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The Internet Businesses IT

No Business Case For IPv6, Survey Finds 340

alphadogg writes "Business incentives are completely lacking today for upgrading to IPv6, the next generation Internet protocol, according to a survey of network operators conducted by the Internet Society (ISOC). In a new report, ISOC says that ISPs, enterprises and network equipment vendors report that there are 'no concrete business drivers for IPv6.' However, survey respondents said customer demand for IPv6 is on the rise and that they are planning or deploying IPv6 because they feel it is the next major development in the evolution of the Internet."
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No Business Case For IPv6, Survey Finds

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  • Ever? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by WillKemp ( 1338605 ) on Saturday March 21, 2009 @03:42PM (#27281885) Homepage

    I'm beginning to find it hard to believe that IPv6 will ever be implemented. It seems to have been on the verge of it for close to a decade now.

    • Derrr... I mean universally implemented. I know it's partially implemented.

    • Re:Ever? (Score:5, Funny)

      by unlametheweak ( 1102159 ) on Saturday March 21, 2009 @04:02PM (#27282067)

      The problem is that the guys that were working on the big IPv6 transition quit there jobs to work on the Duke Nukem Forever project.

    • Re:Ever? (Score:5, Informative)

      by bytesex ( 112972 ) on Saturday March 21, 2009 @04:14PM (#27282201) Homepage

      As a person who's involved in an implementation of IPv6, let me say that it's difficult to see it implemented without ubiquitous gigabit networks all around, as well as network equipment (routers) that run on the kind of CPUs we don't nowadays expect such hardware to run on. On the one hand, they've made stuff easier (no more checksums on IP level, addresses that tell you something about themselves); on the other they've made it more difficult (potentially quite a lot of headers before you get to ICMP for example, as well as up to seven addresses that any device must listen to, address sizes that don't fit a natural integer), but the network is also busier: network meta-messages fly around all the time - much more so than with IPv4, its ICMP, IGMP and ARP (ARP times out in 20 minutes; link-layer address mapping in IPv6 expires in less than a minute), and don't forget multicast: it's obligatory and used a lot on IPv6, meaning that routers will be so much more busy synchronizing.

      Then again; the time that hardware and linespeed catches up, *will* come. It's just not now, and nobody is in a hurry either. But running IPv6 over lines that do 1 Mbps in practice, however doable; it wouldn't make anyone happy.

      • Re:Ever? (Score:5, Informative)

        by mellon ( 7048 ) on Saturday March 21, 2009 @04:35PM (#27282393) Homepage

        Um, what the heck are you talking about? The ARP timeout is two minutes, not twenty. Speaking as someone who's also implemented IPv6 and used it pretty extensively, it sounds like you really don't know what you're talking about.

        There is a known failure mode with ICMPv6 if you have a 127-bit prefix, but this is well-known, there's a fix for it in the standards, and the workaround is that you just don't ever use 127-bit prefixes. There's no particular benefit to using 127-bit prefixes, so this is kind of a no-brainer.

        As for CPU consumption, again, what are you talking about? On the backbone, the proliferation of micro-routes for IPv4 is a *huge* problem. IPv6 route aggregation makes things *faster*, not slower, and consumes less CPU time as well.

        If you are working over low bandwidth links, you might want to take a look at 6lowpan, which allows you to statelessly compress headers down to under twelve bytes.

        Bottom line, the conclusions you've drawn are, as far as I am aware, complete nonsense. I'm sure you believe what you've said, and it's the result of real things that you saw, but without a bit more back story, I don't think it contributes any useful knowledge to the discussion.

        • Self-defeat. (Score:5, Interesting)

          by numbski ( 515011 ) <numbski@nOSPAm.hksilver.net> on Saturday March 21, 2009 @06:03PM (#27283177) Homepage Journal

          I tell this story all the time, and I'll tell it again.

          I *tried* to build up a new fiber network in downtown St. Louis using IPv6. I couldn't get the address space!

          It's insane - I could get 3x/24 blocks (non-sequential) assigned to my ASN, but in order to get an IPv6 allotment, I had to show proof that I *already* had utilized a full /24 of IPv6 addresses (which is NOT 256. It's 256*256*256!) They said to get it from my upstream provider - they said they don't do that, get it from ARIN. I go back to ARIN, ARIN says "They're full of it, get it from your upstream provider."

          Even more insane? IPv6 allotments are FREE! I had to pay per year for an IPv4 allotment, but the free stuff? Pfft...we have it, we'll never run out of it within your lifetime, but you can't have it.

          WTF?

          • Re:Self-defeat. (Score:5, Informative)

            by mellon ( 7048 ) on Saturday March 21, 2009 @07:23PM (#27283833) Homepage

            Instead of getting upset, get smart. ARIN is correct - you're supposed to get your allotment from your upstream provider, unless you're peering on the backbone (which it seems you aren't, since you have a provider). Your provider is probably used to the IPv4 way of doing things; the problem with that is that it produces fragmentation, which produces huge routing tables. In order to keep the routing tables small, the IPv6 allocation policy is to allocate hierarchically, so that you would get your addresses out of your provider's space.

            When your provider runs out of space, you either renumber or fragment; renumbering is obviously preferred, and in v6 it's also easy, because you can do a soft transition - deprecate the old addresses, but keep using them for a month; by that time, all existing connections will be using the new addresses, and in the meantime all the connections that used the old addresses have faded away.

            This is sufficiently different than the way things are done in IPv6 that it's not surprising that your provider doesn't understand it yet. So you need to help educate them - this isn't a situation where people are deliberately fingerpointing, but rather an opportunity for some education.

        • by karl.auerbach ( 157250 ) on Saturday March 21, 2009 @07:02PM (#27283661) Homepage

          This is a minor nit - ARP cache timeouts are normally on the order of 300 seconds, not two minutes.

          A less minor nit is this: IPv6 does not help decrease the size of routing tables as seen by major providers. Nor does IPv6 reduce the burden of sending routing updates so that routing updates are propagated faster than the underlying rate of change of usable net paths. (Enterprise subnets, whether IPv4 or IPv6, don't generally propagate into the routing announcements as seen by the big carriers.)

          The compelling argument, for me at least, is that IPv6 is really a new internet that runs along side of the existing IPv4 net - there is no direct interoperability. This means that pretty much any new expansion of the net is going to require IPv4 connectivity, and IPv4 addresses, to reach the legacy net. And that makes IPv6 redundant from the user's point of view. That sort of drains the oil out of the IPv6 crankcase.

          Of course the biggest argument of all is that IPv6 does not solve the hard issues of propagating routing information and finding usable paths across the net, particularly as the demands of human-conversational traffic and the political acts of nations are (unfortunately) driving routing to become increasingly aware of the types of traffic being routed.

          I'm waiting to be shown that I'm wrong - I helped do the very first calculation of IPv4 address consumption back in the mid 1980's. And I was in the group at Sun back in the very early 1990's where IPv6 took form. I spent time at Cisco wrestling with questions like how to efficiently mechanize 128-bit longest-prefix matching on 32 and 64 bit hardware. And my company currently has IPv6 testing products. So I've been watching IPv6 for what will soon be two decades.

          To me one of the tilt-points of IPv6 will be when I can go into Frys Electronics and find IPv6 capable print servers and other widgets of that ilk on the shelves.

          I saw ISO/OSI come and go (I was rather a fan of TUBA - which included the use of ISO/OSI CLNP for the new IP layer - when the various IPv4 alternatives were being considered in the early 1990's.) It would not surprise me to see IPv6 go the way of ISO/OSI.

          • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 21, 2009 @08:56PM (#27284551)

            To me one of the tilt-points of IPv6 will be when I can go into Frys Electronics and find IPv6 capable print servers and other widgets of that ilk on the shelves.

            We're starting to see this already. The Apple Airport Express/Base Station products are IPv6 capable and do 6to4 tunnelling when used as gateway devices, out of the box.
            The HP CPxxxx series network printers are also IPv6 capable.
            Now we just need the other tilt-point of broadband providers handing out IPv6 allotments, and we'd be set.

      • Re:Ever? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Darkk ( 1296127 ) on Saturday March 21, 2009 @10:28PM (#27285099)

        Sounds too familiar.... Kinda like the damn analog tv to digital switchover which been planned, discussed and advertised for YEARS!! Then it got delayed....AGAIN!! Cuz those 6 million viewers think analog tv works just fine and don't want to switch to digital and they don't comprehend that fact digital is better using a $50 converter box.

        Sheesh. Ah well.. good luck with IPv6. I know it'll be the holy grail for the Internet but right now they don't see the immediate benefit and won't upgrade unless they are forced to.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by dryeo ( 100693 )

          And how is digital better if on the fringe? Analog decays gracefully, some snow but still watchable. Digital means having a miserable wife as she likes TV when you can watch it, not when there is a blank screen.
          IPv6 is the same, great when you don't mind spending a bunch of money to downgrade to the newest thing but crappy if you have old software.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Cyberax ( 705495 )

      You can use IPv6 _now_ with 6to4 or Teredo.

      It's quite simple, actually. You can start IPv6 on your network in about 1 hour (including stateless autoconfiguration setup).

      First, follow this tutorial: http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Linux+IPv6-HOWTO/conf-ipv6-in-ipv4-point-to-point-tunnels.html [tldp.org] (I suggest the 'deprecated' method, because it actually works fine :) ).

      Then install radvd ( http://www.litech.org/radvd/ [litech.org] ), don't forget to turn on IPv6 routing and you're set!

      Being able to SSH directly into every machine on my

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Melkman ( 82959 )
      Well, it is already implemented. Maybe not with much US based businesses but AMS-IX saw a ten fold increase in IPv6 traffic this year: http://www.ams-ix.net/mnt/verliernix/img/flow/ipv6/all/ipv6bps_yearly.png [ams-ix.net]
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Lord Ender ( 156273 )

      I work for a software company. We are seeing IPv6 labs popping up around our global offices because customers are starting to ask for it in our products. It's showing up on RFPs. It's coming.

      And having worked with it for a while, I must say it's a dream compared to v4.

  • I for one would not be surprised to see China and the likes implement IPv6.
  • Well, (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TinBromide ( 921574 ) on Saturday March 21, 2009 @03:45PM (#27281907)
    In a world without sharp objects, knives, or sidewalks, there would be no business case for bandaids. IPV6 is a solution to a problem that hasn't asserted itself. How often do you buy cough medicine when you haven't been sick in a while? This goes the same for ipv6. Until ISP's start charging more for ipv4 addresses due to scarcity, nobody is going to switch beyond digital survivalists and people who like to tinker with new technology.
    • Re:Well, (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mellon ( 7048 ) on Saturday March 21, 2009 @04:00PM (#27282039) Homepage

      I guess you don't care about end-to-end connectivity. P2P, VoIP, skype, stuff like that? Obviously not something you want.

      As we run out of IP addresses, we will have more NATting of IPv4 networks. This will mean that instead of having a single global IP address with your ISP, you will have an RFC1918 address. The people who have global addresses will be fewer, and so Skype's nat traversal will depend more heavily on them, which they will notice and which will decrease Skype's popularity. Same with p2p.

      Consequently, at some point it will be the case that the only applications that are well-supported on the Internet are walled-garden apps run by commercial sites. Innovation will drop off.

      It's not a pretty scenario. To me, the main selling point of IPv6 is *not* that we are running out of IP addresses and need more. It's that end-to-end is getting less and less available as the internet grows. Deploy IPv6, and end-to-end comes back. That's why we need IPv6.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by TinBromide ( 921574 )
        Correct, hence the digital survivalists comment. Society isn't falling apart yet, but people are preparing for any real life disaster that can come their way. The problems you stated above aren't happening yet, but the digital survivalists are preparing for any of the above "disasters" to come their way.
        • by mellon ( 7048 )

          Digital survivalists? Oy weh, has it really come to this, that planning for the near future is considered "survivalism?" Personally, I call it "pragmatism," but I guess I'm out of step with the mainstream.

          • There's a difference between having enough canned foods to last you a week and having a bug out vehicle fully stocked and ready to take you to safety and support you along the way.
      • by bytesex ( 112972 )

        I know the IETF guys aren't very big on NAT, but it does have one (albeit collateral) advantage - security. I'm not saying that people should run services from behind NAT, nor that they should be connected to by Skype through NAT (or ftp, whose problem is more original and older); but there are solutions for this: services can still run on borders - there aren't going to be 4 billion service machines for quite a while yet, while the other problems (inbound connectivity to end-user machines) can be solved b

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by growse ( 928427 )
          NAT doesn't give you anything over a well-configured firewall. And if you run NAT instead of a well-configured firewall, then you're not taking 'security' very seriously.
          • NAT doesn't give you anything over a well-configured firewall.

            It has psychological benefits. It gives network administrators (especially incompetent ones) a sense of security and safety.

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by growse ( 928427 )
              Well, I'd argue that we want actual well-managed security, instead of just a sense of one. Show me a network admin that's relying on NAT for security, and I'll show you an incompetent network admin.
              • Suit yourself, but I think it's important to get everyone on IPv6 now, and to wean them off NAT later.

  • It will happen (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Daimanta ( 1140543 ) on Saturday March 21, 2009 @03:47PM (#27281919) Journal

    With the rate IPv4 adressess are running out it is only a matter of time before we will switch to ipv6. It might be 3 years from now or perhaps even more but when ipv4 becomes scarce(and it will), people and (internet)companies will try and make the switch to ipv6.

    Don't get started about the turd that is called NAT, that's a problem posing as a solution.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      "Don't get started about the turd that is called NAT, that's a problem posing as a solution."

      True, but it will always come down to the cheapest solution. Not the most technologically superior.

      As for consumer ISPs, I think the day might come when ISPs start to NAT all of their clients, and charge a fee to get a static, external IP.

      Some businesses might implement IPV6, especially when Windows fully supports it (if Vista or 7 don't already, I'm honestly ignorant), but as long as finding ways to remain on IPv4

      • Re:It will happen (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Nick Ives ( 317 ) on Saturday March 21, 2009 @04:21PM (#27282271)

        Windows has supported IPv6 since XP.

        As for ISPs NATing all their customers, I'm not sure if that'd be most cost effective than simply using IPv6. Isn't it the case with NAT that you're limited to a maximum of 65535 concurrent TCP or UDP connections? Someone would have to invent some sort of NAT load balancing system which could break all sorts of stuff.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by anss123 ( 985305 )
          Speaking of NAT, how many wireless routers out there support ipv6? That might be the biggest hurdle.
        • by mellon ( 7048 )

          XP is missing DHCPv6, which means you can't get an IP address for your DNS servers. Other than that, though, you're right, it does work. However, it definitely works better in Vista. If you are running Vista, there's a decent chance that you're using it without being aware of it.

        • Re:It will happen (Score:4, Informative)

          by kasperd ( 592156 ) on Saturday March 21, 2009 @04:40PM (#27282441) Homepage Journal

          Isn't it the case with NAT that you're limited to a maximum of 65535 concurrent TCP or UDP connections?

          No. You can do a lot more connections than that. First of all a TCP connection is identified by two endpoints. If you connect to two different remote addresses, the connections can actually come from the same local port number. That trick only works for TCP. For UDP there could be more than two parties involved, and such tricks would break. Also, you are not limited to a single external IP. An ISP could setup a separate NAT box for every n customers. But customers are going to get a worse internet experience, even if ISPs do spend more money on it. So before ISPs start doing such tricks, they will probably start offering IPv6 addresses in the hope that some users will no longer use IPv4 addresses. But I don't think many systems will refrain from requesting an IPv4 address over DHCP just because they were able to get an IPv6 address. However if ISPs do start deploying NAT boxes on a large scale, they'd better start offering native IPv6 at the same time, because that certainly can offload some of the connections from the NAT boxes. Even though a system may get both an IPv4 and IPv6 address, it isn't necessarily going to use them. Some systems will try IPv6 first, as long as the name resolves.

      • I think you nailed it on the head.

        IPv4 addresses are going to be today what water supplies were in the wild wild west.

        Companies that have hoarded their 16 million class A's from the stone age stand to make a windfall from their IPv4 holdings.

        The only reason v4 is doomed is because of a false sense of abundance back when they were dished out, and now that they are scarce the companies who are in a position to help out will instead have every incentive to hog it all and milk it for all it's worth. NAT is no

    • Re:It will happen (Score:5, Insightful)

      by arkhan_jg ( 618674 ) on Saturday March 21, 2009 @04:05PM (#27282109)

      NAT is the only reason we still have ipv4 - if we hadn't had that nasty hack, we'd have had to move to ipv6 out of necessity some time ago. I'm really looking forward to going back to having every PC with a globally routable IP address, it will make application communication work so much easier, and firewalls can stick to being allow/deny/drop firewalls instead of all this stateful masquerade hack-job stuff on top.

      The main sticking point for me is all UK ISPs are IPv4 only. There's not much point running IPv6 internally if you're only going to have to tunnel it or 6to4 it once it leaves your network, though I'm thinking of converting a VLAN or two internally to IPv6 for a systems and applications trial.

      • Lately while advocating decentralised version control at my workplace I discovered that management love to have control of their assets. Thats why you have to come into the building through one RFID controlled door past a video camera. I think our PHBs will be fine with NAT for a long time to come.
        • You're aware that any decent firewall can filter packets without NATing them, right? The big problem with public IPs for everyone isn't access control, but network renumbering.

          • You're aware that any decent firewall can filter packets without NATing them, right? The big problem with public IPs for everyone isn't access control, but network renumbering.

            Yes but you and I aren't making the decisions here. The people who do make the decisions know that the people they hire are unable to reliably configure a firewall. NAT is more fail safe because it is more like to fail to a not working (ie closed) state. I an not saying it is smart. Just the way things seem to be done where I work.

            • It's perfectly reasonable to configure a firewall to block everything by default and open small holes, just as you do with NAT. If you're relying on NAT to keep your network safe from incompetent network administrators, you have far bigger problems.

            • NAT != firewall.

              You'll still have a firewall/router at your network edges, deciding what connections are allowed to come in and out of your network as currently.

              The difference is, instead of your routers pretending to the rest of the world that they're the one that wants to say, connect to a video conference or a website, and then munges the packet headers in and out so they end up at the right box internally, while fooling everybody else, your pcs will send packets out and get them back using a real addres

              • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                by QuoteMstr ( 55051 )

                NAT != firewall

                You know this. I know this. But plenty of people don't, and the fact that we're even having an argument about this fact highlights the IETF's profound lack of pragmatism. People want their safety blankets, and ff the IETF hadn't opposed NAT and private networks in IPv6, we'd see much better adoption by now.

                We could have tackled the NAT issue at a later time. One of the universal and timeless principles of change is to pick your battles. The IETF decided to fight for adopting IPv6 and eliminat

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        NAT is the only reason we still have ipv4 - if we hadn't had that nasty hack, we'd have had to move to ipv6 out of necessity some time ago. I'm really looking forward to going back to having every PC with a globally routable IP address, it will make application communication work so much easier, and firewalls can stick to being allow/deny/drop firewalls instead of all this stateful masquerade hack-job stuff on top.

        A nice pipe dream.

        People are used to having 1 or 2 IP addresses handed to them. Most probably

    • Don't get started about the turd that is called NAT, that's a problem posing as a solution.

      The odd thing is that those who use NAT and especially proxies today won't have much trouble switching to IPv6 tomorrow. You just have to make your gateway IPv6-capable, and off you go. IPv6 is a non-issue for many (most?) businesses.

    • Don't get started about the turd that is called NAT, that's a problem posing as a solution.

      Then it's doing an amazing impersonation, as there doesn't seem to be any movement by the people using it to get IPv6 instead.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by petermgreen ( 876956 )

      IMO there is no question that when IPV4 addresses become scarce ISPs WILL push home users behind nat (with maybe an option to get a public IP address at a price high enough that only geeks pay it) to free up IP addresses for more lucrative customers.

      I don't particularlly like NAT either but that doesn't mean it won't win out as the "soloution" to the IPV4 address shortage.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by grumbel ( 592662 )

      It might be 3 years from now or perhaps even more but when ipv4 becomes scarce(and it will),

      IPv4 addresses have been scare for a decade or so, the answer so far was to cripple the net with NAT or simply to raise prices when you want a real static IPv4 address instead of a dynamic one. I don't see that changing anytime soon. The problem is simply that IPv6 doesn't really provide any instant advantage, since hardly anything is available on IPv6 that isn't on IPv4. And the whole 'it will make networking simpler' isn't something the average user will grasp anytime soon, even worse, addding an IPv6 rec

    • rubbish. i've been hearing people spouting the line "at the rate IPv4 addresses are running out" for almost a decade now but no one ever actually has any hard facts to back that we are running out at some kind of rapid rate.

      There are VAST numbers of IP's that are unused in IPv4. And what exactly is wrong with NAT? 10's of millions use it without issue.

      I say IPv6 is a solution looking for a problem.

      • by tftp ( 111690 )

        And what exactly is wrong with NAT? 10's of millions use it without issue.

        NAT does present a problem, for example in VoIP telecommunications. You can't generally just plug a SIP phone into your office network and call someone overseas who has a similar phone plugged into his office network if at least one of those offices uses NAT. There are workarounds, but they are quite bad [wikipedia.org]. Most video and audio streams are UDP, sent unsolicited from and to weird ports of phones (weird unless you also spy on SIP...)

    • With the rate IPv4 adressess are running out

      I used to hear this a lot (not so often nowadays), but what is this rate, actually? Do you know? Do you have an idea at least of the order of magnitude of this rate? I'll admit, I don't know the answer, but I don't spout bullshit I know fuck-all about, publicly.

      Just sayin'

  • by dgatwood ( 11270 ) on Saturday March 21, 2009 @03:56PM (#27282007) Homepage Journal

    I'm seeing two copies of this story posted on the front page, both posted in the same minute. That has to be some kind of Slashdot record. Even normal user comments can't be duped by the same person less than two minutes apart....

  • by grondak ( 80002 ) on Saturday March 21, 2009 @04:00PM (#27282045) Homepage

    Oh yes, finally. It has occurred! A story duped right next to each itself. Timothy FTW!

  • "This article went by... and then another one..."

    "Was it the same article? Or a different one? THINK!"
  • As a developer and network security professional, I frankly can't wait until everything under the sun is addressable. I really do want my car to be able to talk to my electric razor.
    • I really do want my car to be able to talk to my electric razor.

      The parlor trick of 2025 will be to hack a car so when someone revs it, its signal will be rerouted to a neighbor's razor to suck their face off.

    • You jest, but I'd love more integration. Why shouldn't I be able to connect to my cold, frozen car with a web browser and adjust the climate controls?

      Why shouldn't I be able to wirelessly check how much milk I have in the refrigerator and pick some more up on the way home? (Or more likely to me, the refrigerator could tell me "you let your milk expire again, you idiot").

      • Why shouldn't I be able to connect to my neighbor's car with a web browser and turn off the alarm siren when I get sick of it going off in the night?

        There, fixed that for ya.

      • by tftp ( 111690 )
        You can do that and more already, with IPv4 and a NAT. What are you waiting for?
  • I demand it. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by YesIAmAScript ( 886271 ) on Saturday March 21, 2009 @04:05PM (#27282105)

    I demand it because I'm tired of NAT. As I have more devices at home that I might want to access remotely, or that need full inbound and outbound access for full functionality (as jump-in, jump-out games often do), I get more and more tired of dealing with NAT.

    And it's not just me. When I'm trying to help my dad with his machine, I can't connect to it remotely to access it.

    Even my DirectTV satellite receiver uses IP access now, and due to NAT, they can't count on being able to contact your receiver from their end. So, any centralized service like remote booking has to take special measures to work.

    IPv6 makes all this a lot easier, for example if you "request assistance" on Windows Vista/7, the first thing it does is create a Teredo tunnel so that your machine can be accessed remotely to diagnose and fix it.

    • DirectTV does not need IP access for remote booking that is done over the sat link and VOD works under NAT as well as DIRECTV2PC(TM) and MRV (still in beta test)

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        Yes, I know. That's what I said it had to take special measures to work as opposed to saying it doesn't work.

        There are inward-bound services that are precluded by the lack of incoming access. No, none of these are on the PVRs right now, because there is no such incoming access.

        As an example, when you remote book, why don't you get any confirmation? Why does it just make you select "record if possible" (instead of priority record) and then you just go home and hope it recorded? Why can't it contact your box

  • by mellon ( 7048 ) on Saturday March 21, 2009 @04:06PM (#27282111) Homepage

    I don't mean customers should want IPv6. I mean that that's what should drive IPv6 deployment. Address depletion is a problem, but it's a problem that has workarounds, and to the extent that customers aren't bothered by the workarounds, there will be no IPv6 deployment.

    The main impact of the workarounds is twofold. First, your outward-facing global IPv4 address will go away. Right now, your ISP has probably assigned you a real IPv4 address, not an RFC1918 address. So people can get packets to your gateway directly. That will go away.

    The second impact is that we will have more and more layering of NATs. This will make peer-to-peer applications harder and harder. Also, as more users are piled up on single IP addresses, we will start to see port starvation. What this looks like is that iTunes will start acting funny - displaying some things, showing error messages for others. DNS lookups will fail, and you'll have to retry. Google maps tiles won't show up, so you'll see a partial map, and have to reload (possibly to see different tiles not show up).

    So yeah, things will keep chugging along. But it will work less and less well as time goes on.

    And I think that is what can, and should, be driving demand. If you don't want that, you might want to start fantasizing about how to get IPv6 into your own home. I have it in mine, it works a treat. I think it's too hard for the average person to do right now if their ISP doesn't support it, but that's a problem that we ought to try to solve if we want the internet to keep being a place where peer-to-peer is possible, and where innovation is possible.

    Running out of address won't kill the internet. But it will suck the life out of it.

    • Considering probably considerably less than 1% of internet users have ever even heard of IPv6, i wouldn't hold your breath waiting for them to start demanding it.

      • by mellon ( 7048 )

        They will never ask for it by name. What they will ask for is for Google Maps to work, for Skype to work, for Bittorrent to work. Right now, if you live in the U.S., you aren't seeing problems with these services yet. Yes, if you have a global IPv4 address, you are passing a lot of traffic for other people without realizing it, but aside from that it's not a problem. Yet.

    • People are always willing to put up with a certain level of mediocrity as long as they don't have to think. We see it all the time with people using computers chock-full of spyware. Google Maps reloading won't be a problem for people until it actually takes less time to look up a route on paper.

      Changing to IPv6 is hard. If there's any amount of incompatibility, we'll see something like the Digital TV debacle --- just think about the hoopla around that one and consider:

      1. Most people have cable or satellite an
  • There wasn't a business case for the automobile when it first came out, either. Nor for the airplane. But how many businesses today could operate without the overnight delivery offered by air freight and delivery vans? Not many.

    Except that there is a business case for IPv6, mentioned right in the summary. customer demand. If customers want it, there's your business case right there: if we don't offer it, our customers will leave us for competitors who do offer it. "If we don't do it we'll lose more customer

    • by tftp ( 111690 )

      There wasn't a business case for the automobile when it first came out, either. Nor for the airplane.

      There was a business case for the automobile - to haul heavier loads faster, without horses being tired. A very real example of that need is in railroads and steam locomotives, so people already knew what they want, just without rails. There was a business case for the airplane - to fly people and cargo faster than in a dirigible (which predates the airplane by about 50 years.)

      Compared to all that, IPv6

  • Cell phones (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FranTaylor ( 164577 ) on Saturday March 21, 2009 @04:17PM (#27282219)

    If cell phones turn into real computers, which has probably already happened, then we will need IPv6 if all those phone users want to surf.

  • by mark-t ( 151149 ) <{moc.talfdren} {ta} {tkram}> on Saturday March 21, 2009 @04:20PM (#27282251) Journal
    People ask what can IPv6 offer that NAT cannot. Try running multiple servers on multiple machines behind the same NAT, where one would like them to be accessible to the outside world via default port numbers. No amount of NAT configuration can get around this limitation, so saying NAT solves all the problems that IPv6 is supposed to answer is nothing more than self-delusional. Let's flip the question now.... what can NAT do that IPv6 cannot? Especially considering the fact that even *IF* for some reason that didn't involve how many IP's you actually have available, you still wanted to utilize NAT for some reason, you still could do that with ipv6... no problem at all. So what does NAT do that IPv6 can't? The only answer that might actually exist to this is that it arguably costs less to implement. So in reality, it's not that there's no business case of IPv6, it's really the case that these businesses are just cheap.
    • The only answer that might actually exist to this is that it arguably costs less to implement. So in reality, it's not that there's no business case of IPv6, it's really the case that these businesses are just cheap.

      I think that from the perspective of most business owners you have just defined 'business case'. Ie 'cheap'.

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by QuoteMstr ( 55051 )

      Try running multiple servers on multiple machines behind the same NAT, where one would like them to be accessible to the outside world via default port numbers.

      To be fair, you can use a reverse proxy for this.

      *IF* for some reason that didn't involve how many IP's you actually have available, you still wanted to utilize NAT for some reason, you still could do that with ipv6... no problem at all.

      You can, but people were told for ages they couldn't. That's actually a big factor opposing IPv6's adoption.

      Lots of

      • by sjames ( 1099 ) on Saturday March 21, 2009 @08:49PM (#27284521) Homepage Journal

        Want a private net? Unplug the uplink and number your machines any way you want! If you prefer a protected LAN, make your firewall default to DROP, then tell it what you do want. The IETF probably proposed local IPv6 addresses because they were tired of the few holdouts drooling on their shoes when they explained that for the nth time.

  • 2009 (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    2009 will the Year of IPv6 to the Desktop.

  • There's more money to be made form an artificially scarce resource. That why we put our corporate benefactors in control of the Internet.
  • Will a big Business really want to have all of there 1000's of pc to each have there own public ip address?

    Will people still us nat to get of having to pay for each IP? IPS like comcast will love to make you pay per pc like how then want to per tv with there digital cable outlet fees.

    How stuff used on the Local network only that you works with ipv4?

  • Chicken and egg (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Midnight Thunder ( 17205 ) on Saturday March 21, 2009 @04:53PM (#27282533) Homepage Journal

    Part of the problem at the moment is that because network companies are failing to provide IPv6 ready equipment, it is only the dedicated few that are moving to IPv6. Linksys, D-Link I am talking about guys like you. The there are the ISPs like Bell and Telus here in Canada who have to plans, or even anything beta.

    Now look in Africa, Asia and Europe and you will see some serious movement in that direction.

    Don't get me wrong, I have my computer enabled with Tiredo, providing me IPv6 access, but companies are going to want the easy route to IPv6 and until they are provided the support, or like my experience two days to immenent failure they aren't likey to do sod.

    I have a Linksys WRT54G v8 and there isn't even the possibility of installing a version of DD-WRT that supports IPv6 :(

    • Linksys, D-Link I am talking about guys like you.

      I meant that they are amongst the guys dragging their feet. Linksys has made it clear that they have no IPv6 plans, and my best bet is to go with corporate solutions from Cisco -- idiots.

  • I suspect the switch to IPv6 will take about as long as the switch from DC to AC electricity. IPv4 is so ingrained in hardware and software that it will take decades after the last IPv4 only hardware has been produced for the switch to occur. Additionally, the cost of IPv4 addresses is going to need to rise above the couple of dollars a year it currently is at. http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/14/off-goes-the-power-current-started-by-thomas-edison/ [nytimes.com]

Heard that the next Space Shuttle is supposed to carry several Guernsey cows? It's gonna be the herd shot 'round the world.

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