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Google Businesses The Internet

Google Over IPv6 Coming Soon 264

fuzzel writes "Today Google announced Google over IPv6 where ISPs can sign up their DNS nameservers so that their users will get access to an almost fully IPv6-enabled Google, including http://www.google.com, images and maps, etc., just like in IPv4. Without this only http://ipv6.google.com is available, but then you go to IPv4 for most services. So, start kicking your ISPs to support IPv6 too, and let them sign up. Check this list of ISPs that already do native IPv6 to your doorstep. The question that now remains is: when will Slashdot follow?"
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Google Over IPv6 Coming Soon

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  • Wow! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Atrox666 ( 957601 ) on Thursday January 08, 2009 @09:33AM (#26371463)

    Wow I can finally have all the advantages of IPv6 like

    Until they run out of IPv4 addresses it really doesn't matter.
    There are a few obscure tunneling applications to this but who cares.

    • Yea With NATs and DNS aliasing It will still be a while. Most likely there will be a point where they go to the people who reserved those big Class A and B networks, early on and edict of Use it or Loose it.

    • by Surt ( 22457 )

      Routing speed. Jumbograms.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by lazyl ( 619939 )
      Cell phones will drive IPv6. Large service providers like Sprint are already dedicating significant resources to IPv6 because they know they will need it for 4G. NATing won't work because there are just too many phones. So those 4G phones will have to be IPv6. And then they can only access the IPv6 internet. So that will drive everything to switch.
  • Wait for it.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by growse ( 928427 ) on Thursday January 08, 2009 @09:35AM (#26371489) Homepage
    Cue people who don't understand routing and generally how the internet works saying "But why can't we just use NAT? HP don't need that many IP addresses!".
  • Soon ? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by mbone ( 558574 )

    I got ipv6.google.com the night the IETF turned off IPv4 [arstechnica.com], and that was
    over 9 months ago.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 08, 2009 @09:36AM (#26371511)

    it's eerily similar to google in ipv4

  • Is it just me (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jandrese ( 485 ) <kensama@vt.edu> on Thursday January 08, 2009 @09:37AM (#26371515) Homepage Journal
    Or is that list of ipv6 capable ISPs depressingly short? All I see on there are a handful of tiny mom and pop shops and perhaps some larger foreign ISPs. Until Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, NTT, Telekom, or any other major ISPs start showing up on that list all of this IPv6 stuff is going to remain a research toy. I would use IPv6 now if my ISP supported it. I'm not really interested in setting up a complicated tunnel for effectively no benefit. That IPv6 porn site never even got off of the ground.
    • I noticed that only 5 US providers were listed. Kind of answers why Slashdot hasn't ran out and signed up as suggested by the post. Becomes a question of which comes first. The chicken or the egg?
    • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday January 08, 2009 @10:12AM (#26372059)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • by greg_barton ( 5551 ) <greg_barton&yahoo,com> on Thursday January 08, 2009 @11:54AM (#26373501) Homepage Journal

        ...use 6to4...

        And, if you're on a WAN in Chicago, the choice could be: X.25 or 6to4?

      • Kind of related, but I wonder...

        Will someone create 4to6? (or have they already) The router would map IPV6 external addresses to v4 addresses internally? Not that I can think of a reason for it besides some kind of convoluted security or remapping or ports to specific internal addresses.

    • by Above ( 100351 )

      Many don't advertise well.

      NTT/Verio has some of the best IPv6 support out there.

      Hurricane Electric has made a point of being an aggressive IPv6 deployer.

      Verizon Business (UUNet) now offers IPv6 on a "beta" basis.

      Level 3 has some sort of offering, but I have no details on it.

      It's true none of the consumer ISP's offer it to the consumer yet (Comcast, Cox, CableVision, Verizon FIOS), but then that may be premature at this point. Several of them have stood up in public forums and talked about the planning and

    • Re: "Research Toy" (Score:3, Interesting)

      by jc42 ( 318812 )

      Until Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, NTT, Telekom, or any other major ISPs start showing up on that list all of this IPv6 stuff is going to remain a research toy.

      The phrase "research toy" strikes me as an excellent opportunity for the canonical auto analogy:

      Imagine that all the commercial transport vendors had "standardized" on the Ford Model T (a very good car in its day). Your chain of stores needs to deliver tons of material from suppliers to warehouses to retail outlets? Organize a fleet of millions of M

      • by Nevyn ( 5505 ) *

        Meanwhile, in academia, they would be using "research toys" like trucks, trains, airliners and huge ships to transport 100-ton objects (or packets of smaller objects) between campuses and research stations.

        Terrible analogy, those trucks are interoperable if companyA moves to using trucks/trains/etc. then they can use those to ship to companyB. If any company moved to be ipv6 only they'd have the same effect as if they powered down their data center.

        I currently pay ~$100 for a /29, and given I'm not a bu

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by TooMuchToDo ( 882796 )

      Comcast isn't able to support IPv6 at the CPE until DOCSIS 3.X is rolled out, which is currently in progress. Once people have IPv6-capable CPE/DOCSIS, they could use either stack (or Comcast could just give them IPv6 and tunnel the IPv4 back).

    • Or is that list of ipv6 capable ISPs depressingly short?

      You must be in North America, like me. Providers in Europe, Asia and Africa seem to be leaving us in the dust here. Then again when I check what free.fr is offering their customers in general, I feel we are being left in the dark ages in North America.

  • by slugtastic ( 1437569 ) on Thursday January 08, 2009 @09:39AM (#26371561)
    What ever happened to IPv5?
  • by Euzechius ( 600736 ) on Thursday January 08, 2009 @09:41AM (#26371577)

    Great IPv6 song! :)

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y36fG2Oba0 [youtube.com]

  • by Danathar ( 267989 ) on Thursday January 08, 2009 @09:47AM (#26371669) Journal

    One BIG carrot for Universities and Labs that use google (gmail, docs, etc) is that this means that all that google traffic can be routed over their Internet2 connections which are MUCH faster and of lower latency than their commercial internet connections.

    As an IPv6 user, I would LOVE to use google over IPv6.

    I smell the hand of Vint Cerf at google...

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      "One BIG carrot for Universities and Labs that use google (gmail, docs, etc)"

      Those universities should lose their access to the Internet if they are using Google apps. In the past year, I have seen several leaks of student information (SSN, financial, etc.) caused JUST by the use of Google docs. Maybe if their students are using Google, they will reap some benefit, but even that is a bad idea -- a recent leak at Columbia was caused by a student using Google docs for a research project involving Columbi
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by evanbd ( 210358 )
        Why did the student have access to those records? The breach occurred when the student got the financial data. To be sure, it got worse when it spread beyond them, but I doubt there was a reason a student needed to have that data in non-anonymized form.
    • by grommit ( 97148 )

      Except that the traffic won't be going over the I2 unless Google decides that it wants to pay for connections between their data centers and the I2. Even then, I'm not sure the I2 group would allow it unless Google could bring something of value to the research effort other than faster searches, gmail and google docs.

      I2 != IPv6

      Sure, you can use IPv6 on the I2 but most people are still only using IPv4 on the I2. The I2 runs on completely different fiber than the regular internet. You aren't all of a sudde

    • by afidel ( 530433 )
      Hmm, I wonder if that doesn't also get them some cheap redundancy, just update DNS if their I2 connection goes down and then the Google traffic goes out the commercial pipe.
    • thats no hand your smelling...

  • by MiniMike ( 234881 ) on Thursday January 08, 2009 @09:51AM (#26371757)

    The question that now remains is: when will Slashdot follow?

    I heard that Taco is skipping IPv6, and going straight to IPv7.

    • .. that for quick and dirty use the numeric address are just too complicated. Sure it has benefits wrt security, routing and a load of other behind the scenes stuff. But for people who are used to using numeric ip4 addresses when DNS is slow or for testing purpose or setting up various IP tables or 101 miscellanious things , ip6 is a royal PITA.

      Ok , thats hardly a reason for not using it but I suspect its perhaps one reason why people are relunctant to try it. Half a line of hex is not user friendly.

      • by AlXtreme ( 223728 ) on Thursday January 08, 2009 @10:10AM (#26372023) Homepage Journal

        Ok , thats hardly a reason for not using it but I suspect its perhaps one reason why people are relunctant to try it. Half a line of hex is not user friendly.

        When was the last time you used an IP address instead of a domain name? The only thing I could think of was setting up my DSL modem a year ago, but I'm not a network admin.

        The reason why nearly nobody is using IPv6 is because it doesn't offer any direct benefit to those who need to deploy it.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Viol8 ( 599362 )

          "When was the last time you used an IP address instead of a domain name"

          About 30 minutes ago ftp'ing to one of the many boxes here than arn't assigned a DNA name on the local network.

          • by Viol8 ( 599362 )

            Though DNA addresses could be the future!

          • About 30 minutes ago ftp'ing to one of the many boxes here than arn't assigned a DNS name on the local network.

            Honestly, if your admins are too damn lazy to set up local DNS, then that's their (and your) problem. You can't generalize that incompetency into a reason for the rest of the Internet to suffer.

            It's nothing personal, but I keep hearing that same dumb excuse every time the subject comes up. Average people don't ever type addresses. New network admins type addresses quite often because global DNS doesn't cover them. Experienced admins almost never type addresses because their internal zone is accurate. Y

      • by fbjon ( 692006 )

        for people who are used to using numeric ip4 addresses when DNS is slow or for testing purpose or setting up various IP tables or 101 miscellanious thing

        Just as a guess, you won't really care in the end when you get v6-ified. And what kind of DNS service are you using if you resort to typing addresses? You might want to make some improvements.

        On a similar note, why is there so much FUD surrouding IPv6 here on slashdot? It's as if it was invented by Microsoft, by the sound of it sometimes.

        • by Viol8 ( 599362 )

          "And what kind of DNS service are you using if you resort to typing addresses? You might want to make some improvements."

          Here in many firms I've worked in they don't bother assigning even auto generated DNS names to internal desktop workstations. They get an IP number from DHCP and thats it. If you have to access the box from elsewhere in the building its via the numeric address only.

        • by Wildclaw ( 15718 )

          On a similar note, why is there so much FUD surrouding IPv6 here on slashdot? It's as if it was invented by Microsoft, by the sound of it sometimes.

          Slashdot is filled with BoFH wannabees. And NAT is one of the tools that the BoFH invented to have maximum control while insuring that noone would get an easy working internet experience. As one of the main advantages for IPv6 is to remove the need for NAT it is not strange that you get many protestors.

          Atleast that is my theory, and I am sticking with it.

    • by jo_ham ( 604554 )

      IPv6?

      No wireless, less space than a Nomad. Lame.

  • Routers? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Midnight Thunder ( 17205 ) on Thursday January 08, 2009 @10:00AM (#26371885) Homepage Journal

    Sweet, so I have Google doing IPv6, my OS doing IPv6, yet there are still a finger full of gateway/routers, targeted at the home market, providing IPv6 support. The only router claiming IPv6 support in their specifications is the Apple Airport. Linksys and D-Link apparently have plans, yet nothing in the user documentation. For me, if the manufacturer doesn't document IPv6 in its user document or specification on its web site, then it is as good as not supporting IPv6 - after all I doubt their support team would be any more clued in.

    Don't get me wrong, I am all for IPv6, its just that I am fed up having to deal with tunnels because certain parties are dragging their feet.

    • by samkass ( 174571 )

      So... buy the Apple product, and be sure to let them know that IPv6 support is why you did it. Vote with dollars. The Apple wireless hardware is actually some of the best ones out there anyway feature-wise, they're just a little hard to configure without the special client admin software.

    • by Eil ( 82413 )

      Linksys and D-Link apparently have plans, yet nothing in the user documentation.

      OpenWRT [openwrt.org] and DD-WRT [dd-wrt.com] are third-party firmware for a rather large variety of consumer-level routers and both of them support IPv6.

    • > The only router claiming IPv6 support in their specifications is the Apple Airport. Linksys and D-Link apparently have plans, yet nothing in the user documentation.

      D-Link and Cisco support IPv6. The D-Link-supported routers (a firmware update may be needed) are: DI-784 abg, DI-524 bg, DI-624 bg, WBR-1310 g, WBR-2310 g rangebooster, DIR-615 n. See p. 16 of Ref: http://www.ipv6.org.tw/summit2008/doc/1-4-4.pdf [ipv6.org.tw]

      On p. 15, they say: "Not only [does D-Link] meet IPv6 Ready logo requirements, but also uppe

      • D-Link and Cisco support IPv6.

        Certainly, but I see nothing on D-Link's site. If it is not documented on their site, then it is not supported, ie I wouldn't be able to complain that the feature is broken, since their support team would claim their hardware doesn't support it. Remember the difference between capable and supported.

    • Maybe you have a reason you want a router but if you can live with a switch it should be compatible since switches operate at a lower level and are oblivious to the IP protocol being used.

  • by wvmarle ( 1070040 ) on Thursday January 08, 2009 @10:44AM (#26372471)

    see subject: spoken as a consumer/end-user/Joe Sixpack.

    Looking at my Internet connection: it works fine.

    Looking at my small office network: it works fine.

    Does ipv6 bring any improvement in this? Not that I am aware of!

    From a consumer pov there is no reason for the change. It's purely technical. And even technical there are obviously very few reasons (at least at the moment) to move to ipv6. It ain't broke, so why fix it? Why should I really care anyway? NAT works fine, and anyway I really don't want my networked printer to be reachable from the outside world, unless I very very specifically say so.

    • by fbjon ( 692006 ) on Thursday January 08, 2009 @11:40AM (#26373315) Homepage Journal
      Sixpacks don't really get a say in IPv6, any more than Sixpacks have say on anything else about the inner workings of the Internet.
    • Looking at my Internet connection: it works fine.

      No, it doesn't. It's probably broken by NAT, so a lot of cool peer-to-peer stuff is impossible without going through a broken (which makes it no longer peer-to-peer). What this means to you, Joe Sixpack, is that you can't use fun things like BitTorrent without either manually configuring your router or enabling a security-killing protocol like UPnP.

    • Looking at my IP telephony -- it "works", but pretty much only Skype, because no one else does the tunneling hack required.

      Looking at any other peer to peer connection: It works, but it's much more difficult than it needs to be. Want to transfer files from home to work, over the Internet? You need a VPN, or you need to upload them to a third party (dropbox, etc) and download them at work, or you need to forward ports...

      Oh, and there's the built-in ipsec -- opportunistic encryption.

      From a consumer pov, there

  • When my USD 50 router will be upgradeable to IPv6?
  • Looks prettier than IPv4 counterpart!
  • I apologize if this is a ridiculously simplistic question, but how do you have a LAN with IPv6? If I want to connect to my file server from my laptop now, I just use a local 192.x.x.x address now and it goes straight to my server. Is there something like that for IPv6 so that I don't have to go all the way out to the internet to get back to my file server? I'm assuming there is but I'm a novice when it comes to some of this networking stuff.

    A Google search for "LAN over IPv6" turned up the following, but it

    • Well, I have my own /64 so I just use the public IP addresses of my machines but you could also use the "link local" addresses of your machines (fe80::/10) or "Unique local addresses" (fc00::/7). The best way would probably be to use public addresses though...

      /Mikael

    • Re:Stupid question (Score:4, Informative)

      by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Thursday January 08, 2009 @02:02PM (#26375223) Journal
      What do you mean by a 'LAN'? If you mean a subnet connected to the Internet, then you just plug in a router, configure the subnet, and let every other machine use autoconfiguration. If you mean a network that is not connected to the Internet then you do almost the same thing, but use the fc00::/7 subnet which, like 192.168/16 is not routable over the public Internet. Oh, and if you're using 192/8 for a NAT'd network then you might have some problems since most of that subnet is publicly routable, only the 192.168/16 subnet is private.

      If this is too full of 'technical jargon' for you, here are some definition:

      A subnet is a part of a larger network (borrowing some conventions from set theory, the whole network is also sometimes called a subnet, just to be confusing). IP addresses are a string of bits, 32 with v4 and 128 with v6. For routing purposes, each subnet is identified by a subnet mask. The first n bits of an IP address identify the subnet and the last 32-n or 128-n identify the machine on that subnet. When you see something like 10/8, this means the subnet that starts 10.x.y.z, where the first 8 bits identify the subnet. Sometimes the subnet doesn't fit on a byte boundary. The medium-sized private address range is 172.16.0.0/12. In hex, this is AC100000 - the AC1 is the subnet, and all of the zeros ignored until the packet is on the subnet.

      Subnets can be hierarchical. For example the 10/8 subnet might be used by a big site with the 10.1/16 subnet used by one building, 10.2/16 by another, and so on. The first building might use 10.1.1/24 for one floor, 10.1.2/24 for the next floor, and so on. When you send a packet from the second building to 10.1.1.12 it will be routed to the 10.1/16 subnet, then to the 10.1.1/24 subnet, and then delivered within this subnet by ethernet (the router will use ARP to look up the MAC address that corresponds to that IP address and the ethernet switches will handle delivery on the last segment).

      Bak to your question, you can use a publicly-routable address on a LAN, using v4 or v6. This doesn't mean that data will go over the Internet. If both machines are on the same subnet then packets will never make it to the router, they will be delivered by the local ethernet (or whatever) directly. IP routing is only needed when packets go outside the local subnet.

      In summary, yes it's a ridiculously simple question, it's only the answer which is complicated...

    • by MyHair ( 589485 )

      Short answer: No problem. You will have many addresses to use in your LAN, and your packets will not enter the internet to go to a local file server.

      Slightly longer explanation: IPv6 routing is quite similar to IPv4 routing. I think you might be misunderstanding what is keeping your current local traffic from bouncing over the WAN link.

    • Is there something like that for IPv6 so that I don't have to go all the way out to the internet to get back to my file server?

      That actually is a really stupid question, for someone who knows how Internet routing works.

      Very simply, your computer is always configured to know which addresses are "link-local", which ones must go through a gateway, and what the gateway (router) is. So, for your local address, you've probably got 192.168.1.* as "link-local", 192.168.1.1 is your gateway, and everything else is "on the Internet".

      But that's arbitrary. I like to use the 10.0.0.0/8 network, which is also defined as "local", for that purpose.

  • Why only respond to an AAAA DNS request if it comes from a DNS resolver whose IPv4 address is on a whitelist? Surely it would make sense to allow any connection capable to IPv6 to make use of it. I am lucky in that my ISP is on the list of those providing IPv6, but I use my own DNS resolver which will not be on the Google whitelist.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by praseodym ( 813457 )

      From Google:

      To qualify for Google over IPv6, your network must have good IPv6 connectivity to Google. Multiple direct interconnections are preferred, but a direct peering with multiple backup routes through transit or multiple reliable transit connections may be acceptable. Your network must provide and support production-quality IPv6 networking and provide access to a substantial number of IPv6 users. Additionally, because IPv6 problems with users' connections can cause users to become unable to access Google if Google over IPv6 is enabled, we expect you to troubleshoot any IPv6 connection problems that arise in your or your users' networks.

      Simply said, some networks may have borked IPv6 which would mean that users will be unable to access Google. I can understand that they're doing this before rolling it out to everyone. Maybe there could be something like OpenDNS for IPv6 so that more advanced users have a choice?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by MyHair ( 589485 )

      Why only respond to an AAAA DNS request if it comes from a DNS resolver whose IPv4 address is on a whitelist? Surely it would make sense to allow any connection capable to IPv6 to make use of it.

      Some clients may erroneously think they have working IPv6, get an AAAA address and timeout trying to use it before falling back to IPv4. This really annoys users. It wouldn't be Google's fault that this happens, but their sites would be perceived as very slow and they'd lose users.

      I am lucky in that my ISP is on the list of those providing IPv6, but I use my own DNS resolver which will not be on the Google whitelist.

      It is not clear to me exactly what they're doing. They might be whitelisting networks and not individual resolvers. If so then your home resolver may work when your ISP signs up with them.

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