no direct interoperability. This means that pretty much any new expansion of the net is going to require IPv4 connectivity, and IPv4 addresses, to reach the legacy net. And that makes IPv6 redundant from the user's point of view. That sort of drains the oil out of the IPv6 crankcase.
Of course the biggest argument of all is that IPv6 does not solve the hard issues of propagating routing information and finding usable paths across the net, particularly as the demands of human-conversational traffic and the political acts of nations are (unfortunately) driving routing to become increasingly aware of the types of traffic being routed.
I'm waiting to be shown that I'm wrong - I helped do the very first calculation of IPv4 address consumption back in the mid 1980's. And I was in the group at Sun back in the very early 1990's where IPv6 took form. I spent time at Cisco wrestling with questions like how to efficiently mechanize 128-bit longest-prefix matching on 32 and 64 bit hardware. And my company currently has IPv6 testing products. So I've been watching IPv6 for what will soon be two decades.
To me one of the tilt-points of IPv6 will be when I can go into Frys Electronics and find IPv6 capable print servers and other widgets of that ilk on the shelves.
I saw ISO/OSI come and go (I was rather a fan of TUBA - which included the use of ISO/OSI CLNP for the new IP layer - when the various IPv4 alternatives were being considered in the early 1990's.) It would not surprise me to see IPv6 go the way of ISO/OSI.
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Re:Minor nit - ARP cache timeout (Score:4, Informative)
To me one of the tilt-points of IPv6 will be when I can go into Frys Electronics and find IPv6 capable print servers and other widgets of that ilk on the shelves.
We're starting to see this already. The Apple Airport Express/Base Station products are IPv6 capable and do 6to4 tunnelling when used as gateway devices, out of the box.
The HP CPxxxx series network printers are also IPv6 capable.
Now we just need the other tilt-point of broadband providers handing out IPv6 allotments, and we'd be set.
Parent
Re:Ever? (Score:4, Interesting)
Sounds too familiar.... Kinda like the damn analog tv to digital switchover which been planned, discussed and advertised for YEARS!! Then it got delayed....AGAIN!! Cuz those 6 million viewers think analog tv works just fine and don't want to switch to digital and they don't comprehend that fact digital is better using a $50 converter box.
Sheesh. Ah well.. good luck with IPv6. I know it'll be the holy grail for the Internet but right now they don't see the immediate benefit and won't upgrade unless they are forced to.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And how is digital better if on the fringe? Analog decays gracefully, some snow but still watchable. Digital means having a miserable wife as she likes TV when you can watch it, not when there is a blank screen.
IPv6 is the same, great when you don't mind spending a bunch of money to downgrade to the newest thing but crappy if you have old software.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You can use IPv6 _now_ with 6to4 or Teredo.
It's quite simple, actually. You can start IPv6 on your network in about 1 hour (including stateless autoconfiguration setup).
First, follow this tutorial: http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Linux+IPv6-HOWTO/conf-ipv6-in-ipv4-point-to-point-tunnels.html [tldp.org] (I suggest the 'deprecated' method, because it actually works fine :) ).
Then install radvd ( http://www.litech.org/radvd/ [litech.org] ), don't forget to turn on IPv6 routing and you're set!
Being able to SSH directly into every machine on my
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I work for a software company. We are seeing IPv6 labs popping up around our global offices because customers are starting to ask for it in our products. It's showing up on RFPs. It's coming.
And having worked with it for a while, I must say it's a dream compared to v4.
Re:Ever? (Score:5, Insightful)
Me, I would have preferred to extend the dotted-quad notation over using the colon-separated hex format usually used for IPv6. Dotted quads look more familiar for network administrators, software developers, and so on. As you noted, IPv6 addresses look strange and scare people. This fear of the unknown is a barrier to adoption. Any unnecessary break with IPv4 hurts IPv6 adoption, and we can't afford that; IPv6 with dotted quads is better than IPv4.
Parent
Re:Ever? (Score:5, Interesting)
Your post demonstrates my point perfectly: the colon-separated hex notion screws up URL parsing, requiring algorithm changes for everyone, and as you see, lots of people still haven't gotten it right. Dotted-quad notation wouldn't have required nearly as much effort. The new notation was an unnecessary barrier to adoption.
We're talking about Joe Sysop and Joe Programmer, whose opinions regarding IPv6 are far more important than Joe Plumber's. These people see IPv6 as something exotic and frightening, and try to avoid it as long as they can. IPv6 should have been made as similar to IPv4 as possible; instead, the IETF tried to do too much too fast, and now we're paying the price.
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Re:Ever? (Score:5, Interesting)
Ohforgod'ssake. You're going to *type in* raw IPv6 addresses in a URL? I don't *think* so. I do it for debugging, but there's no way I'd ever ask an end user to type one in, and if I did there's no way the end user would do it. Which makes it a non-problem.
Decimal dotted quads are too big, and they wouldn't look like IPv4 dotted quads anyway. For instance, my IP address as a dotted quad is:
32.1.31.56.2.6.0.0.2.23.191.255.254.133.196.90
In hex, it's:
2001:1938:206: :223:dfff:fe85:c45a
You really prefer hex? You really think that's going to look familiar and comfy to a person who can't handle the hex format? Naw, dude - this is really a great way to weed out people who shouldn't be on staff - if they can't handle the hex, there are a lot of other much more important things they also can't handle, in IPv4-land as well as IPv6.
Admittedly, there's always resistance to new stuff by a certain number of people, and that's perfectly understandable and not grounds for firing. But those people will get over it after a bit of hands-on.
Parent
Joe Sysop doesn't give a flying fuck about IPv6 (Score:4, Insightful)
He and the entire 100,000 person corporation he works for are sitting behind half a dozen routable IPv4 addresses on their own private 10net. He is already overworked supporting the infrastructure which is in place already and when an IPv6 rollout is suggested the first thought which comes to mind is "Just how retarded are you?".
IPv6 is neither exotic nor frightening. Admins and programmers have been dealing with differing networking protocols for decades, including IPX, IP, OSI etc. IPv6 is nothing new. It's simply a fuck of a lot of work for little or no gain.
The question is. What is the "killer application"? If you want IPv6 adoption to proceed at faster than a crawl, you're going to have to come up with something as compelling as the WWW but which simply cannot be realistically achieved over IPv4. Maybe some sort of peer to peer mobile phone application might do it, otherwise, go away and come back when you have something worth talking about.
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Well, (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well, (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess you don't care about end-to-end connectivity. P2P, VoIP, skype, stuff like that? Obviously not something you want.
As we run out of IP addresses, we will have more NATting of IPv4 networks. This will mean that instead of having a single global IP address with your ISP, you will have an RFC1918 address. The people who have global addresses will be fewer, and so Skype's nat traversal will depend more heavily on them, which they will notice and which will decrease Skype's popularity. Same with p2p.
Consequently, at some point it will be the case that the only applications that are well-supported on the Internet are walled-garden apps run by commercial sites. Innovation will drop off.
It's not a pretty scenario. To me, the main selling point of IPv6 is *not* that we are running out of IP addresses and need more. It's that end-to-end is getting less and less available as the internet grows. Deploy IPv6, and end-to-end comes back. That's why we need IPv6.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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NAT exists entirely because of the need to provide point to point routing with a shortage of IP addresses. Remove the shortage and you remove the point of NAT.
It will happen (Score:5, Insightful)
With the rate IPv4 adressess are running out it is only a matter of time before we will switch to ipv6. It might be 3 years from now or perhaps even more but when ipv4 becomes scarce(and it will), people and (internet)companies will try and make the switch to ipv6.
Don't get started about the turd that is called NAT, that's a problem posing as a solution.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Don't get started about the turd that is called NAT, that's a problem posing as a solution."
True, but it will always come down to the cheapest solution. Not the most technologically superior.
As for consumer ISPs, I think the day might come when ISPs start to NAT all of their clients, and charge a fee to get a static, external IP.
Some businesses might implement IPV6, especially when Windows fully supports it (if Vista or 7 don't already, I'm honestly ignorant), but as long as finding ways to remain on IPv4
Re:It will happen (Score:4, Insightful)
Windows has supported IPv6 since XP.
As for ISPs NATing all their customers, I'm not sure if that'd be most cost effective than simply using IPv6. Isn't it the case with NAT that you're limited to a maximum of 65535 concurrent TCP or UDP connections? Someone would have to invent some sort of NAT load balancing system which could break all sorts of stuff.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It will happen (Score:4, Informative)
No. You can do a lot more connections than that. First of all a TCP connection is identified by two endpoints. If you connect to two different remote addresses, the connections can actually come from the same local port number. That trick only works for TCP. For UDP there could be more than two parties involved, and such tricks would break. Also, you are not limited to a single external IP. An ISP could setup a separate NAT box for every n customers. But customers are going to get a worse internet experience, even if ISPs do spend more money on it. So before ISPs start doing such tricks, they will probably start offering IPv6 addresses in the hope that some users will no longer use IPv4 addresses. But I don't think many systems will refrain from requesting an IPv4 address over DHCP just because they were able to get an IPv6 address. However if ISPs do start deploying NAT boxes on a large scale, they'd better start offering native IPv6 at the same time, because that certainly can offload some of the connections from the NAT boxes. Even though a system may get both an IPv4 and IPv6 address, it isn't necessarily going to use them. Some systems will try IPv6 first, as long as the name resolves.
Parent
Re:It will happen (Score:5, Insightful)
NAT is the only reason we still have ipv4 - if we hadn't had that nasty hack, we'd have had to move to ipv6 out of necessity some time ago. I'm really looking forward to going back to having every PC with a globally routable IP address, it will make application communication work so much easier, and firewalls can stick to being allow/deny/drop firewalls instead of all this stateful masquerade hack-job stuff on top.
The main sticking point for me is all UK ISPs are IPv4 only. There's not much point running IPv6 internally if you're only going to have to tunnel it or 6to4 it once it leaves your network, though I'm thinking of converting a VLAN or two internally to IPv6 for a systems and applications trial.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
A nice pipe dream.
People are used to having 1 or 2 IP addresses handed to them. Most probably
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You know this. I know this. But plenty of people don't, and the fact that we're even having an argument about this fact highlights the IETF's profound lack of pragmatism. People want their safety blankets, and ff the IETF hadn't opposed NAT and private networks in IPv6, we'd see much better adoption by now.
We could have tackled the NAT issue at a later time. One of the universal and timeless principles of change is to pick your battles. The IETF decided to fight for adopting IPv6 and eliminat
Re:It will happen (Score:5, Interesting)
You've hit the nail on the head. NAT dovetails very nicely with the "castle mentality" many network administrators have: this is mine, and you can't touch it. It's about control, and there are fewer more tangible symbols of control than your own network numbering scheme. Nobody wants to give up that sense of control by moving to IPv6.
But since 2005, you don't have to: IPv6 now has private address ranges [ietf.org] just like IPv4's. Also, NAT has always worked with IPv6.
Since 2005, all four combinations of address spaces can work in principle: IPv4 inside, IPv4 outside, IPv6 outside; IPv4 inside; IPv6 outside, IPv4 inside (with DNS proxying), and obviously, IPv6 inside with IPv6 outside.
Whether this "castle mentality" is appropriate is a different debate. Moving to IPv6 for the public internet is too important to get bogged down in talking about NAT.
Parent
Re:It will happen (Score:4, Interesting)
No company wants their inner network visible to the outside world (which IPv6 requires unless one uses kludges.)
This very much depends on what you consider to be "visible". You can (and should) firewall incoming traffic, which means someone can't actively scan you. Once you've done that, someone can only gain information about your internal network by looking at the traffic generated by your network. If you think NAT protects you from this then you're sorely mistaken - NAT will only hide the source IP address, you can still gain a lot of information by traffic fingerprinting and other methods.
No company wants to use a protocol with zero real world support for encryption unless you go to a higher layer, or tunnel over IPv4.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Under IPv4, most encryption is done using SSL - IPv6 doesn't change this, SSL still works and is still used. IPv6 also adds IPSEC support (which has since been backported to IPv4, but it originated on IPv6 and works very well there). So in what way does IPv6 have "zero real world support for encryption"? If anything, it has better support than IPv4 because encryption was written into the spec from the start.
No company wants to change their entire IP address range because they change ISPs.
This really shouldn't be a major problem - if you're using autoconfiguration and DNS then the amount of work required to renumber a network is minimal. You can also do a soft migration, so you can keep your old IP addresses in service for a while after your new IP addresses are put into service.
Some boxes have an infinite DHCP lease?
If that's your setup, you need to get a network manager who has a clue.
Businesses know that IPv6 is broken, untested, and unstable in production environments, with hastily written standards that factor little in the way of security.
You post indicates that people *think* they know that IPv6 is broken, untested, unstable and insecure. In reality, these people are grossly misinformed.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
IMO there is no question that when IPV4 addresses become scarce ISPs WILL push home users behind nat (with maybe an option to get a public IP address at a price high enough that only geeks pay it) to free up IP addresses for more lucrative customers.
I don't particularlly like NAT either but that doesn't mean it won't win out as the "soloution" to the IPV4 address shortage.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It might be 3 years from now or perhaps even more but when ipv4 becomes scarce(and it will),
IPv4 addresses have been scare for a decade or so, the answer so far was to cripple the net with NAT or simply to raise prices when you want a real static IPv4 address instead of a dynamic one. I don't see that changing anytime soon. The problem is simply that IPv6 doesn't really provide any instant advantage, since hardly anything is available on IPv6 that isn't on IPv4. And the whole 'it will make networking simpler' isn't something the average user will grasp anytime soon, even worse, addding an IPv6 rec
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Is that really a NAT problem or is it a SIP (VOIP) problem?
It is a general peer-to-peer problem. NAT breaks peer-to-peer communications - there are workarounds (such as STUN) but they are not, and cannot be, reliable. The only solution is to remove NAT from the equation.
SIP certainly could have been designed better IMO. Wonder who first conceived of embedding the IP address, normally only a part of the IP header, in the application data, as a security measure no less!
It's actually a pretty sensible idea: Your phone registers with a SIP registration server so that other users can find it - lets say your ISP runs the registration server, so people know to place calls to r7@yourisp.com if they want to phone you (very similar to email). So I phone r7@yourisp.com
Fastest dup ever? (Score:4, Funny)
I'm seeing two copies of this story posted on the front page, both posted in the same minute. That has to be some kind of Slashdot record. Even normal user comments can't be duped by the same person less than two minutes apart....
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Post in one thread, mod in another SWEET (Score:3, Funny)
Oh yes, finally. It has occurred! A story duped right next to each itself. Timothy FTW!
Aside from the obvious "business driver." (Score:5, Funny)
I demand it. (Score:3, Insightful)
I demand it because I'm tired of NAT. As I have more devices at home that I might want to access remotely, or that need full inbound and outbound access for full functionality (as jump-in, jump-out games often do), I get more and more tired of dealing with NAT.
And it's not just me. When I'm trying to help my dad with his machine, I can't connect to it remotely to access it.
Even my DirectTV satellite receiver uses IP access now, and due to NAT, they can't count on being able to contact your receiver from their end. So, any centralized service like remote booking has to take special measures to work.
IPv6 makes all this a lot easier, for example if you "request assistance" on Windows Vista/7, the first thing it does is create a Teredo tunnel so that your machine can be accessed remotely to diagnose and fix it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, I know. That's what I said it had to take special measures to work as opposed to saying it doesn't work.
There are inward-bound services that are precluded by the lack of incoming access. No, none of these are on the PVRs right now, because there is no such incoming access.
As an example, when you remote book, why don't you get any confirmation? Why does it just make you select "record if possible" (instead of priority record) and then you just go home and hope it recorded? Why can't it contact your box
Customer demand should be the business case. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't mean customers should want IPv6. I mean that that's what should drive IPv6 deployment. Address depletion is a problem, but it's a problem that has workarounds, and to the extent that customers aren't bothered by the workarounds, there will be no IPv6 deployment.
The main impact of the workarounds is twofold. First, your outward-facing global IPv4 address will go away. Right now, your ISP has probably assigned you a real IPv4 address, not an RFC1918 address. So people can get packets to your gateway directly. That will go away.
The second impact is that we will have more and more layering of NATs. This will make peer-to-peer applications harder and harder. Also, as more users are piled up on single IP addresses, we will start to see port starvation. What this looks like is that iTunes will start acting funny - displaying some things, showing error messages for others. DNS lookups will fail, and you'll have to retry. Google maps tiles won't show up, so you'll see a partial map, and have to reload (possibly to see different tiles not show up).
So yeah, things will keep chugging along. But it will work less and less well as time goes on.
And I think that is what can, and should, be driving demand. If you don't want that, you might want to start fantasizing about how to get IPv6 into your own home. I have it in mine, it works a treat. I think it's too hard for the average person to do right now if their ISP doesn't support it, but that's a problem that we ought to try to solve if we want the internet to keep being a place where peer-to-peer is possible, and where innovation is possible.
Running out of address won't kill the internet. But it will suck the life out of it.
Cell phones (Score:5, Insightful)
If cell phones turn into real computers, which has probably already happened, then we will need IPv6 if all those phone users want to surf.
and the basic low cost data planes are nat'ed (Score:4, Informative)
and the basic low cost data planes are nat'ed
Parent
Let's flip the question.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Let's flip the question.... (Score:4, Insightful)
There is more than one protocol than http. Try ftp, imap, smtp, irc and https on for size.
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Re:Let's flip the question.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Want a private net? Unplug the uplink and number your machines any way you want! If you prefer a protected LAN, make your firewall default to DROP, then tell it what you do want. The IETF probably proposed local IPv6 addresses because they were tired of the few holdouts drooling on their shoes when they explained that for the nth time.
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Chicken and egg (Score:3, Interesting)
Part of the problem at the moment is that because network companies are failing to provide IPv6 ready equipment, it is only the dedicated few that are moving to IPv6. Linksys, D-Link I am talking about guys like you. The there are the ISPs like Bell and Telus here in Canada who have to plans, or even anything beta.
Now look in Africa, Asia and Europe and you will see some serious movement in that direction.
Don't get me wrong, I have my computer enabled with Tiredo, providing me IPv6 access, but companies are going to want the easy route to IPv6 and until they are provided the support, or like my experience two days to immenent failure they aren't likey to do sod.
I have a Linksys WRT54G v8 and there isn't even the possibility of installing a version of DD-WRT that supports IPv6 :(
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I'm going to sacrifice 5 of my mod points to comment here, just because I have to in order to refute your preposterous point.
"Climate change" and "fossil fuel supply" sure sound like big FUD points. We have little of the former, and much of the latter at this time. Thus, at this time, any radical and painful "cure" is not indicated any more than it would be for giving an ultra-aggressive course of chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and surgury to a person who has a potentially pre-cancerous cell.
Could it be