Cisco Linksys Routers Still Don't Support IPv6 380
Julie188 writes "It's 2011, IPv4 addresses are officially exhausted, and the world's largest router maker, Cisco, still doesn't support IPv6 in its best-selling line of Linksys wireless routers. This is true even for the new E4200 router released just last month (priced at $180). The company has promised to add IPv6 to the E4200 by the spring. But it has not been specific about if and how it will offer an IPv6 upgrade to the millions of other Linksys routers currently running in homes and small businesses."
wow (Score:3)
Yet another reason I'm glad I've always recommended against Linksys to friends and family. Shoddy equipment in the past, and no preparation for the future now.
Re:wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Its not like they need new hardware to achieve ipv6.
They need only offer a firmware upgrade.
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They don't even need to write the upgrade. Ship dd-wrt.
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Its not like they need new hardware to achieve blahblah. They need only offer an arglebargle flatucaster
Translated for Joe six-pack and grandma. Expect a new line of linksys "now with ipv6!" because that was the plan all along.
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But why offer new firmware when they can rake in more money pushing new equipment?
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Ok. I am a techno-idiot. Is my current linksys router, circa. 203-ish, going to be OK, or is it going to not work?
Is that a model number or a year?
Re:wow (Score:5, Funny)
It was one of the original routers from 203AD. (well 203ADish).
Because at the time there was not nearly a large enough base for IP based data transmissions they relied more heavily on humans. This router utilizes various symbols that were popular among the time to indicate direction. With a bit of a wheel you can turn the directions to various paths and thereby facilitate the routing of information or rather people.
All in all, it is more like a road sign which can be shifted this way or that.
To answer the question, I'm afraid there is no update to this model because at the time of it's conception there was no implementation of IPV6 or IPV4.
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Ok, a missed symbol entry engendered this much hostility, lol.
Since I am not quite sure what this IPV6 actually is, I guess it is too difficult to explain if an older router will continue to work.
In the sense of getting me to slashdot, google, WW, FB, wired, porn, and various other sites I frequent.
You must be new here. That's nothing even remotely hostile. I found it quite cheeky and fun. Welcome to Slashdot citizen!
Although, I do admit I see nothing to suggest that your browsing habits are much different than the rest of ours. I'm not sure what you meant by WW. Google indicates that means Weight Watchers.com. Although many of us could benefit from a few visits to that site, we're too busy eating what our parents bring down to the basement to really worry about any of that. I'd suggest mixing i
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Still better than anything netgear makes ;).
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nobody should use linksys. however, cisco small business products are excellent for friends and family, support everything under the sun, and are easily managed remotely, without being crazy expensive. WRVS4400 is one easy example [cisco.com] and it's $180 and comes with a realistic warranty, supports IPv6, IPS, and all the things that people believe they should get with consumer routers.
meanwhile, buy shit products and you get shit support (aka E4200 for example). It's not a complicated concept. Just like when people
Re:wow (Score:5, Funny)
Yet another reason I'm glad I've always recommended against Linksys to friends and family. Shoddy equipment in the past, and no preparation for the future now.
No preparation for the future now, but they'll be prepared for now in the future.
Then they'll send that preparation back in time and everything will be hunky-dory.
Haven't you seen the pointless brand awareness ads that CISCO runs, showing a classroom in China and one in the US teleconferencing?
Or the giant out-side displays on opposite sides of the planet?
Clearly these ads demonstrate CISCO's mastery of all things time and space. Not only is there 0 latency, the fucking sun is high in the sky in both places at the same fucking time. I wrote a detailed email to every public email address I could find for CISCO, but I only got one drone response. The drone asked me to clarify my concerns, to which I replied "YOUR FUCKING ADVERTISEMENTS SHOW A DISTURBING DISREGARD FOR THE FUNDAMENTAL LAWS OF PHYSICS". Still waiting for a response.
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To CareerBuilder.com: "FUCKING CHIMPANZEES CAN'T DRIVE!"
To ETrade: "FUCKING BABIES CAN'T TALK LIKE THAT, LET ALONE DAY-TRADE!"
To Frito Lay: "FUCKING DORITOS CAN'T BRING PEOPLE BACK FROM THE DEAD!"
ipv6 support on Cisco/Linksys routers (Score:5, Informative)
dd-wrt FTW
Re:ipv6 support on Cisco/Linksys routers (Score:5, Informative)
I second this. Plus every one I've installed DD-WRT on has ran multitudes more stable than the official firmwares have.
Re:ipv6 support on Cisco/Linksys routers (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed. In fact, there have been a number of instances where I've bought a Linksys router and installed DD-WRT not because I wanted the extra features but because I needed the extra stability. I've maintained for years (albeit with somewhat shrinking confidence) that Linksys' hardware is perfectly fine; it's just the firmware that makes their products suck.
Re:ipv6 support on Cisco/Linksys routers (Score:4, Interesting)
For the performance gain you see by going to dd-wrt, I've seen the same leap by going from dd-wrt to the tomato firmware. (The features in dd-wrt out pace the weak hardware in the devices, anyway).
For a basic home wireless router, the hardware is pretty great. Don't ask it for much more, though. :)
Considering what else is out there, I don't think I'll be buying any more Linksys products. The cost/benefit doesn't pan out. Nearly identical equipment is available for half as much, and better is available for less.
Re:ipv6 support on Cisco/Linksys routers (Score:5, Informative)
Yes. If you stick to the "stable" release, it's 2 years old and basically not really "stable" as it tries to be a one-size-fits-all release, usualy aimed at whatever 3 or 4 models the actual developers of the project have (thousands of people participate in forums but they are "testers").
There's no "stable" release. There are hundreds of undocumented "builds" which fix some things and break others. I tried about 10 different versions until I found one that worked with my WRT600N and gave me 300mbps (the other ones didn't enable the 5GHz radio).
Not only that. A buggy firmware screwed up my NVRAM and I had to take my router apart and reset it via serial port (which is fun and I enjoy doing when I have free time, just not to my main router RIGHT WHEN I NEED IT).
For every DD-WRT release you want to try, you have to make a 30/30/30 reset (with the router ON, hold reset - 30 seconds, unplug the router, 30 seconds, plug it back in, 30 seconds, release reset). You CAN'T save the config file cause it's not compatible between different builds (did you say you didn't like reconfig?). Every tutorial out there Just Works for whoever wrote it - years ago on an unspecified build, which of course isn't the one you're running and it's not going to work with yours either.
IPv6 is NOT supported out of the box (no, it doesn't matter if it comes built-in. The web config doesn't have a web page to set up the ipv6 stuff, and not even popular tunnel brokers, like HE and Sixxs Just Work. You have to make them work. Some things you do through web config, others through broken, ugly startup scripts.
Don't get me wrong, I love DD-WRT. I use it, but it's not something I'd recommend to the average person. It goes way beyond "reset to factory defaults", it crosses the "keep your soldering iron ready" level.
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A few years ago, with firmware v.1, a flash took 5 minutes and came loaded with extra features (Bridging, VPN) but since v.3 I think, the images have to be smaller and less featured in order to fit on the tiny flash chips. Not only that but the procedure to do it now involves sacrificing a goat, banging your head against the wall and constantly reverting the firmware. I want the large flash back!
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Or any of the others... i use openwrt, mostly because I hackit alot. All myimages are custom built.
There are wrt firmwares around for all tastes and all kinds of users.
Re:ipv6 support on Cisco/Linksys routers (Score:4, Informative)
Except you need a version with at least 8MB flash for dd-wrt to support ipv6. I just spent weeks trying to get ipv6 to work on my WRT54GL with 4MB flash, but none of the official (or unofficial) builds I could find supported ipv6. I finally just broke down this afternoon and picked up an Asus RT-N16 with 32MB flash and am uploading DD-WRT as we speak.
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My DLINK 825 router supports v6 natively (enable tunnels till the ISP bites the bullet). ReFlashing is child's play. The problem is what seems like cumbersome tutorials for *WRT comparable to babying^W mastering a whole new Linux distro . IE: run this command to download ssl, this one to download v6, this one to chain scripts for your non-default firewall, that one to turn on the web GUI we all take for granted in all consumer routers... Please give it to me straight:
Are there binaries with the web interf
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I would say DD-WRT from the research I've done, although it's the only one I've tried myself. OpenWRT seems to be the least turnkey (but most flexible), with Tomato apparently being decently user-friendly once you get it all set up, but fairly complex to install.
Re:ipv6 support on Cisco/Linksys routers (Score:5, Informative)
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Another me too. Used DD-WRT for 6 to 12 months, and switched over to Tomato ever since (a year or two now) due to the dd-wrt security hole(s) on the WRT54GL.
P2P apps seem to be the best way to test a router's stability :-)
Re:ipv6 support on Cisco/Linksys routers (Score:4, Interesting)
I just started using Tomato a couple years ago on my WRT54Gv4. Did some benchmarks on speedtest.net before and after.
HyperWRT (based on the original Linksys FW) maxed out around 20mbps.
Tomato managed to max out my 25mbps FiOS line.
So Tomato saved me from a hardware upgrade. Plus the web interface is much prettier and has traffic graphs.
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Re:ipv6 support on Cisco/Linksys routers (Score:4, Insightful)
Board layout changes, totally different bootloader, entirely different SoC from a completely different vendor, Switch to VXworks and halve the available RAM, hey, if the web interface looks the same, its the same product, right?
I'm definitely not bitter about this.
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Most of the newest DD-WRT firmware doesn't have IPv6 support anymore (at least not on my wrt54g).. Reading the forums, it was removed to make room for other features. Annoying, since there is support for all sorts of crap in there.
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tomato [polarcloud.com] for more win
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Asus RT-N16
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100% stable, takes a beating, super fast
makes wrt54GL's and friends look like ameteur hour.
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Netgear WNDR3700
Definitely a good choice; I just picked one up last week because I wanted IPv6 and my old Linksys only had 2 MB of flash. With the 8 MB in the Netgear I was able to load the entire "mega" build of dd-wrt and get pretty much anything I could want. For complex setups the importance USB support should not be overlooked either; the dd-wrt firmwares only support a 32k flash configuration partition and complex configurations can easily overrun this. When I bought the Netgear I slapped an old 1 gig thumbdrive on
Why would they? (Score:2)
What motivation would Cisco possibly have for providing firmware updates to old, cheap routers?
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The do it all the time [cisco.com]. Why would they stop now.
Comeon guys (Score:5, Funny)
Go easy on them, Cisco is such a small company and really there was no way they could have seen this coming.
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It should be no big deal for them to license code from Tomato USB firmware or DD-WRT, both of which support IPv6 amongst many other really cool features. I don't buy routers that do not support DD-WRT, and I strongly prefer routers that support Tomato USB.
Hopefully, failing that, Cisco can still add IPv6 support through a future firmware upgrade. I doubt anyone who just spent $180 on a router is going to buy a new one a year from now.
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They already did. Why else do you think the WRT54GL and WRT160NL exist?
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>>>no way they could have seen this coming
Um.
What? I saw the IPv4 exhaustion coming two years ago, and I don't even work in this field. Cisco should have known years ahead and built-in the v6 code just like Microsoft did with Vista years ahead of schedule.
whoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooosh.
Inexcusable (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple, Netgear, Dlink, etc are offering support for it.
This is why no one wants to switch yet. If the users can't access your sites businesses are not going to judge it very cost effective to make them available on v6.
Modern Marketing Theory (Score:2)
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Apple, Netgear, Dlink, etc are offering support for it.
This is why no one wants to switch yet. If the users can't access your sites businesses are not going to judge it very cost effective to make them available on v6.
It's not about *switching*.
It is about getting dual-stack devices and dual-connectivity.
Once set up this way, you don't even notice whether the website you just went to was IPv4 or IPv6.
I've been set up this way for a number of years via a tunnel-broker.
Duh just run Linux... (Score:2)
Just run a Linux Distro on it like DD-WRT http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/IPv6
The firmware it comes with is crappy anyway...
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And you'll find that you are still on IPv4 and behind a two layer LSNAT system because your neighbors, ordinary consumers who could no more install DD-WRT than they could perform brain surgery on themselves, all just went out and bought brand-new IPv4-only Cisco routers.
OpenWRT (Score:2)
I have an old Linksys router and put OpenWRT on it. It supported ipv6 just fine with that firmware on it but ran out of disk space as soon as I tried to add qos support. I went back the the stupidly expensive Cisco branded router that's full of bugs..
I don't see Linksys as core equipment. (Score:2)
meaning it's not going to connect on the big-wacky side of the interwackytubes thing. it's going to be on a 10 network or a 192.168 network and fed by NAT from some host that has bgrp to the real thing. non-story. now, Foundry or Cisco that can't work on IPv6, that's news. 2007 news.
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Getting rid of NAT is the whole reason to switch to IPv6. NAT is evil and should never happen. And before you say it, there is NO security benefit over a properly configured stateful firewall.
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All NAT devices have a stateful firewall; tracking state is how NAT can happen at all. If you remove NAT, you are still left with a firewall with rules to deny inbound connections unless initiated from inside.
That is, the security you're talking about is not provided by NAT, but by the firewall underneath NAT. That's not going anywhere.
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Yes. And 40-bit SSL should be enough for anybody.
Er. Uh. I mean to say: "It's really, really obscure! So it must be safe!"
Say again? It is not obscure, it is a mathematical property from the fact that 2^40 is not a very large number but 2^64 is.
How long does it take to scan your subnet? It is easy to calculate, take an average ADSL home connection that is 10/1 Mbps. An IPv6 echo request ping packet is 118 bytes. Packets per second: 10,000,000 / 118 / 8 = 10593. Seconds to complete scan: 2^64 / 10593 = 1,741,408,861,862,508 seconds. Or 55,219,712 years.
Of course 55 million years is the time for someone to scan you. If you have
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It is obscure. You can keep saying it's not, but it nonetheless is. (You do the dictionary look-up on that word as homework.)
Ok, I assume we will be looking in a computer science dictionary, lets just take Wikipedia on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_by_obscurity [wikipedia.org]
Quote: Security through (or by) obscurity is a pejorative referring to a principle in security engineering, which attempts to use secrecy (of design, implementation, etc.) to provide security.
What we are discussing here can never be obscure by definition. If it was we would not know how it worked since that would be the secret.
Combine the tenacity of something like Blaster with the fact that random generally isn't, and such software will land somewhere. Furthermore, I think you genuinely underestimate the number of folks downloading and running such niceties as "FREE Registry Cleaner 9000" and the "OMG PONIES!!!" screensaver, which allows a fair number of seed nodes out of the gate. (I made those names up. You get the point.)
Actually I do not get the
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Forcing even more ISPs to use LSNAT, making life difficult for all their customers and delaying the transition even more for everybody.
quit buying cisco (Score:2)
Those WRT54G derivatives (Score:2)
I run a v3 (or was it v4?) router w/ Tomato (http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato/) firmware. Given the nature of GPL firmwares, wouldn't it be possible just to enable IPv6 support in the router? Correct me if I am wrong, this should not be a hardware issue at all, right?
Disappointing a company as large as Cisco to not enable support for IPv6 for the Linksys routers out there. Perhaps this is a sign for other router manufacturers like Buffalo to step up and be the first.
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> Correct me if I am wrong, this should not be a hardware issue at all, right?
It could. First, they may have been so stingy with memory that there's no room. Second, they may have made "unauthorized" upgrades difficult or impossible. Doesn't matter. though. 99.99% of the owners of these routers are ordinary consumers.
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Tomato does not, but TomatoUSB does do IPv6.
One Word ... (Score:2)
DD-WRT [dd-wrt.com]
As someone who wanted to test his home router with Comcast IPV6 testing, I was sorely disappointed with the firmware running on my router. Appearently the version I have USED to have some IPV6 support, but recent revs have either broken it, or stopped supporting it.
Cisco doesn't care about Linksys brand. It was simply a marketing decision to buy the company to promote Corporate products. I won't buy Corporate Cisco equipment if I can ever help it. My company is replacing Cisco with much less expensive
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Problem with that is the micro and mini builds do not support IPv6, so anyone with only 2 or 4MB of flash is SOL. And that's a lot of linksys devices.
Okay, what am I missing here? (Score:2)
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> Okay, what am I missing here?
The fact that some of their bottom of the line consumer routers still don't support IPv6 despite the fact that their more expensive products have supported it for years.
Irresponsible. (Score:5, Insightful)
Their refusal to enable IPv6 support is having a bad effect on IPv6 adoption. I don't think most people realise how bad IPv4 exhaustion can be. IPv4 exhaustion puts a cap on internet growth, which in turn retards economic growth.
Seriously Cisco, fuck you, just fuck you.
Sell More Routers? (Score:2)
Sounds like a great way to sell more routers. Most people won't understand the details. If some Geek Squad goon says "you need to upgrade your router to support the New Internet(TM)." Most people will pony up the $50 and move on.
Instead of spewing hate, we should be lauding Cisco on their capitalist business savvy. They are going to make loads of money selling people new gear that they otherwise wouldn't need.
Erm... this can't be completely true (Score:2)
My linksys E3000, with whatever factory firmware it had from oct 2010 has IPV6 functionality. (Tested using http://v6.testmyipv6.com/ and http://test-ipv6.com/faq_opera.html, and I can see ipv6 cisco and google sites).
The e4200 might not, but that certainly doesn't mean none of them do.
Summary is false (Score:4, Informative)
WNR1000 ipV6 support hard to find (Score:4, Informative)
It is a new update as of Feb 3, 2011 and its listed as being for the WNR1000v2 - no mention of the more recent v3. IPv6 compatibility is not mentioned on the product page or the spec sheet.
Too funny... (Score:5, Informative)
This is too funny: you realize this is Cisco we're talking about here, right? The company that still requires obscene steps and wads of cash to get security updates for a paid-for product?
I don't mean to flamebait, but seriously. Cisco is one of the most frustrating (large) companies to deal with in this regard. Smaller companies try to do the same things, but ultimately those behaviors turn people off their products. Why is Cisco still bannered about as the end-all, be-all for networking equipment, given that:
* feature for feature, their switches are inferior in many ways to their competetors
* Cisco products have less fabric provisioning than, say, HP switches, which cost a fraction as much (off the top of my head, 30% less fabric at 4x the cost)
* Less usability built into the devices themselves (limited interface feature set). This applies to the 'home' routers, too: the Buffalo home routers are comparable to the Linksys (in some cases, 'identical'), cost less, and have better firmware. And lately, the radios have been better, too (for wireless).
* Getting upgrades for an old Cisco is difficult and costly. "Old" usually means "not a couple years new and doesn't have a current service contract".
I mean, seriously: it still costs how much for a Cisco PIX 50x? We're not even talking about something recent; 501s still sell, new, for over $150. It's no small wonder that small businesses buy things like Sonicwall devices given the alternative in 'name brand networking equipment'.
You can argue that it's worth the money due to comprehensive support, lifetime this or that, or what have you. For most people, upon careful examination, the truth is that Cisco isn't a good value decision.
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Considering most OS's out there support IPv6 (Vista, 7, Linux, Mac OS X) and most have it defaulted ON out of the box, why not add the capability? I don't know how many of the Linksys routers still run a version of linux out of the box, but it wouldn't be hard to add in, and allow the home network to run on IPv6 (or drop back to IPv4 if need be). Not that it's a huge deal, but it's not so much future proofing as it is something already in your home, on your network, just under/not utilized.
Re:Who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
Considering most OS's out there support IPv6 (Vista, 7, Linux, Mac OS X) and most have it defaulted ON out of the box, why not add the capability?
Because it would cost Cisco money to do so, and they would get no financial benefit out of it. Those routers were never advertised with IPv6 support, so why should they be upgraded for free?
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I'm not talking about older units, I'm more so talking about the new(er) units out now
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Those routers were never advertised with IPv6 support, so why should they be upgraded for free?
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You mean, people paid money to Cisco for features they still haven't gotten yet? Did Cisco book that revenue yet, or did they defer booking it until the feature will actually be delivered? Inquiring accountants who remember the Enron scandal want to know!
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No. people paid money to Cisco for features they got, now they've changed their minds and want different features!
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When did people develop this sense of entitlement that every little cheap-ass consumer product they buy ought to be future-proof?
Last Sunday during the Super Bowl when Ozzy and The Bieber told them it should be that way.
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How often do you think people swap out their routers? I've been using same one since late 2005 and see no reason to upgrade (no, 802.11n is not enough of a reason).
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You will when your ISP mandates IPv6. See how that works? There needs to be some reason for them to keep making new consumer gear.
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You will when your ISP mandates IPv6.
The ISPs have another alternative: refuse to offer connectivity except via NAT unless you're using IPv6. If you're content with being a second-class user, you can continue to use your crappy Linksys. Your call.
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The problem isn't the expectation of being future-proof, the problem is the very small value of "future" [straightdope.com] (now a moving target per the manufacturer).
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
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So you think we should all just STFU and get busy cramming those landfills full?
Of course, my Linksys supports IPv6 just fine. I re-flashed it years ago.
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
When did people develop this sense of entitlement that every little cheap-ass consumer product they buy ought to be future-proof?
IPv6 has been out a lot longer than my router. It's not about being future-proof. It's about being present-proof.
Re:Who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
When did people develop this sense of entitlement that every little cheap-ass consumer product they buy ought to be future-proof?
We're not talking future-proof here. IPv6 is here, now, and yesterday.
Usually consumers have a reasonable expectation their product be present-proof. If it claims to be a router, it should meet current versions of the internet standards, in regards to node requirements for routers.
Re:Who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
It sounds like you are relying on accepting incoming connections to a ssh (or any other) server on a home connection. Initially your ISP will probably let you keep a public v4 IP for some token extra cost (or even free on request) but over time expect that cost to gradually ratchet up as the market value of v4 IPs increases. Or your ISP may decide to be nasty and say that to get a public v4 IP you have to upgrade to a significantly more expensive "buisness" connection.
If this service is important to you then you should be making enquiries with your ISP and/or making contingency plans sooner rather than later. It's always better to have plans for dealing with a problem than to have it thrust on you with no warning.
Re:Why do we need IPv6? (Score:4, Insightful)
1993 called, reminding me to remind you that you must have missed their memo about the end of 'class C' and their new, shiny CIDR-plan.
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There will -- assuming the slow pace of the IPv6 deployment doesn't totally fuck it up -- probably be devices that consumers will want to use that will depend on IPv6, for things like multihoming.
If you don't have IPv6, it may become more difficult for your mobile device to roam seamlessly from the cellular WAN to the home LAN when you walk in the door, meaning that the video call or whatever it is you're doing (watching porn, more likely) will drop.
I frequently hear people basically claiming that "nobody n
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Completely hiding the end user from IPv6 is extremely difficult for an ISP. As websites migrate to IPv6 (without an IPv4 version), what IP address should the end user be directed to?
For example:
1. SomeCorp.com sets up his website with only an IPv6 address.
2. Joe Schmoe attempts to visit the website.
3. The DNS query for SomeCorp.com returns the IPv6 address.
4. Joe Schmoe's computer cannot get to the address, because his IPv6 has been disabled by his ISP.
What this means is that the users router MUST support
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They do at least on the WAN side.
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In the case of home broadband such as cable or DSL, the modem (which is a technical misnomer, but still the accepted name) is, in its simplest description, just a way to adapt digital network traffic from a cable or land line to ethernet. On the user end there still needs to be a device to accept the IP address assigned by the ISP, whether it is a computer, web router, etc. There do exist combination cable modem / routers which do all of this as one encased device. Cisco/Linksys is a manufacturer of these,
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So we can see the problem coming... so instead of doing something about it now and being ready, you advocate doing nothing? Perhaps a little short sighted? (Especially since ARIN, APNIC and RIPE will probably run out of IPv4 addresses this year)
Re:Oh they care: their incentive is revenue. (Score:3)
I don't think they care.
Sorry for quoting your posting title to start, but I'd like to add to what you've already touched on here...
Internet switches are far easier and cheaper to produce and with the advent of IPv6, it will be economically feasible for an ISP to provide multiple addresses for a single residence. In this way buying a wireless switch will be much more plausible and cheaper for the user. I.E. something like this:
Step 1: Refuse to support upcoming IPv6 standards.
Step 2: Prolong purchasing of IPv4 routers and simi
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IPv4 actually 'ran out' a while back, we passed the 5 billion devices connected to the (4 billion address) internet back in August '10. Massive NAT and restrictions on public IP address allocations means that IANA ran out quite a bit later. The restrictions are set to get even more severe but most of the NICs won't actually allow their reserves to completely run out for years. I'll just be nearly impossible to be allocated any addresses.
So Cisco are seeing that the current product line will continue to w
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Not really.
Something like 90% of end users are running behind nat already. (Ok, I pulled that 90% figure right out of my ass, but you get the point). I know entire State agencies that are using their perfectly good world routable IPs ... (wait for it)... Behind a NAT!!!
Its not the way the net was designed to work, but we've been using it that way since dirt.
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I doubt APNIC will be the first, as they got three /8s (two requested and one of the final five) out of the final issuance from IANA. Barring a change in their issuing policy, ARIN is going to be the first to run out, followed by APNIC, then RIPE. LACNIC and AfriNIC are probably good for at least a year.
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Prefix delegation. You can't expect ISPs to configure static routes via SLAAC assigned addresses on customer router's WAN interfaces for the prefixes the customer is going to use on the LAN interface.
Re: (Score:2)
Name servers and NTP servers can be propagated via ND options as long as the client OS can pick up on those options.
DHCPv6 is primarily interesting for prefix delegation.