IPv6 Over Social Networks

An anonymous reader writes "A new RFC has been published this morning to significantly speed the deployment of IPv6. With IPv6 over Social Network (IPoSN), '[e]very user is a router with at least one loopback interface,' and 'Every friend or connection between users will be used as a point-to-point link.' It is noted that latency on the network can be very high, though."

Re:Twenty-first century arrives after slight delay

[Idiomatick]

To be fair we have had planes that also go on roads for a loooong time. China does control its weather to a degree. And anyone that has worked on the moon CLEARLY commuted to work. You could strap a furby to a roomba for the last bit too.

IPv6 interoperability failure

[Anonymous Coward]

http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/ipv6mess.html

Re:The real joke is

[Anonymous Coward]

My 32-bit applications work just the same on my 64-bit operating system. If they didn't I would still be using the 32-bit operating system right now and so would just about everyone else I know.

IPv4 applications are incompatible with IPv6 without modification. To this day there continues to be plenty of new software and hardware released with IPv4 only support.

I believe that at some point in the distant future we'll switch but to compare the IPv6 transition with moving to 64-bit is fundamentally absurd.

ipv4.5?

[r_naked]

Was there something wrong with coming up with an addressing scheme that DIDN'T involve hex?

For example, go 64bit and use 16bit "hextets" -- 512.512.512.512. With that scheme you would have full backwards compatibility by using good old standard CIDR. If someone owned 1.255.255.255/8 today, with the switch they would still have that allotment, but we would now have 1.511.511.511/8 available as well. Am I missing something really obvious here?

For that matter, if we REALLY needed 128bit, go with either 32bit "somethingtets" -- 1024.1024.1024.1024...

Again, I would really like a network engineer / programmer to explain why this wouldn't work.

Who had the bright idea that we had to use hex for ipv6 AND have it not be backwards compatible.

From the people I talk to, the biggest reason they haven't gone ipv6 on their home networks is "because then I have to think in hex", with the secondary reason being "there is nothing available on ipv6 that isn't on ipv4 anyway".

Thanks,

-- Brian

Re:The real joke is

[ppanon]

My 32-bit applications work just the same on my 64-bit operating system.

That's because your operating system is hiding some of the thunking that happens between 32-bit apps and the 64-bit kernel.

I believe that at some point in the distant future we'll switch but to compare the IPv6 transition with moving to 64-bit is fundamentally absurd.

The IPv4->IPv6 equivalent to the 32-bit->64bit thunking are IPv4->IPv6 gateways that - surprise, surprise - are in use so that IPv6 network clients (which are more widespread in Asia because they don't have enough v4 address space allocated) can access IPv4 hosts across the rest of the Internet. If you want to run your legacy IPv4 apps, you'll be welcome to do the reverse: run them on your private IPv4 network behind a NATting firewall/protocol gateway while the rest of the Internet runs IPv6.