IPv6 and the Business-Case Skeptics 297
Julie188 writes "Experts keep screaming that the IPv4 sky is falling. Three such experts were recently asked point-blank to state an irrefutable business case for moving to IPv6 now, and their answer was more plausible than the old refrain (the lack of addresses and a yet-to-be-seen killer IPv6 app). They said that there isn't a business case. No company that is satisfied with all of its Internet services will need to move, even in the next few years. They also pointed out that Microsoft is a unique position in the industry both causing and hindering IPv6 adoption — causing through its IPv6 support in its OSes, and hindering by not extending IPv6 support into very many of its apps."
Not exactly true (Score:4, Informative)
There's no business case if you don't care about growing your network. If you do, you need to care about IPv6, becuase in a few years, it's going to become increasingly difficult to get new public IPv4 addresses.
Actually, Microsoft supports IPv6 in several of its core products. IE, Outlook 2007, Windows Mail/Live Mail and Exchange 2007 support IPv6, as do many of the services in Windows 2008 (IIS, DHCPv6, DNS, POP, CIFS, LDAP, Kerberos, Remote Desktop). Some of these also have IPv6 support on Windows XP (IE, IIS, Remote Desktop, CIFS).
Re:IPv6 will happen when China demands it (Score:5, Informative)
China has already demanded it. China's new national network, CERNET2, runs IPv6 - http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-12/27/content_403512.htm [chinadaily.com.cn].
Re:IPv6 will happen when China demands it (Score:3, Informative)
Ultimately China will need a lot more than a billion IP addresses. At the moment I have internet connections for home computer, work computer, mobile phone and laptop
Re:Consumer rollout (Score:3, Informative)
Moving to IPv6 means that I can't use NAT anymore for my home network.
I don't believe that's accurate. What's supposed to happen is that your ISP gives you a /64 block and you don't need NAT, but nothing says you can't use NAT if you want to (or if your ISP doesn't play nice).
Re:Not exactly true (Score:5, Informative)
Many companies do not need public IP addresses, yet they have large networks. For example, imagine a company that has a location with 2,000 employees. The company does not offer web services but they do need internet access for their employees to be able to send/receive email and use business applications between sites (via VPN tunnels). In this case the company may only need a handful of IP addresses and NAT all of their private addresses through the pool of 4 or 5 public IP addresses for that location. They can easily add a new building to their location and just expand their LAN as they have an entire 10.0.0.0 A block providing millions of IP addresses. NATing between the internal LAN and the internet they can get up to ~250,000 entries (provided their hardware can support that), allowing each of their 2,000 users to be using, on average, 125 internet applications (or open connections) at once.
This situation I suspect is typical of almost all companies. Most already have enough public IP addresses to satisfy all of their internal users and lots of room to expand on their LAN side.
Re:Consumer rollout (Score:3, Informative)
Moving to IPv6 means that I can't use NAT anymore for my home network.
You technically can, but there are few sane reasons for wanting to.
That means I need a block of IP addresses assigned to me. So does my telco/cable company have this set up and will it cost me a huge amount to get a block of IPs?
Correct, yes (they will), and no (it won't). I have a free /48 allocation from Hurricane Electric [tunnelbroker.net], giving me a home netblock of 2^80 addresses. If your ISP tries to rake you over the coals, I could probably peel off 2^64 or so of those to lend you.
Excuse me, Why are they not interoperable! (Score:2, Informative)
The reason no one upgrades is that the new "standard" is not simply interoperable with the old. When color TV came out you could still watch the same programming on you B/W. It is not the case with IPv6. You need new routers, new software, new DNS and to train your people. Sure Apache 2.0 and Vista work but an Apache configured just with IPv6 can not serve people on the "internet" (yea yea build a bridge yada yada yada)
Please, the spec is bad just for this reason. The simple basic requirement for new addressing scheme is that it works with existing equipment.
Time to start over with a new spec.
Re:Excuse me, Why are they not interoperable! (Score:4, Informative)
Except that the IPv6 design is backwards-compatible. Any IPv4 address has, per the IPv6 spec, an IPv6 representation, so any IPv6 machine can talk to a machine that has only IPv4 connectivity. Likewise, if your IPv6 machine also has an IPv4 address, there's a defined transformation to allow traffic to it's IPv4 address to be handled by the IPv6 stack. Most IPv6 stacks include all this functionality internally already.
And yes, IPv6 is radically different from IPv4. It's different for the same reasons a Freightliner semi tractor's radically different from a Mini Cooper: it's designed to do things the Mini's incapable of. Sure, you can redesign a semi tractor to be similar to the Mini, use the same parts as the Mini and all that, but in doing so you'd make the tractor cease to be a semi tractor and cease to be capable of doing what you wanted a semi tractor for.
Re:There is no business case *in the US* (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Microsoft and IPv6 (Score:3, Informative)
In short, just about everyone had a working IPv6 stack at about the same time.
Re:Excuse me, Why are they not interoperable! (Score:3, Informative)
IPv4-compatible addresses [wikipedia.org] are deprecated, and IPv4-mapped addresses [wikipedia.org] are basically only there so you can write an "IPv6 only" application and still transparently handle IPv4 connections. The actual system the app is running on still has to be dual stack.
IPv6-only hosts can't talk to IPv4-only hosts without help [wikipedia.org]. As noted above, what could an IPv6-only node put in the source address of an outgoing IPv4 packet that would ensure it got to see any responses?
And and that risk of looking like I'm deliberately trying to shoot down your entire post (which I'm not!), apart from the address size, IPv6 is reasonably similar to IPv4. It tidies some stuff up, makes a few optimizations (no checksums, no fragmentation), but is still recognisably "IP."
Re:Not exactly true (Score:3, Informative)
Re:You want a business case? (Score:3, Informative)
I am sorry but that explanation is lame. Is there any operating system out there that does not support dual TCP/IP stacks? Is there any mainstream application out there that does not support IPv6 in addition to IPv4? There you have it. Just configure your IPv4 system to be also capable of IPv6 and offer your services in both ways. You just need an upstream provider that provides you with IPv6 connectivity (a little more difficult but not a show stopper).
AFAIK there is only one real problem left that will keep many big businesses from deploying IPv6: multi-homing. The technology to have more than one upstream provider for IPv6 connectivity is still in flux.
NAT is *not* a security technology. (Score:3, Informative)
Repeat it until it sinks in. In some cases it is possible to tunnel through NAT routers. And there are several attacks that do not depend on the victim having a public IP address. If you want security, use a firewall, anti-virus and anti-spyware technology.
Re:There is no business case *in the US* (Score:4, Informative)
Re:You want a business case? (Score:3, Informative)
You don't really need an IPv6 capable ISP for the bare minimum of IPv6 -- there's an anycast address (192.88.99.1) for the nearest 6-to-4 relay which worked with no problems for me.
What is a problem is routers -- specifically, consumer routers with integrated modems etc -- which don't support IPv6. My ADSL modem/router worked after I'd given it a new firewall rule -- I could then use IPv6 on one PC on the LAN. But what should happen is the router gets the /64, then assigns addresses within it (like DHCP) to any devices on the LAN as required. Few (if any) consumer routers support this.
Re:You want a business case? (Score:3, Informative)
I want my static IPs so I can run my own server and access my network without having to use a 3rd party service to synch up the IP and the domain.
Try here [colo4jax.com] (just giving my colo provider a free click)
Seriously--I pay $59/mo for a dedicated server. I have 16 IPs included with an offer of additional IPs for free.
If you want home internet access, call Comcast, Verizon, Sprint, Qwest, AOL, Compuserv, or whomever.
If you want to host a server, call a hosting company. Your home internet connection is not sold for hosting servers.
I'll give you a business case (Score:3, Informative)
...In _one_ customer deployment We're deploying 1.7 million devices over 1200 mobile subnetworks in under 18 months. Each device needs to be capable of self addressing and migrating from subnetwork to subnetwork subject to the local RF conditions.
These devices need to be uniquely addressable from existing Unix hosts, as well as capable of being monitored from current Enterprise Network Element Managers.
We've further hypothesized that by 2012 as many as fifty of these networks will be in existence, each of which may need to have all their nodes addressable by multiple vendors.
There is your business case for IPV6.
Ironically, internally, in our company, and on all of our servers - we are 100% split stack. No desire whatsoever to run IPV6 pure environments. NAT does everything we need. Don't even run IPV6 on our IPSEC Remote Access VPN or 802.11 environment.
Re:Multicast (Score:3, Informative)
In the v4 Internet, multicast exists but is usually disabled (except U-Verse).
In the v6 Internet, multicast will exist but be disabled (except maybe U-Verse).