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The Internet

Internet Groups To Stream Live IPv4/6 Announcement 185

Posted by CmdrTaco from the hey-thats-almost-now dept.
revealingheart writes "On Thursday, 3 February 2011, at 9:30 AM Eastern Standard Time (EST) [14:30 UTC/GMT], the Number Resource Organization (NRO), along with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the Internet Society (ISOC) and the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) will be holding a ceremony and press conference to make a significant announcement and to discuss the global transition to the next generation of Internet addresses. We invite all interested community members to view the webcast of this event."
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Internet Groups To Stream Live IPv4/6 Announcement More

Internet Groups To Stream Live IPv4/6 Announcement

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  • The transition is so seamless that there has to be a massive function to signal that change must occur now, not just should have. Pretty good fail there.

    • Re:Seamless (Score:5, Insightful)

      by KiloByte ( 825081 ) on Thursday February 03, 2011 @09:00AM (#35089602)

      The shit did not hit the fan yet. No one really cares about IANA's pool running out -- but not being able to obtain them from RIPE will be a serious problem.

      • No one really cares about IANA's pool running out

        RIPE probably cares a lot about IANA's pool running out and they will surely spread all their troubles downstream to all of the account holders.

    • Seamless? The transition was not seamless! The scarcity of IPv4 addresses has been breaking things for YEARS, ever since the first NAT deployment. Now it will just get worse at a faster rate, until v6 is popular enough that we can reliably address packets to any host on the internet (firewall permitting) and see them get there without needing any "forwarding" nonsense.

    • What's the point of IANA, now that they've given out all their numbers?

      Seriously, the holders of the various /8's can form a new organization to govern themselves now. And I can imagine they have a few good reasons to do it.

      The only thing that will keep IANA relevant will be IPv6.

      • > What's the point of IANA, now that they've given out all their numbers?

        Who do you think gives out IPv6 numbers?

        > Seriously, the holders of the various /8's can form a new organization to govern themselves now.

        I can think of no good reason for them to do that.

      • IANA [iana.org] kept track of other kinds of numbers besides IPv4 addresses, and their job wasn't just to hand out unique numbers, but to keep track of who owns the numbers that are out there. And if you think IPv4 number ownership is going to stay stable now that they're all gone and you can only get them from other people, you may be a bit surprised.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by davew ( 820 )

      To be honest, this is a fair comment. It *should* be a seamless transition, and evidently it's not going to be. My one concern is that, on the internet, this sort of change can't be laid down from on high. The kind of people who should be working on this transition are... pretty much the target audience of slashdot, actually.

  • ...the issue of a Papal Bull declaring that NAT Is Evil, perhaps with an international treaty to ban it? It's a shame Princess Diana isn't still alive - she'd probably have more consensus with that than tackling land mines.

    (Too soon?)

    • Not all NAT is evil. NAT64 and DNS 64 are useful transition mechanisms so that you can connect with v4 hosts while running v6.

      • Well, NAT64 is like purgatory. You left earthly IPv4 in God's grace but you receive punishment for continued involvement with 32-bit sinners. And, yeah, I suppose purgatory needs a sunset period.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Morth ( 322218 )

        Useful as long as you have software that runs on IPv6. There's a lot of software that will never be upgraded, so most likely dual stack will be around for a long long time.

        • But the better long term solution would be a global IPv6-only addressing scheme. If some software on a particular machine only understands IPv4, let it talk IPv4 locally and a gateway (separate hardware or on the machine itself) can translate packets to IPv6 appearing from machine's unique IPv6 address. MTU discovery will respond appropriately.

        • a bit like Internet Explorer 6 then

  • Let me summarize... (Score:5, Funny)

    by msauve ( 701917 ) on Thursday February 03, 2011 @08:51AM (#35089536)
    "Yes, we have no bananas."

  • No awareness of timezones whatsoever.

    It's going to be 6:30 in California, people!

    Sheesh, if you want people to watch your announcement live, you need to schedule it when as many folks as possible are AWAKE.

    • Re:Typical east coast sensibilities (Score:5, Informative)

      by Pteraspidomorphi ( 1651293 ) on Thursday February 03, 2011 @09:01AM (#35089608)

      That's what they did by aligning it with night in the pacific ocean. There are a lot of people outside the american continent, you know?

    • Fantastic! Finally, my habit of waking up before 5 AM for no apparent reason for the last several years will finally bear fruit.

      • Past that, can't view on Firefox 3.6 or 4 on Linux amd64. Tried it in Firefox on Windows XP in VMware Player 3 and my system became unresponsive (thanks, VMware!) Didn't hang, I could see occasional disk activity. Windows media stream link is 404.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by sjames ( 1099 )

          What you didn't know is that the presentation is a performance art piece. It depicted just about what will happen in a few months if you ask for a block of v4 addresses.

    • It's going to be 6:30 in California, people!

      <troll> What's the problem? You Californians will be up at 5 drinking your wheat grass meth smoothies before your pilates anyway.* </troll>

      I agree, that is way too early for anything. Nothing should go on at 6:30am except the clock showing there's 4 hours of sleep left.

      *I am a native Californian. Even WE think we all do this.

      • > I am a native Californian. Even WE think we all do this.

        Whereas in fact you sleep in until 11 and then "do lunch", consisting of raw fish and margaritas.

        BTW I was up at 6:30, but then I live on a farm in Wisconsin. Here in the Midwest we all get up early to milk the cows. In the East they're all up early for the three hour commute to their office jobs in the city.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jo_ham ( 604554 )

      Have a look at a globe some time ;)

      California is not the centre of the world (although it depends on your frame of reference). The time is set so that as many people as possible *are* awake.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Thud457 ( 234763 )

        The time is set so that as many people as possible *are* awake.

        [citation needed]
        my google-fu couldn't bring up an adequate answer for the dynamic consciousness centroid of the Earth accounting for timezones

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Binestar ( 28861 )
          Middle of night over the PACIFIC. Less people live in the pacific ocean than elsewhere, so conversely, less people to be asleep at that time. Sorry, no citation, just common sense.

      • Have a look at a globe some time ;)

        The globe is a chimera created by the leftist elite. The world is flat - you know it, and I know it.

        I've seen many Japanese people leave here (Seattle) and fly west - none of them have ever come back. They obviously fell off the edge.

    • There are ever so slightly more people in Asia and Europe then there are in California. It's already being held too late if they wanted "as many folks as possible are AWAKE" is the main criteria, but waiting for California would just ensure even fewer people were "AWAKE".

  • At least, that's what the ISPs have largely been thinking on the ipv4 / ipv6 switch. And it's completely understandable why - ipv6 is a significant investment, while sticking to ipv4 is short-term more profitable. In addition, they may be thinking that they can make the other ISPs or even other countries do all the work for them.

    The economics of it are probably no different than any theoretical global environmental problem: It affects everybody, but nobody wants to pay to fix it, and nobody will until eithe

    • A lot of small ISPs are on the edge as it is, and they simply cannot afford to make a switch to IPv6. A lot of them are just AT&T resellers so no great loss, but a few of them also provide services that the death star won't touch, like multihop microwave links to serve obscure neighborhoods.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ducman ( 107063 )

      I tried to explain the news blurb to my wife, who know nothing about networking. She said, "well, you'd better call Al Gore and tell him you need some more addresses. He invented the internet, surely he can fix it."

  • Can somebody tell them to kill the buzz on the audio?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fbjon ( 692006 )
      Indeed, somebody just noticed and fixed it.

    • Can somebody tell them to kill the buzz on the audio?

      Man! Those vuvuzelas are everywhere now.

    • Great, can you post some comments telling us what it says? I mostly can't load the page and when I can I still can't access the stream.

      • So far it's just a ceremonial handing over of the last blocks, and the recipients are giving brief speeches. The guy from Asia Pacific commented he expected to run through his final allocated addresses in three to six months.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by fbjon ( 692006 )
        Ceremonial allocation of the last blocks, now a pause. There will be a press conference at 10:00 local time.

        • Thanks! Maybe they will have a coordinated text PR release then. Given their incompetence delivering the stream I'm not betting on it, though.

  • *sniff*

    It's like watching your baby grow up and leave home...

    I couldn't help crying a little when they gave APNIC 103.0.0.0/8

  • I was planning to watch it since yesterday, but all I see right now is "Error establishing a database connection".
    • I get a piano sonata and the ICANN logo. Just now I heard someone clicking their fingers so I guess that's a test card while they fix something.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cpghost ( 719344 )
        That's because the announcement is over. It will resume in 3 or so minutes with a press conference. At least I hope they'll stream it too.
  • It is 9:55 AM EST. On the conference call number they just announced that they will be starting shortly.. .

  • According to my clock, it's now 10:45 EST. I checked the links above but nobody as posted what the "big announcement" was all about.

  • OMG Olaf just told everyone they should not even notice the change over when asked what people needed to buy or do to get on IPv6!!

    • Yes, he is not right! Many people (at least in Europe) run ADSL modem routers that they have to manage themselves. And a switch to IPv6 means either hoping for a firmware upgrade and applying it or buying a new one. Unless you have one that already supports IPv6 out of the box. (I think only some of the AVM Fritz!Box modem routers do).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )

      And he is correct. I'm not sure what your issue is.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by GeorgeS ( 11440 )

        I have no issue( I've been using IPv6 just fine for the last 2 years and have an IPv6 cert from he.net) but, the millions of people that may/might be required to Flash their own hardware may have plenty of issues.
        and he is not correct....there may be plenty of ISP's that ask/require an end user to make changes to the settings on a cable modem or router...this is trouble...always will be...Period.

  • I feel like they did a pretty poor job explaining to the layman what exactly the difference is between IPv4 and IPv6.

    They really need to stress that sticking with IPv4 isn't an option, its not like 6 is some new hotness that we're trying to sell to them. 4 has a limited number of addresses, and we're running out. If we do run out, then we have big problems. The internet stops working the way you want. However, most people are already IPv6 capable, and its just the ISPs and major online services which ne

  • We want NAT-PT! (Score:3)

    by Chemisor ( 97276 ) on Thursday February 03, 2011 @11:07AM (#35091058)

    Bring back NAT-PT [ietf.org]! It was prematurely obsoleted due to scalability concerns. Those concerns are indeed valid, but only for large networks. On a home network with a couple of users it is a perfectly viable solution. Put NAT-PT on a router appliance, give it an IPv6 address, and it will let the home network transparently pretend that IPv6 does not exist. Yes, there are a few obvious problems with the few protocols that send IP addresses, like bittorrent, but a simple client fix can easily send hostnames instead. Otherwise, it will just work, and nobody will have to care about IPv6 except ISPs.

    Many of the transition problems arise from the insistence that everybody want IPv6. Normal people don't care about IPv6, don't want IPv6, and couldn't care less what it is. Instead of starting to convert from the bottom up, with users going IPv6 first on their home networks, and then the ISPs and backbones switching when everybody has moved, do it the other way around. Convert the backbones to IPv6 down to ISP level. Then the consumers can use NAT-PT appliances to pretend that that did not happen and keep on going without any disruption.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      That's exactly the problem. The vast majority of home users just want the Internet to "just work" - and if you want to transition them to IPv6, you need to basically offer a box they can replace their existing Linksys with.

      IPv6 is a pain to deal with because it changes a lot. Now try telling your mom how to differentiate between the 2 IPv6 addresses she'll have on her PC (link-local and the routable one), when before she just handled that 192.168.1.xxx one and everything worked.

      And when my ISP decides to gi

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bengie ( 1121981 )

        DNS server? I've been able to ping any device on my network by name for years without having DNS. There are other protocols for local network name resolution.

      • Average users don't see IP addresses at all, so I can't see any of those issues applying. Autoconfiguration is essential for those users anyway, and that shouldn't be any harder for V6.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bbn ( 172659 )

        I do not know why you need a private subnet. Just use the link local address that you just bitched about if you want an address that does not change.

        But if you do want a private subnet, please take a clue and stay away from using fc00::/64. That is wrong. You need to pick up a random subnet in the range. Here is a tool that will do it for you: http://bitace.com/ipv6calc/ [bitace.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bengie ( 1121981 )

      "Convert the backbones to IPv6"

      They already are and have been for the past at least 5 years. The earliest back-bone provider was IPv6 certified back in 2001 and everyone from Sprint to AT&T to Level3 have been 100% IPv6 ready on all of their back-bone links since 2004-2006.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by NoSig ( 1919688 )
      The real problem is that if you are running IPv6 and the server you are connecting to doesn't, you won't get a connection. You could fall back to IPv4 in that case, but do you then wait for a time-out on the IPv6 attempt? In that case your surfing will be extremely slow. Worse, if you CAN fall back to IPv4 then you must have an IPv4 address and so you've actually done nothing to solve the problem of address exhaustion.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bengie ( 1121981 )

        if the server is not running Ipv6, I should hope it doesn't have an IPv6 DNS entry.

        I think what you mean if a hop between you and the server doesn't support IPv6, so your attempt to use it will fail.

        All Teir1 back-bone providers are IPv6 ready, so the only time this should happen is a mis-configured router or the customer has a Teir2 provider that doesn't support IPv6 yet. If their provider doesn't support IPv6, then they shouldn't advertise an IPv6 address for DNS.

  • Have IANA rent v4 IP address space at a dollar a year per IP.

    Cheap as hell if you're not wasting it.

    Presently, people sitting on piles of v4's they aren't using have ZERO incentive to cough them up without a fight, particularly if there's profit to be had subletting them to desperate folks willing to pay an arm and a leg for connectivity because all the v4s are already taken by the same sorts of greedy bastards that are loaning them downstream numbers in the first place.

    • Unless you like the idea of routing tables the size of the moon.

  • At the current rate of growth, how long till we need v8?

    • v6 uses a 128 bit number for the address (instead of 32). 2^128 is a shit load of addresses.

      • v6 uses a 128 bit number for the address (instead of 32). 2^128 is a shit load of addresses.

        I get tired of seeing this because it seems very misleading. Sure there are 2^128 theoretical addresses - but since a subnet is defined as /64, most of those addresses will never get used. So all you can really say - I think - is IPv6 will provide a minimum of 2^64 addresses right?

        I mean, IIRC Comcast is going to be assigning a /64 to my house!

        Corrections are welcome (seriously).

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by JSBiff ( 87824 )

      We likely won't need an IPv6 replacement until we've colonized most of the Universe. The IPv6 address space is 128 bits long, although the lower 64 bits are reserved for individual host addresses, so we could view the address space as being 65 bits wide.

      That gives us 2^65 addresses, more or less.

      2^65 = 3.68934881 Ã-- 10^19

      So, that's 36.89 QUINTILLION addresses. That's really, really, a lot of addresses. To put this in perspective, according to WikiPedia, there's 100-400 Million stars in the Milky Way.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bengie ( 1121981 )

      At the current rate of growth, how long till we need v8?

      Well, if 1,000,000,000 new customers, who are given a /64 each, came online per second, it would take almost 600 years.

      Since IPv6 is very large and it has room to accommodate the current population of the world, your rate for IP allocation will not exceed human population growth in the long run.

      I will use human population growth as the limit. Current population growth is about 4 births per second, but about 1 person per second dies. Let just use a hugely large birth rate of 1000 per second because we plan t

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