IPv6 Adoption Up 300 Percent Over 2 Years 425
Mark.J - ISPreview writes "The Number Resource Organization, which is made up of the five Regional Internet Registries, has revealed that the rate of new entrants into the IPv6 routing system has increased by 300% over the past two years. The news is important because IPv4 addresses (e.g. 123.23.56.98), which are assigned to your computer periodically, are running out. IPv6 addressing (e.g. 2ffe:1800:3525:3:200:f8ff:fe21:67cf) was invented as a longer and more secure replacement." IPv6 is still gaining ground slowly, particularly in the US.
300%? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:IPV4 addresses are NOT running out (Score:5, Informative)
God, I'm tired of it being repeated that IPV4 addresses are running out. Everybody who's not a journalist should know that it's not true.
And everyone who's a network admin knows that it is.
Nat+uPNP is perfectly capable and 100% backwords compatible.
Great, so I can re-write every application to support a half-assed workaround like NAT. I'd much rather have each host bugging the crap out of the router to forward a specific port, please! than to just get the migration over with and be done with it. If you think that NAT+uPNP is a replacement for IPv6, then you need to find a hobby more suited to your skill level.
Re:IPV4 addresses are NOT running out (Score:5, Informative)
Nat+uPNP is perfectly capable and 100% backwords compatible.
NAT is a hack, and uPNP is not universally supported -- not in the routers themselves, and not in every program you might want t ob accessible.
Besides which, there are a limited number of ports, and you're still preventing people from picking a standard port and leaving it open, to connect to it later -- for instance, if my ISP NATs me, how do I ssh or vpn back home? Let alone run a webserver out of my house..
That's not even getting into all the millions of unused IP's being held by the early internet companies.
True, but consider that IPv6 would prevent anything like that from happening again.
Start with $1 per year per ip to EVERYONE who owns an IP's and you'll see the "IP Shortage" vanish overnight.
I'd also very likely see my own public-facing IP go away, and more and more ISPs NAT-ing all their customers -- who are then doubly-NATed behind their routers -- which is then a gigantic pain in the ass to deal with, versus simply upgrading to ipv6.
I'd also likely see my hosting costs go up a bit.
All to manage this artificial scarcity, and push it back for awhile -- which could be so easily dealt with by simply upgrading to ipv6, and giving an IP address to every device on the planet -- and, as a nice side effect, making it possible for me to assign a public-facing IP address and DNS entry for every toaster in my house.
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:That looks silly.. (Score:3, Informative)
Which part are you complaining about? The use of hex? The use of colons? The length? The use of hexadecimal digits is to make it shorter, I think (since the addresses are so long). I believe the colons are to unambiguously distinguish them from IPv4 addresses.
One thing the summary didn't show was the use of the double-colon. IPv6 addresses commonly have long sequences of zeroes in them, so you can write something like 3f::4:1e:f106 and everything between the :: is zeroes (enough zeroes to make it the right length).
It depends on how the networks are set up, of course, but a lot of IPv6 addresses will have MAC addresses embedded in them. The idea is that you as a consumer get a /64 subnet (instead of a single IP). You might typically then have 256 hosts in that subnet, and each host can have as many devices as it wants (each device distinguished by its MAC).
Re:IPV4 addresses are NOT running out (Score:2, Informative)
I'm quite happy with NAT.
Re:How many years before we run out of IPv4? (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4/index.html
Re:IPV4 addresses are NOT running out (Score:5, Informative)
Most machines don't need an externally accessible IP.
Which has nothing to do with the IPv4 vs IPv6 debate. Regardless of which stack you use, you are never forced to have externally accessible IP addresses. This is what firewalls, routers, and reserved, non-routable addresses are for.
Re:IPV4 addresses are NOT running out (Score:5, Informative)
Lots of them.
Any kind of webserver. Try running two of them on the same IP address.
Of the above, especially websites using SSL. Can't have more than one per IP address.
FTP is a horrible pain when NAT is involved.
Many video conference applications.
Programs like instant messengers with file transfer.
BitTorrent and any form of P2P in general.
IPsec in transport mode
Many games. Two players trying to play online doesn't work at all with some games, no matter how much you fiddle with NAT.
Remote desktop. When troubleshooting, I can't just ask the person I'm helping to install VNC, because then I'd have to explain to them how open the port.
I'm sure the list can get a good deal longer, but this seems enough.
Re:up 300%? (Score:4, Informative)
We get it from basic English skills. It's "up 300%" not "300% of what it was".
1 -> 3 = 300% of what it was.
1 -> 4 = up 300%.
Again:
300% x 1 = 3
1 + 3 = 4
Re:up 300%? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I'll switch when my ISP does (Score:3, Informative)
Expect mobile phone companies to switch first. They are already NATing most of their customers when they want IPv4, but their next generation networks are IP-only and run everything else on top of IP. Using NAT will be a colossal pain for this, because they only have 2^24 (around 16 million) IPs in the 10/8 range and most mobile phone companies have a lot more than 16 million customers. You could NAT each cell, but then you'd have massive routing issues. Running IPv6 natively is going to be a much easier solution.
Once the mobile phones are on v6, you're going to want your desktop to support v6 so that you can make VoIP calls to a mobile from there and sync your contacts and photos easily. Once most of the clients have switched, then the servers can start switching since they won't lose much business by it.
And in an era when even a C64 running Contiki has support for IPv6, there's really no excuse for a device not to support it.
Re:So what? What should I be doing? (Score:3, Informative)
Next, you deploy 6to4 on your routers and start running dual-stack clients. Then call your ISP again and say 'we're currently using 6to4, but we want to disable this soon and switch to a proper v6 address, do we need to go to one of your competitors to do this?'
Re:IPV4 addresses are NOT running out (Score:4, Informative)
Many people do not want IPv6 because getting set up for it will be expensive and time consuming.
Except it's not.
Remembering or just typing an IP will be much more of a bitch.
I haven't typed my IP since I added it to DNS.
And some people don't want machines to have publicly accessible IPs.
Then don't open the firewall.
I for one don't want my fucking toaster or condoms
I think (hope!) you didn't mean it that way.
to have IP addresses.
Then don't plug them into the LAN.
IP WHOIS for the win! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:IPV4 addresses are NOT running out (Score:3, Informative)
We're using OpenBSD's FTP proxy [openbsd.org]. It works well, and is easy to set up (much easier than it used to be, anyway).
IPv6, DNSSEC, and ubiquitous SSL or IPSec are things that are long overdue.