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Networking IT

IPv6 Readiness Report 280

Posted by Hemos from the where-do-things-line dept.
MythoBeast writes "In the latest episode of the Intellectual Icebergs podcast, Brett Thorson of Ravenwing provides a very good review of how ready our industry is for IPv6. He also provides a pretty good implementation guide for those who want to set up IPv6 at home."
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IPv6 Readiness Report More

IPv6 Readiness Report

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  • By the time IPv6 is ready (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 30, 2006 @08:38PM (#14603558)
    We'll need IPv8.

    • Re:By the time IPv6 is ready (Score:5, Informative)

      by comcn ( 194756 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @09:02PM (#14603703) Journal

      That may be a joke, but in reality IPv6 is ready. My UK ADSL provider, Andrews & Arnold [aaisp.net], provide me with an entire block of IPv6 addresses. They will even route it to you natively if your router will support it, otherwise you have to use a 6-over-4 tunnel. My network uses it by default over IPv4; it's kind of neat when e-mail has IPv6 addresses in the headers. ;-)

      • One company does not an industry make.

      • Re:By the time IPv6 is ready (Score:4, Informative)

        by Znork ( 31774 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @06:10AM (#14605742)
        Anyone who has an IPv4 address has an entire block of IPv6 addesses. With 6to4 you dont need any support from your ISP (well, as long as they're not actively blocking such traffic).

        "For any 32-bit global IPv4 address that is assigned to a host, a 48-bit 6to4 IPv6 prefix can be constructed for use by that host (and if applicable the network behind it) by prepending 2002 (hex) to the IPv4 address. Thus for the global IPv4 address 207.142.131.202, the corresponding 6to4 prefix would be 2002:CF8E:83CA::/48. (IPv4 addresses use decimal notation while IPv6 addresses use hexadecimal notation). This gives a total prefix length of 48 bits, the same as an end site is supposed to be allocated under normal IPv6 address alocation leaving room for a 16 bit subnet field and a 64 bit address within the subnet." - Quote from Wikipedia 6to4 entry

  • A podcast guide? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Qzukk ( 229616 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @08:42PM (#14603584) Journal
    Personally, I'd rather have a written guide of some form to refer to when I implement IPv6, though I'm going to listen to this just to see how it turns out. It'll probably be just like class where I scribble furiously to write down everything the professor says.

    • Re:A podcast guide? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by daniel23 ( 605413 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @09:04PM (#14603717)

      I agree with this, unlike a written guide a podcast has no copy'n'paste and it is much harder to follow talk than written text when the language used is not your native tongue.

    • Written guides for what? (Score:5, Informative)

      by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak@yaho[ ]om ['o.c' in gap]> on Monday January 30, 2006 @10:17PM (#14604065) Homepage Journal
      For installing IPv6 on Linux: Go to any IPv6 provider (British Telecom, Hurricane Electric, WIDE - there are plenty of them). Download the script. Enter your IPv4 address and MAC address into their web form. Run their script on your machine. You are now fully IPv6-ready. (Most Linux distros come fully IPv6-enabled.)


      For installing IPv6 on any *BSD: Pretty much the same. All the *BSDs have been IPv6-ready for a long time, under the KAME project banner.


      For installing IPv6 under Windows: You go to Microsoft Research and install the stack. Unless it's already on the CD - it is, for some versions of Windows.


      For actually implementing an IPv6 stack? Well, for that you want the RFCs on the IETF website, and the IPv6 evaluation kit (TAHI) that is listed on Freshmeat. I didn't type all the damn information for the various testing packages into the record for nothing!


      Aside from that, I really can't think of anything you could need a guide for.

      • British Telecom, Hurricane Electric, WIDE - there are plenty of them)

        The btexact tunnel has been down for weeks with no sign on resolution.. I can easily imagine it going away.

        Hurricane electric works fine. WIDE is not a tunnel broker.

        Last time I went on a search of tunnel brokers only a month ago there were less than 10 (pretty much all in the US only). Most of the ones that were there a year or so ago have shut down.. Also, KAME is dead... even the 6bone is being closed down.
    • man ifconfig

      Enjoy

  • IPv6 isnt really wanted (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 30, 2006 @08:43PM (#14603590)

    IPv6 is a solution looking for a problem, at the moment in its current state nobody will use it, its complex , doesnt play with legacy systems (even win2k support is flaky at best) all those routers and wifi boxes that best buy are selling, most of the ISP's dont want it and dont support it let alone the users figure it out

    its another "its coming" technologies thats "nearly" with us for the last 10 years and STLL nobody really cares, its like W3C validation, nice in theory but most people dont care about it and most of the html generation tools dont create it

    • Re:IPv6 isnt really wanted (Score:5, Insightful)

      by shawn(at)fsu ( 447153 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @08:53PM (#14603657) Homepage
      Just wondering is it better to fix a problem before it arises or wait until it's about to bite you. I'm thinking of the /. [slashdot.org] issue with VIN's to run out soon It wasn't really a failing of VIN as it achived what it's goals were for the required time. Can't some of the same be said about IPv6.

    • Re:IPv6 isnt really wanted (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cgranade ( 702534 ) <cgranadeNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Monday January 30, 2006 @09:00PM (#14603694) Homepage Journal
      It is wanted, as it solves a very pressing issue. With more and more mobile devices and embedded devices requiring their own IP addresses, we are running out of address space. Furthermore, the design of IPv4 relies upon assumptions that are no longer valid, nessesitating such ad hoc and stop gap solutions as NAT. While NAT may be useful in its own right, it should not be used solely to allow for more devices.

      As for the comment about W3C validation, it always has been, continues to be and will most likely continue to be very important in the future. Without such a service, how is one to tell what XHTML, HTML, etc. actually are? Machines are not intelligent, and so we cannot be content with the tag soup that passes for HTML on most sites, but we must reqire some sort of standard for quality. I would love to see a browser that, by design, will choke on any non-validating input, since by design such a browser would be simpler and easier to maintain. Without quality control mechanisms such as W3C validation, we would have a very poor Internet indeed.

      • Re:IPv6 isnt really wanted (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 30, 2006 @09:11PM (#14603755)
        > While NAT may be useful in its own right, it should not be used solely to allow for more devices.

        Umm, that's precisely why it's used. So it doesn't adhere to the purity of the end-to-end argument (in fact, it pretty much smashes it), big deal. It works, and it's the defacto standard, and it's pretty much pushed off the need for IPv6 to the unforseeable future.

        • NAT provides a firewall (Score:5, Insightful)

          by tepples ( 727027 ) <<tepples> <at> <gmail.com>> on Monday January 30, 2006 @09:26PM (#14603833) Homepage Journal

          Umm, [adding more devices is] precisely why [NAT is] used.

          Apart from that, NAT is also useful because of an inherent side effect, namely that a basic firewall comes "free" once your router has implemented NAT.

          • Re:NAT provides a firewall (Score:4, Informative)

            by evilviper ( 135110 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @02:28AM (#14605203) Journal
            a basic firewall comes "free" once your router has implemented NAT.

            No. NAT PROVIDES NO SECURITY WHAT-SO-EVER. No matter how many times it is said, people still don't get it. It REALLY doesn't provide any security. All it does is add a couple simple steps before someone can address your inside machines. NAT is the equivalent of locking your door with a rubber-band.

            Here, instead of repeating myself over and over again, just look at the last time I talked about it:
            http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=169925&cid=141 66128 [slashdot.org]

            • All it does is add a couple simple steps before someone can address your inside machines.

              Hmm... let me see... In your other comment you wrote:

              Send source routed pings to the broadcast addresses of the private address ranges

              Do most NAT devices support source routed pings? How do most deployed residential NAT devices handle ICMP ECHO and source routing?

              make no mistake, those are certainly not the only way to easily pierce through a NAT.

              What other ways were you talking about? Did you explain th

              • make no mistake, those are certainly not the only way to easily pierce through a NAT.

                What other ways were you talking about? Did you explain them in other Slashdot comments?

                NAT is attackable with a variety of active and passive techniques. NAT is also very obnoxious because it requires packet rewriting, making it hard to use with things that verify packet integrity like IPSEC. NAT has served us well, but it's only needed because we have an IP address limitation.

                In order to get FTP to work prope

              • I had a nice long and detailed response typed out... Then Firefox crashed :-(

                What other ways were you talking about?

                I don't really want to take the time to detail them here (that's why I typically just mention the simple source-routed+ICMP method) and I'm not finding any good search results on the subject. Perhaps someone else here is more inclined to spend time detailing other methods than I am. I'll cover one more simple method though...

                Instead of source-routed packets, you can gain access to another m

        • Re:IPv6 isnt really wanted (Score:5, Insightful)

          by bigpat ( 158134 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @10:38PM (#14604177)
          big deal. It works

          Ummm, no it doesn't work. It works for a few things, and breaks a whole lot of other things. You are arbitrarily limiting a whole set of end-to-end applications simply because you have no imagination. The simple fact is that I can, with my static IP, do a hell of a lot more than you can with some short leased DHCP IP behind a NAT.
          • The 'mobile devices' argument is total bullshit.

            The only devices that need public IPs are servers. Hell, it's a potential security hole to give a non-server a public IP *at all*. *all* mobile devices can sit behind a NAT with absolutely no issues. Mobile phones for example do *not* have public IPs and never should do - there is no legitimate reason for wanting to access a mobile phone remotely.

            Also, ipv6 doesn't get rid of NAT. There is IPV6 NAT in cisco routers, simply for the security aspect it's requ

            • Re:IPv6 isnt really wanted (Score:4, Insightful)

              by frakir ( 760204 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @05:04AM (#14605597)
              there is no legitimate reason for wanting to access a mobile phone remotely.
              hmmm............

            • Re:IPv6 isnt really wanted (Score:5, Insightful)

              by ultranova ( 717540 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @07:22AM (#14605954)

              The only devices that need public IPs are servers. Hell, it's a potential security hole to give a non-server a public IP *at all*.

              In Internet, every device is a server. That some of them are dedicated specifially to server duties does not change this. Filesharing networks, netphones, anything that lets two machines to exchange information in realtime - they all require at least one machine to have a public IP so it can be contacted. So yes, in Internet, every device needs public IP in order for the network to function.

              Of course there are many interests that would love to see Internet to get broken and replaced by old-style broadcast network, since that would stop the competition from independent parties to those interests power. RIAA and MPAA, as two best examples, want to close Internet as a distribution channel for anyone but themselves. ISPs don't want you to be able to run your own servers, since that will increase the bandwith consumption and therefore decrease their profits. Blizzard and other MMORPG makers want to keep the costs of running a (small) server ridiculously high to keep competition to a minimum.

              These are the real reasons for dynamic IPs, port blocking, and NAT. They are inconvenient, because they are designed to inconvenience you, to keep you in your role as a consumer. Producers don't want competition, and will do anything to stop it from happening.

              Mobile phones for example do *not* have public IPs and never should do - there is no legitimate reason for wanting to access a mobile phone remotely.

              Unless, of course, you want to call one ;). IP address is simply the Internets equivalent to a phone number.

      • IPV6 suffers from the another-technology-is-good-enough-and-cheaper problem.

        Beta was superior, VHS was good enough and cheaper.

        Audiofile stereo equipment is superior. An IPod is good enough and cheaper.

        IPV6 is superior. IPV4+NAT is good enough and cheaper. Which is very unfortunate because IPV6 solves real problems.

        • I so wish that wasn't true. It would be awesome if IPV4 stopped working right now and we all had to go to IPV6. Then finally file transfers would start working well.
        • Windows and Linux both come with IPv6 sollutions, as well as 3rd party firmwares for routers such as the WRT54G line (and derivitives). It isnt like VHS vs Betamax where you where forced to use one or the other, its like the difference between DVD-R and DVD+R, just get a system that does both at the same time.
      • [IPv6] is wanted, as it solves a very pressing issue.

        Do you have any evidence? If so, why are adoption numbers so vanishingly small? They that IPv6 is wanted by almost nobody, probably because they don't have any pressing issues that only IPv6 solves..

        While NAT may be useful in its own right, it should not be used solely to allow for more devices.

        Er, that's the whole reason NAT was invented. Why shouldn't it be used that way?

        Without quality control mechanisms such as W3C validation, we would have a very
      • Actually NAT serves us quite well in our situation. Cellular devices (mainly from China) are the big pressing fricking issue here and for the most part cell phones do NOT need real public IP space. There are extremely far and few betweens where a cell phone from any nation needs an IP that can be pinged from the outside or otherwise accessed. Cellphones make thier own calls out to the internet and negotiate a way for the data to be sent to them. Only in the case of network present apps and say Crackberries
        • Not everyone can code HTML as well as "some" on /.

          I see you're new here... :)
        • Cellular devices (mainly from China) are the big pressing fricking issue here and for the most part cell phones do NOT need real public IP space.

          Chinanet users are double NATted. Those are end users behind two layers of NAT. Broadband in China has started rolling out. Indian broadband is taking off. VoIP has been deregulated to some extent in India, and that is THE fastest growing cellphone market right now.

          When you have half a billion users requiring IP address space, IPv4 isn't very likely to be able to s
    • doesnt play with legacy systems (even win2k support is flaky at best)

      Heh, that's because Win2k is a legacy system...

    • Re:IPv6 isnt really wanted (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jamesh ( 87723 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @10:00PM (#14603976)
      I'm right now struggling with the various implementations of NAT-T (IPSEC NAT Traversal) and the fact that they won't play nice together. Wouldn't be necessary with IPv6.

      Ever tried to set up a VPN between two sites which both use 10.0.0.0/24 as their network range?

      Ever wished you could just ssh direct to your desktop machine from home without futzing around with vpns?

      So you may not want it or see the need for it, but if you understood the amount of work that has gone into making NAT the 'solution' it is today you might appreciate it a little more :p
    • Indeed: there's a very simple test - if it were wanted it would have been adopted by now!

      There was a powerful driver to IPv6 - the shortage of IPv4 addresses - but the people working on it couldn't resist the urge to try and solve a bunch of other less pressing problems while they were at it. The practical experience of people who've been in this kind of "upgrade" situation before is that unless you have absolute central control over the network you have to do migrations in very simple, evolutionary steps w

  • Like Y2K? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by microarray ( 950769 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @08:49PM (#14603625)
    Could someone tell this uninformed person what the hype is all about? So, we run out of IP addresses, so what? Seems like a market then exists where you could on-sell your IP addresses for $$$. Prices go up too high, market forces then result in IPv6 implementation. What's the problem?

    • I can't exactly on-sell my only IP address, because then I wouldn't have one. Hell, one is already too few (I want about four, but for some reason the cost of four addresses is more than four times the cost of one.)


      The main benefit of significantly inflating the address space is that you can allocate enormous blocks for each subscriber, and remove most of the need for NAT.


    • Re:Like Y2K? (Score:5, Informative)

      by vux984 ( 928602 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @10:25PM (#14604095)
      Seems like a market then exists where you could on-sell your IP addresses for $$$. Prices go up too high, market forces then result in IPv6 implementation. What's the problem?

      The way ipv4 addressing is structured. 209.112.155.123 and 209.112.155.124 are in the same block. They don't have to be next door neighbours in the real world, but they do have to be 'close' to each other from the networks point of view. That will mean they belong to the same ISP, in the same city, and quite probably a fairly small chunk of that city.

      IP addresses, by virtue of the numbers that make them up have to be hooked up to the network in a specific place in order for packets to find them. They exist in 'blocks' for convenient routing. The "routing tables" that you hear about describe where to send traffic addressed to a specific block should go. For example a backbone router A might know that traffic destined for 209.x.x.x goes "thatta way"... and and another router B further down the line might know that 209.112.x.x goes "through that pipe there"... and so forth, until it finally reaches a router C that says hey that destination block is right on the LAN here!

      If 209.112.115.122 were suddenly "sold" to a guy in another city all his packets would would still end up at Router C, where they would be undeliverable because the owner isn't connected directly to that router.

      As a rough analagy it would be like "selling your home address", but not your home. Even if you transfer the address to a guy in china all the mail is going to end up at your door step. Sure you could make special arrangements to have it forwarded back to china (and you can do this with ip too)... but that has two repurcussions:

      1) The guy in china still needs a chinese address for the forwarded mail to arrive at so he's accomplished nothing!

      2) Any mail addressed to him, even from his next door neighbour is going to be shipped around the world because it won't know its supposed stay in china until it arrives at your place. The chinese post office will see the Dutch (or whatever) address on the evelope and ship it off for a round trip through Holland...

    • IPv6 isn't just addressing. (Score:5, Informative)

      by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak@yaho[ ]om ['o.c' in gap]> on Monday January 30, 2006 @10:28PM (#14604105) Homepage Journal
      IPv6 includes the following features that either don't exist in IPv4 or you need to install bunches of other stuff to get it to work:


      • Zero configuration of the IP stack. It's self-configuring, completely.
      • Privacy. IPv6 mandates IPSec and I believe all IPv6 stacks out there provide that.
      • Speed. IPv6 addressing is heirarchical and the headers are simpler and stacked, so much less information needs to be processed even though the headers are technically longer.
      • Mobility. IPv6 supports Mobile IP - indeed, that was a design consideration - with fully optimized routing. It's only available under IPv4 as a hacked implementation of a workaround.
      • Routing. Native IPv6 routing (as opposed to RIP-ng and OSPFv6) is designed from first principles, as opposed to being something that has evolved over time to be sub-optimal but backwards-compatiable.
      • Multicast. IPv6 mandates multicast, which will reduce bandwidth consumption on broadcasts drastically.
      • Anycast. This allows you to find a service by querying the network rather than some moron in technical support.
      • MTU feedback. Your computer won't send what the network can't carry. This means you don't get packet fragmentation, which is great for firewalls and users on networks with restricted packet size. This will become more significant as jumbo packets increase in popularity.


      Tell me again why you don't need IPv6. Only, this time, say how you're going to meet these criteria whilst you're at it.

      • This is nice and has been repeated again and again, but what inquisitive minds want to know is what really happened to IPv5 ?

        It's time for the truth to come out ! no more coverups ! They can't silence us all !

  • The article's an MP3, not text! Text Version? (Score:5, Informative)

    by billstewart ( 78916 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @08:54PM (#14603662) Journal
    I don't want to listen to some podcaster ranting about some topic that they may or may not have a clueful opinion about. Is there a text version of that person's comments? Skimming text is not only important for deciding if the author is providing any new or useful information, it also gives you much better control over how much of your time you want to spend on the quality of information you're getting. http://www.intellectualicebergs.org/ [intellectualicebergs.org] indicates that there are two main topics and three other sections, and doesn't say how long the podcast is. I normally don't rant about Slashdot's choice of material, but this is a waste of time; I could probably do better by going to a random social event* around here and asking about IPv6 readiness.

    (mid-90s silicon valley story - friend of mine was visiting a friend, the house phone rang, somebody answered it and gave some technical advice about windows. "Who was it?" "Just a wrong number, but it was an easy question.")

    • This is why I hate podcasts. Text can be indexed, skimmed, and searched with everything from Control/Command-F to Google. It can be cut, copied, pasted, and even plagiarized if you want. A sound recording has none of these advantages, and it has several disadvantages: the speaker might use a lot of "um"s and "uh"s or be otherwise unpleasant, you can only listen at a constant speed (more or less), skimming is pretty much impossible, etc etc etc. Also, you can read a lot faster than you can listen--i.e., how
    • I don't want to listen to some podcaster ranting about some topic that they may or may not have a clueful opinion about. Is there a text version of that person's comments?

      This is becoming a bigger problem on the net lately, people who post links to video/audio streams which do not have accompanying transcripts. The submitter may find it interesting, but I personally don't have a spare half hour to devote to your pet video/audio link (even if it is in a usable, open media format). I'll happily skim even

  • Why do we need to be ready? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Wesley Felter ( 138342 ) <wesley@felter.org> on Monday January 30, 2006 @08:56PM (#14603677) Homepage
    I didn't bother to listen to the podcast, but luckily this is Slashdot so no one will hold it against me.

    Geoff Huston's "IPv6: Extinction, Evolution or Revolution?" [circleid.com] is probably the most insightful thing I've ever read about IPv6 deployment, although the conclusion is pretty negative.

    But assuming that IPv6 is worth deploying, Microsoft is way ahead in getting computers IPv6-enabled. Their work on Teredo [microsoft.com] should make life a lot easier for P2P developers.
    • I didn't bother to listen to the podcast, but luckily this is Slashdot so no one will hold it against me.
      I don't the fact that you're commenting without listening to it against you.

      What I will hold against you, is that by not downloading the 47MB MP3, you do not contribute to the slashdot effect.

      This is a community and communities work together. Now go download that MP3!
    • I didn't bother to read the link you provided, because as an IPv6 trainer in our company I already know:

      IPv6 is not needed, NAT works. Some people will even insists NATing their IPv6 network to protect the internal addresses.

      You don't need IPv6 to have global reachability for VoIP and P2P. Teredo actually proves, that you can contact anyone with a private address if you really want. You just need some form of global addressing, and an active "NAT circumvention" server like Teredo. Skype and other P2P networ
      • IPv6 is not needed, NAT works.

        For a fraction of what you can do on the Internet, yes. Stop oversimplifying.
        Even I as a regular user have run into the problems with two NAT'ed people trying to communicate with each other.
    • "But assuming that IPv6 is worth deploying, Microsoft is way ahead in getting computers IPv6-enabled."

      You mean that you still need to install a patch for WinXp while Linux, BSD, etc. distributions have ipv6 enabled by default already?

  • Spam must be controlled (Score:4, Interesting)

    by humankind ( 704050 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @09:11PM (#14603754) Journal
    We can't move to IPv6 until the spam problem is solved. With the additional address space that IPv6 offers, spam will increase by a googol if the spam gangs are not stopped. More spam is stopped because of RBLs now than any other method. IPv6 would make that obsolete.


    • We can't move to IPv6 until the spam problem is solved.
      With the additional address space that IPv6 offers, spam will increase by a googol if the spam gangs are not stopped.
      More spam is stopped because of RBLs now than any other method.
      IPv6 would make that obsolete.



      Even assuming that were true, it would just mean that we couldn't move email to IPv6.
      The amount of spam being sent is unlikely to change because of IPv6.
      In test after test, I've found RBLs far less effective at stopping spam than spam assassin,

  • Anyone watch 24? (Score:5, Funny)

    by someonewhois ( 808065 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @09:12PM (#14603761) Homepage
    IPv6 isn't going to work because of television. Chloe: "Jack, give me the IP Address of the workstation and I'll send you a decrypter." Jack: "Okay one sec........... Alright, got it! F as in food, E as in earth, D as in death, C as in card, colon, B as in bad, A as in apple, six, eight, colon, three, six, four, four, colon, one, two, zero, seven, colon, A as in apple..." FBI Agent breaks in: What's this? Jack? You're supposed to be dead! [shoots Jack] [Season Ends] Man oh man oh man. That's gotta be the reason why IPv6 isn't implemented yet. (Seriously, tech support nightmares)
    • Oops, forgot linebreaks...

      IPv6 isn't going to work because of television.

      Chloe: "Jack, give me the IP Address of the workstation and I'll send you a decrypter."
      Jack: "Okay one sec........... Alright, got it! F as in food, E as in earth, D as in death, C as in card, colon, B as in bad, A as in apple, six, eight, colon, three, six, four, four, colon, one, two, zero, seven, colon, A as in apple..."
      FBI Agent breaks in: What's this? Jack? You're supposed to be dead! [shoots Jack]
      [Season Ends]

      Man oh man

  • I listened to the podcast being someone who is quite knowledgeable in IPv6 and thought that Brad did a good job of laying out the important points and stakes in terms that someone new to IPv6 can understand pretty well, and he was very accurate on his information from a technical standpoint (aside from when he talks about the implementation headaches of PKI, he was way off on that one). I also agree with him on the state of IPv6 (fun for geeks/military types now, but not business and consumer-level primetim

  • WRT54Gs IPv6 (Score:3, Informative)

    by Solosoft ( 622322 ) <chris@solosoft.org> on Monday January 30, 2006 @09:21PM (#14603812) Homepage
    If your WRT is running DD-WRT v23 you can run a 4-6 tunnel through the router and run RADVD on it to give your clients IPv6 address's.

    Here is a IPv6 Install Guide for DD-WRT and a WRT54Gs [solosoft.org]

    I would love some more people to test out my little config and tell me if there is anything they do not understand in it. It's very straight forward and uses SMB for people who have a v4 Router (not enough room for JFFS). Of course you could simply move a conf to your /jffs/ file system.
    As Long as your running Linux (with ipv6 enabled) and Windows XP (run "ipv6 install") once the router is setup and running your clients get IP's automagicly. (or any ipv6 enabled OS for that matter)

    Thanks :)
    • Tunnel brokers are obsolete and inefficient; you should advise people to use 6to4 instead.

  • IPv6 Design Mistakes (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Eravnrekaree ( 467752 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @09:30PM (#14603846)
    I believe that the design of IPv6 was flawed in ways that it has inhibited adoption which could have been much more rapid. The IPv4 address space should have been a subset of the IPv6 address space. This would allow easy interconnectivity to Ipv4. The other direction, for going from Ipv4 to Ipv6 is trickier, but could involve manipulation of DNS. When a ipv4 peer requests a IP for a DNS address, the DNS server will reply with a private IPv4 address, the router/gateway associated with the DNS server will catch the connection to this IP and reroute the connection to the proper IPv6 address. It does only work with DNS addresses, yes. A special block of Ipv4 addresses should have been set aside for this purpose exclusively. Problem solved. Most people use DNS anyway. Other solutions could be devised to access a ipv6 address without DNS from ipv4, a protocol that would allow users to configure a forwarding route on the router via some utility, so that all connections to a private IP are rerouted to a specified IPv6 address. This could have eventually been built right into clients as well. This would have allowed a gradual switchover. The problem with the current switchover plan is that since there are so few Ipv6 users, there is not much incentive for websites to make themselves accessible on ipv6, but at the same time, users see no benefit from moving to ipv6, since there are not many websites avialable from it. So in order to access the internet, people need two seperate Ip configurations, people are not going to bother with ipv6 since it is pointless to them, all of the websites are on ipv4. Thus we get nowhere. It is absolutely true that there must be a gradual transition period where both protocols will be used and where both protocols must be interoperable.
    • I think another interesting concept was IPv7 proposals. These put some additional address fields into some unused space in the IPv4 headers, if memory serves me. Each IPv4 address would basically contain a massive address space then.

      The IPv4 routers would just send all of the packets right through, ignoring the additional fields. This basically allows a new address space to be layered on top of IPv4, although, it does require hosts to have upgraded software to understand the new fields.
    • ::192.168.0.1, as a substitute foe 192.168.0.1?


      Hold on a moment. Close your eyes and count to three. One... Two... Three... Now, open your eyes and try, say, pinging ::127.0.0.1 and see if you can reach your loopback address. Hey! It worked! Magic, I tell ya!

    • Re:IPv6 Design Mistakes (Score:2, Informative)

      by nurmr ( 773394 )
      There are three subranges in ipv6 'assigned' for IPv4:
      • ::192.168.0.1 - real IPv4 connections
      • :ffff:192.168.0.1 - for IPv6 sockets receiving IPv4 connections
      • 2002:192.168.0.1:: - for 6to4 implementations

      see http://unfix.org/projects/ipv6/IPv6andIPv4.gif [unfix.org] for a diagram of how traffic can be automatically translated between the two networks. The NAT-PT box allows the IPv6 only hosts to connect to the IPv4 network, and the socket5/6tunnel box allows the IPv4 only hosts to connect to the IPv6 network by doi

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @09:46PM (#14603922)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Well, end-to-end connectivity would certainly make VOIP solutions considerably less hacky. Is that a bulletproof business case? Probably not, but it's an example of a useful application and it took me a couple of seconds to come up with it. I'm sure there are others if one were to actually think about it.

      While I don't claim to be the world's leading expert on IPv6, I don't believe (and someone please correct me if I'm wrong) that it makes routers, proxies and firewalls go away. It does make NAT kind of redu

    • Business case for IPv6 (Score:5, Informative)

      by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak@yaho[ ]om ['o.c' in gap]> on Monday January 30, 2006 @10:34PM (#14604152) Homepage Journal
      This one's easy. Firewalls don't like fragmented packets, because you can't verify subsequent parts. This means that firewalls either offer limited protection (ie: let the remaining fragments through) or re-assemble the packets themselves (which is slow).


      IPv6 doesn't support fragmented packets. It forces both sides to restrict the MTU of that connection to the smallest MTU of any intermediate network component. In consequence, firewalls don't need to check for fragmentation and don't need to reserve any space for extra state information.


      The practical upshot is that your bottleneck (the firewall) can handle far more connections with far lower latencies, which means B2B (business-to-business) and e-commerce network traffic can run much more smoothly and the system can manage much higher numbers of connections.


      More connections with lower latencies, more business transactions. More transactions, more profit.


      QED.

      • That's hardly a "business case." And as another poster (unfortunately not being modded up) pointed out, IPv6 supports fragmentation. It's just that end hosts have to fragment and reassemble, and not intermediary routers. So, your firewall will see fragments anyway.
    • I keep hearing about handhelds and that millions of them will need their own IP addresses. I don't see why. I'm sure most of the wireless providers want to control the content that their subscribers can send or receive - that business model does not want a wide open network with each host directly connected to the internet.

      Back when it was just a proprietary BBS, Prodigy wanted to charge me $0.25 per email I sent - that business model does not want a wide open network where any host can connect to any SMTP
    • Here is a business case for IP v6:

      Most cable companies, in their TOS, specify that you are only allowed ONE connection with your account, that is one computer. If you want 4 computers in your house to have internet, you need to pay for more.

      What most families due, usually clueless to the fact that they are breaking a TOS, is buy a spiffy looking linksys or netgear WAP, which has NAT enabled by default, and share their single connection amongst all 4 of their computers. Because of NAT, comcast, or whateve

      • What? You think there won't be any ipv6 nat devices? First off, there already are. Secondly, the reason comcast charges for extra IPs is because they, like everyone else, needs to be fairly frugal about handing out IPs. ipv6 negates that.

        And by the way, comcast for SURE knows that people are using NAT ("none the wiser?" please). That's why they tell you to connect your computer directly to the cable modem when you have a problem. Some ISPs even GIVE you modems with built in NAT.
    • This needs to be qualified. IPv6 has no current business case in the US. Everywhere else, they're running out of IP space pretty quickly. Mobile phones have already switched over. Japan is in full distribution. Korea's IPv4 allocation is so screwy that business were having to figure out how to build encrypted connections through multiple levels of NAT. The US Government is switching over and, if you want to do business with them, you had darn well better think about it yourself.

      As for real use cases,
    • Most internal hosts are firewalled, proxied, and natted INTENTIONALLY.

      Most internal hosts are natted. I'm not sure about firewalled, and certainly not that many proxied. NAT is not a security measure. It does provide some security, but then so does having oil poured all over your front porch - but neither was created for or ideal for security. NAT was created to connect previously unconnected networks. It was not created for security. Security is an idea that was tacked on to it later to explain wh

  • this just in: (Score:3, Funny)

    by Gothmolly ( 148874 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @09:52PM (#14603953)
    $PERSON makes $TRENDY style comment about $TECHNOLOGY. $EDITORS don't edit, they greenlight based on $TRENDY. Oh wait, we're talking about whether IPv6 is redundant, necessary, or useful? Thats actually secondary to the point of the accepted submission.
  • I pity the poor deaf slashdotters [slashdot.org]... Oh, and those of us who cannot download mp3s at work.

  • Why IPV6 will be accepted (Score:5, Funny)

    by techno-vampire ( 666512 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @10:03PM (#14603997) Homepage
    IPV6 will finally get accepted when it's discovered that it's the only way to play a network game of Duke Nukem Forever.

  • SixXS is great for experimenting (Score:3, Informative)

    by spinfire ( 148920 ) <dpn@isomerica.net> on Monday January 30, 2006 @10:08PM (#14604020) Homepage
    I run a dual stacked network at home using tunneled connectivity from SixXS [sixxs.net] (I live near Boston, MA, the tunnel endpoint is in NJ. This gives excellent latency performance.). With this tunneled connection came a subnet with enough IPs to last me many lifetimes. Additionally, I maintain a server with native IPv6 access including public access Jabber, NTP, and IRC. See here [isomerica.net] for more info.

    IPv6 won't neccessarily get you anything you don't already have at this point, but the technology is ripe for experimenting and things work remarkably well.

  • IPv6 Business Case (Score:3, Interesting)

    by netrangerrr ( 455862 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @10:31PM (#14604118) Homepage
    There was no business case for the transition from ARPANET's old NCP protocol to TCP/IPv4 in the 1980s - but there were technically compelling reasons. Luckily the ARPANET pioneers realized that a new protocol was needed to easily integrate the new services and applications they were thinking of deploying. Soon the WWW, e-mail, etc. exploded as they were simple to deploy on a powerful TCP/IP infrastructure. IPv6 makes it cheaper to deploy new network services and applications (like imbedded IPsec and QOS routing) by adding new extension headers to define new services. It also scales massively and offers both private networks and E2E options. You'd be amazed at how much extra code/infrastructure is necessary to get around NAT today to make many applications work.

    We are currently working on a paper, with help from subject matter experts of the North American IPv6 Task Force, on HOW to get a return on investment from IPv6 technologies by adding new IPv6 based network services to enhance reliability, security, QOS, and mobility support in networks.

    • You make a good point, but there are still hurdles left:

      - not all DNS entries yet have a AAAA attribute
      - transistion technologies still half-baked. For example no home router gateway supports it. There is no suitable NAT compatible tunnel that I have yet found - this is true for the Mac at least.
      - NAT provides a means for individuals to easily allocate a private address space without having to register each appliance. So far I haven't seen any suggestions on how

    • Re:IPv6 Business Case (Score:4, Informative)

      by VGPowerlord ( 621254 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2006 @01:11AM (#14604958)
      There was no business case for the transition from ARPANET's old NCP protocol to TCP/IPv4 in the 1980s - but there were technically compelling reasons. Luckily the ARPANET pioneers realized that a new protocol was needed to easily integrate the new services and applications they were thinking of deploying.

      To be exact, ARPANET switched from NCP to TCP/IP on January 1, 1983. NCP had a few shortcomings

      • Like UDP, NCP had no way of handling lost packets. TCP introduced packet acknowledgement to fix this.
      • NCP had no real routing. TCP/IP introduced the concept of gateways, routers, and independant networks/subnets.

      The difference between IPv4 and IPv6? The size of the address space and the human representation of the addresses (hexadecimal instead of decimal).

      While we're on the subject, it took over 8 years from the publication of Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn's A Protocol for Packet Network Interconnection (May 1974), which described TCP, for ARPANET to incorporate TCP/IP.

      It's also important to note that the size of the Internet in the 1980s was nothing like it is today. The Internet only had 562 hosts in August 1983, 8 months after the changeover. The same source states that the Internet had 353,284,187 hosts in July 2005. (Source: Hobbes' Internet Timeline [zakon.org], with data taken from Mark Lottor's zone program reports [nw.com], and the ISC [isc.org])

  • PKI and IPsec in IPv6 (Score:5, Informative)

    by netrangerrr ( 455862 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @11:01PM (#14604307) Homepage
    I listened to the audiocast and picked up an important point- the commentator said IPsec (an integral part of IPv6) has historically proven undeployable except in small networks and would not enhance security.

    He is probably unaware that just a few weeks ago, the IETF released a series of updates to IPsec [RFCs 4301 - 4309] and a new automated key exchange (IKEv2) [RFC 4306] to update IPsec to simplify and standardize implementations and automate key exchange. Also, many a few large organizations (DoD, MIT, pharmaceutical companies, etc...) have extensive public Key Infrastructures (PKIs) ready for IPv6 IPsec. A new deployment guide on updated IPsec and IPv6 will be published shortly by the IPv6 Forum.
  • Verizon DSL (NYC) not ready. Oh so NOT ready. CableVision (NYC) so not ready. All of my old linksys routers don't even support IPv6. Only thing I have ready for IPv6 is my damn Linux box.

    Yeah, so far, I can ping myself all day... I'm just getting myself ready... any day now... really... c'mon... do it. do it.

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