Sales of Unused IPv4 Addresses Gaining Steam 329
netbuzz writes "A growing number of U.S. carriers and enterprises are hedging their bets on IPv6 by purchasing blocks of unused IPv4 addresses through official channels or behind-the-scenes deals. There is certainly no shortage of stock, as these address brokers have blocks available that range from 65,000 to more than a million IPv4 addresses. And it's not just large companies and institutions benefiting, as one attorney who's involved in the market says he represents a woman who came into possession of a block of IPv4 address in the early '90s and now, 'She's in her 70s, and she's going to have a windfall.''"
The Year is 2021 (Score:5, Funny)
They approach the criminal's ancient Cadillac CTS and open the trunk. Inside is a briefcase packed with millions of little strips of white paper, each bearing an IPv4 address. Copbot 4X applies a small strip of multipurpose adhesive to his index finger with his mouth and reaches down to snag one of the strips. As he feeds it into his mouth and the ping trace times out he emits a satisfied Artoo Detoo whistle. "It's pure," he confirms as Friedeggs nods satisfactorily.
"You know, I think we're finally gonna catch these bastards. These addresses belong on display in the Guggenheim, not
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I imagined this whole thing as part of an episode of Futurama.
Spoof Is a Better Word (Score:3)
You do realize that GPS signals are completely passive, yes? The whole system works by computing your location relative to the GPS transmitters whose location are well known - it's impossible to hack something through the GPS signal.
So what happens when someone spams your GPS device with incorrect signals that lead you to believe that you're heading back to point A when in reality you're heading back to point B? Perhaps I should have used the word 'spoof' instead of 'hack' [slashdot.org] but the post itself is a joke.
Also, no Copbot would ever sample an unknown IP4 address like that, it might link him to malware or compromise his location.
I'm not aware of anyone being able to exploit the ping command in such a way today -- perhaps so in this future universe that will never exist ...
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Also, no Copbot would ever sample an unknown IP4 address like that, it might link him to malware or compromise his location.
I'm not aware of anyone being able to exploit the ping command in such a way today -- perhaps so in this future universe that will never exist ...
The fact that you pinged and got a response means the host on the other end knows you did it too, kind of like hearing a sonar ping in the ocean... But then his "errors" post was a joke too soo....
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You do realize that GPS signals are completely passive, yes?
Ah, that's where he got you, this is the FUTURE.
Re:The Year is 2021 (Score:5, Funny)
Not if you build a GUI using Visual Basic and backtrace the signal.
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Remember that such a complex task requires at least two individuals manning a keyboard.
Re:The Year is 2021 (Score:5, Funny)
Glaring errors.
You do realize that GPS signals are completely passive, yes? The whole system works by computing your location relative to the GPS transmitters whose location are well known - it's impossible to hack something through the GPS signal.
That was really good. But can you say it again, this time maybe using the voice from the Simpson's Comic Book Guy? That would be epic.
class a blocks (Score:5, Interesting)
ford could've averted their recent financial woes by auctioning off their 16 million ip addresses http://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-19-0-0-0-1 [arin.net]
Re:class a blocks (Score:5, Informative)
Ford was profitable in 09, 10, and 11. [yahoo.com]
So by "recent" I assume you mean 2008, when it lost 14.6 billion [businessweek.com].
From TFA, each address is worth about $12.
So unless math has changed and 12 x 16million equals 14.6 billion... No, they could not have "averted their recent financial woes by auctioning off their addresses".
not for sale! (Score:2, Funny)
I will never sell my ip address for any amount of money! It's 127.0.0.1!
It follows me where ever I go - it's very valuable, too.
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I know! 127.0.0.1 is like the best pr0n site ever!
I did not know that about you..
IPv4 forever? (Score:3)
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Yes and no - we have been running out, but we also haven't been sitting idly by while that happens. Stuff like NAT has become far more common, which takes the pressure off for a little while. It's not too different from the whole oil crisis - we have a limited amount, but new technologies and recycling techniques can extend the date where it's finally completely exhausted.
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And after we go through the kicking, screaming, hair pulling, and chair throwing to reclaim those blocks, it would push back exhaustion by about 15 months at best and then we're out again.
Re:IPv4 forever? (Score:5, Funny)
That's nothing. Wait until you see what happens when the clock rolls around on midnight on Dec 31st, 1999.
Re:IPv4 forever? (Score:5, Insightful)
Several oil rigs would have gone into shutdown had there not been an update to the timestamping of data before the change-over.
That nothing happens is not a case of 'there was no problem' it is a case of 'almost all shit got fixed'.
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Re:IPv4 forever? (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems that we have been running out of addresses for 10 years or something and everyone has been talking about moving to IPv6 since the late ninteties ? I am sure there is a limited range of numbers and the issue is real but also seems like fodder for sensationalist tech journal articles.
You are 100% correct. It was clear then and it is clear now how it will play out. All it takes is just a little analytic thinking: We will never run out of IPv4 addresses. Yes, you read it right: NEVER.
What will happen is that as supply of IPv4 remains flat, and demand for it goes up, supply and demand laws kick in, and the price of an IPv4 address goes up. As prices go up, people sitting on unused addresses will start selling them, and people that need them will start buying them (This article is a good example). So the market will naturally redistribute IPv4 addresses from wasteful uses to more productive uses. This will also mean that there will ALWAYS be an IPv4 address for you to purchase if you want to pay the price, that is why I say we will never run out of IPv4 addresses.
There will be a point, where cost of an IPv4 address will be greater than the cost of switching to IPv6. This threshold will start happening for a few sectors first. My guess is Business to Business applications and back office services first. At some point cell phones too since there are so many. At some point, ISP will start offering an IPv6 only plan with some backward compatible proxy which would be cheaper than IPv4 plan for consumers with limitations. Web sites will want to be optimized for these consumers, and will start offering their content in both protocols. This will make IPv6 switch less and less costly as more content is available for it. Once enough consumers are in IPv6, web sites will start ignoring IPv4 altogether to save the cost of an IPv4 address.
Eventually, enough momentum will be gained by IPv6 that IPv4 will go the way of the typewriter, where it is available, but nobody cares.
This will be a smooth transition, no crisis, no armagedon, just free market pushing the change slowly and efficiently. This process will take years. No one is or should be in a rush to switch or panic, just switch when it is cost effective to do so.
sounds a bit facebooky (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, windfall now, but next month when IPv6 day [worldipv6day.org] comes and all the IPv6 sites stay lit, they'll be worth a rapidly diminishing amount.
ArsTechnica has a nice piece about IPv6 [arstechnica.com] and why it's not going to be such a disaster thing after all, add to that the IPv6-capable [netgear.com] home [dlink.com] routers [cisco.eu] that are actually being made (at last!) and the ISPs who are rolling out IPv6 networking to their customers... and it's all looking rosy.
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IPv6 means unique IP's for everyone of your devices
that means no need for NAT and your "real" IP will be visible on the internets
marketers will love it since there will be no more need for cookies
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You don't even need cookies at all if you just track their IP address
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Who is switching IP addresses? With IPv6, your ISP has no shortage, so they will just give you a permanent one.
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ah, so you have no clue how ipv6 works
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you mistake what he's saying - IPv6 has a feature called "Privacy Extensions for Stateless Address Autoconfiguration in IPv6". [ietf.org]
This means that your IPv6 address can be randomly generated within your address range handed out by the ISP so that it (to practical purposes) changes all the time. Here's a quick blog entry [wordpress.com] about it.
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Fran - Windows uses a system called privacy extension which changes your address at regular intervals. This is done exactly to prevent tracking you by your address. You still have the option to use a static address but it is not the default.
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Sure, windfall now, but next month when IPv6 day [worldipv6day.org] comes and all the IPv6 sites stay lit, they'll be worth a rapidly diminishing amount.
ArsTechnica has a nice piece about IPv6 [arstechnica.com] and why it's not going to be such a disaster thing after all, add to that the IPv6-capable [netgear.com] home [dlink.com] routers [cisco.eu] that are actually being made (at last!) and the ISPs who are rolling out IPv6 networking to their customers... and it's all looking rosy.
The good thing about World IPv6 day this time is that it won't be turned off after a day.
It's about time that IPv6 became widely available. This should start w/ ISPs, who can provide DS or DS-lite to customers still needing IPv4 access. Other than that, since they'll ultimately have to convert anyway, they should get the ball rolling.
Other customers should do it whenever they plan equipment upgrades, so that this conversion accompanies such changes.
Another lost opportutity (Score:2)
I almost picked up a class b in the early days but i knew i didn't 'need' it, so never did.
Of course never thought this 'internet' thing would ever be of the slightest interest to the average guy..
Doh/2
It's Big Business (Score:2)
I'm of the opinion that Class A addresses were behind some of the large IT mergers. For example, DEC (16.0.0.0/8) was taken over by Compaq, who were later taken over by HP (15.0.0.0/8). So HP owns two adjacent Class A address spaces. That's got to be worth a pretty packet, and they don't really need 32 million addresses, do they?
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When all the IP v4 addresses are gone they can raise the price to several hundred dollars per address. Not too bad on a $5 investment and I bet will save the company and boast the share price as a result.
IBM has MANY IP addresses too. However, they bought them in the 1990s when they were much much bigger than today and had a half million employees.
Hoarding? (Score:2)
Sure we should all move to IPv6, but does anyone else think that hoarding a scarce resource just makes it scarcer?
Some of the early players were granted large swaths of IP space and they should return them if they are no longer needed.
Once again, a few greedy players screw things up for everybody else.
Regulation (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't normally support regulation and I am not sure I'd vote for this idea if asked to myself but I want to put it out there anyway.
What if we ban, that is right ban, the use ipv4 on publicly accessible networks after say 2018. Make it illegal to route ip4v addressed packet for a third party. This would force the move to ipv6. Which I think is good for freedom and the little guy. Yes that is right a forced migration is good for the little guy.
Its big business that has interests in keeping everyone on IPv4 and its actually big business who have the bigger investment in ipv4 only gear. The little guy can afford migrate.
What this is really about is ipv4 implies NAT. NAT implies third party brokers, which imply track ability, and opportunities to create digital toll booths. You can't just send files directly to each other; oh no they have be posted to some file sharing site so they can show you adds and the NSA has a good opportunity to data mine.
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That's a bit draconian. And probably unenforceable. And probably unconstitutional, come to think of it.
A more tolerable way would be "lead by example": pass a law saying all government networks must be IPv6 (both internally, and externally) by 2018, and that any networking and computing equipment purchased with taxpayer dollars after 2014 must be fully IPv6-capable (possibly with an exception for NSA et al. to buy completely non-TCP/IP stuff, if that's a thing they do). I know they already have some require
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Why does Valve care about IPv4 so much? (Score:2, Funny)
I mean, why is Valve giving IPv4 so much more steam? Is this a sale thing or something like that?
The key to IPv6 (Score:4, Interesting)
This is the key to transitioning to IPv6. People will transition to IPv6 as costs increase for IPv4. When transitioning to IPv6 is cheaper than buying IPv4 addresses, the change will come quickly.
Hopefully people will observe this and learn how change happens. It doesn't happen because you wish it would. It doesn't happen because you know The Right Way for everyone to manage their lives or their businesses or their operations. It is driven by tangible benefits, not ideology.
(Magically, this results in people seeing tangible benefits from their decisions rather than absorbing "unexpected" costs related to idealistic or mandatory early adoption.)
Pray, tell (Score:4, Insightful)
How, in any tangible way is she anything more than a cybersquatter? Also: 'came into possession'? What, they 'fell off the back of a truck'? Sounds as sketchy as the legal profession.
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Well it's the same as somebody parked on "sex.com" right? I mean if a .com can cybersquat why can't an old granny?
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If I buy a few million numbers out of a range of several billions when only a few thousand numbers of the entire range are ever going to be used, am I cybersquatting?
What about if two decades later it turns out everybody was wrong and we ARE using most of the range?
Maybe she knew somebody who got assigned 123.x.x.x and he gave her 123.123.x.x as a birthday present because he was broke so he couldn't give her a real present?
Those IP numbers were considered pretty much worthless when the internet started, wit
This one quote shows how dumb this whole thing is. (Score:2)
"It will be a slow, natural progression forward, with a lot of legacy IPv4 content and assets lying around,"
IPv4 content? Seriously? Assets? You mean old routers that don't support IPv6? if businesses have been buying enterprise network gear that only supports IPv4 then they deserve to have stacks of them sitting around, but there's no reason that an enterprise still can't use a LANA scheme and use NAT-PT at the edge. I swear people make the whole IPv6 thing seem like it will change the whole world, it
Watch the routing tables explode... (Score:2)
n/t
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You cannot own an address, you lease it.
From who? Come on boys and girls, the person you lease something from is called an... umm... what's that word? Help me out?
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
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And... ARIN or whoever can also revoke/reclaim them if they are not being used appropriately.
Working for a hosting provider we have to make sure and catch spammers and abusers or we might not get another allocation when we need them.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Funny)
I can. But that's because I'm not a penniless hippie. Wait... that's something else.
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They find a way (or pretend to), in much the same way as they find how to "own" an employee Facebook or Twitter account--if the law is not on their side, the post-nasty-legal-threat settlements will be.
Sublet (Score:5, Insightful)
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The 70-year-old lady "owns" the lease. She is (apparently) selling her rights to those addresses. So, yes, a person can't "own an address", but you can own the rights to use it.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
What utter and serious bullshit.
What else do you propose?
IPv4 address for regular allocation* have run out at the IANA and APNIC and will soon run out at RIPE and ARIN too.
Meanwhile IPv6 is still in it's infancy with the majority of end users not having access to the IPv6 internet. So if you want to run a public server it needs to have a v4 address.
Under these circumstances a market means that IPv4 address gradually rise in value and as that happens people will re-evalute what applications really need a public V4 address. Lack of a market means that addresses stay where they are even if they could be more lucrative elsewhere stifiling choice.
You cannot own an address, you lease it.
That is true for modern allocations, with older allocations the status is less clear.
But even for modern allocations the RIRs are coming round to the realisation that allowing some form of sales** is a good idea as part of managing the twilight years of IPv4. The alternative is that you will only be able to buy usable hosting services from providers who happen to have a pool of addresses already (most likely hosting providers who are also end-luser ISPs and so have addresses they can recover using ISP level NAT).
* There are still a few held back for special allocations.
** IIRC arin and ripe are requiring the recipiants of such sales to justify their address use to reduce hoarding.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
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Strange. Most people who own a house are pretty sure they own that property, and the address is a description of its location.
Did you mean "you cannot own an IP address?"
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Do you have no idea how property works?
You don't actually own your own land in most cases/countries, you lease it from the government (or something to that same effect).
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Free Waterfall Junior: "You can't own property, man."
Farnsworth: "I can. But that's because I'm not a penniless hippie."
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Re:Exactly why we don't need IPv6 (Score:5, Insightful)
Started out strong. I like the reference to oil. That could have been modded up funny, until that bullcrap about keeping the dot formatting. Are you really afraid of colons instead of dots? Or is it the hexidecimal numbers that frighten you? IPv6 solves more issues than just IP address exhaustion... autoconfiguration, routing, etc. It's going to happen and you'll have to crack a book. Deal with it.
Re:Exactly why we don't need IPv6 (Score:5, Funny)
I completely agree... anyone who complains about IPv6 is a troll.. 3ffe:1900:4545:3:200:f8ff:fe21:67cf is incredibly easy to remember.
Re:Exactly why we don't need IPv6 (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe you should try DNS sometime
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Not sure if DNS solves all of the problems though.
On my home network, I've got my own machines, and I have my work laptop. Since my work laptop isn't allowed to join my "home" workgroup, there is no DNS which will work between by laptop and my machine. I can't change that part of my network config either.
The only way to do file/printer sharing is by IP address. Possibly a limitation of Windows that doesn't allow you to do any 'real' networking between machines unless you
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Are you aware that you can run software on windows machines that is not provided by microsoft but by other vendors?
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Why, no. Here I've been limiting myself to minesweeper, notepad, solitaire, and the calculator. Stupid me. I've been doing this computer thing wrong for the last 20 years.
But, seriously, what software would you suggest which will give me in-house DNS that my locked down work laptop will play nicely with? I can't change the workgroup/domain it's a member of. I've never had much luck in gett
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I've never had much luck in getting two Windows machines to handle file sharing without opening up perms fully since there's no mutual authentication that I can work out
What's amusing is that you started out complaining about DNS, and when we get to the bottom of your complaint, it turns out that it's all based on your ignorance of Windows authentication.
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Authentication is something different, but the thread is about DNS. BIND, probably the same DNS that your IP-Hoster is running so it is likely proven that your laptop is playing nicely with it, is available for windows. The DHCP server in your router can tell all local machines that they should ask your local DNS to resolve addresses.
Or, you could add all your local devices IP numbers to the hosts file on all machines. For a small number of machines this should be feasible.
I am not an expert on authetificat
Re:Exactly why we don't need IPv6 (Score:4, Insightful)
Huh? Um, exactly what's the DHCP server on that network there? Does that DHCP server advertise a DNS server? Can you modify the DNS server?
Alternately, can turn of the DHCP server on that wireless router that only does caching recursive DNS, and install a DNS server and DHCP server on your other computer, and run that?
And then, why again do you need to run your own DNS server anyway? Won't the people who give you the /64 take requests to add records? Or use one of the dynamic DNS protocols that allows you to register your IP? And I think there's yet another answer that involves anycast and autoconf...
Or maybe I'm just completely not understanding what you mean by "join my 'home' network".
IPv6 has some pretty good autoconf out of the box. You use RADVD to just announce services, you don't need any software managing IP addresses because the nodes will do that themselves. And when you want to use some service that isn't a pure client-server-http thing, the fact that each computer has a unique IP on that other side of the firewall is helpful. And for the most part, the "OMG, that's hard" retoric is horribly overblown. Get a /64. Configure a route-announce daemon (things your ISP can do for you). IPv6! Free!
Setting up a game, I was trying to debug a connection problem someone had, and sent them to a site that tells you IP addresses. A different friend went there, and discovered he had an IPv6 address. His ISP had provided it for him, and he had literately never known. It wasn't relevant. That's the experience you should expect.
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Re:Exactly why we don't need IPv6 (Score:4, Interesting)
DHCPv6 is not the only way to do it, so mandating it is kind of silly
With zeroconf and IPv6 autoconfig, you don't actually need to run a DHCP server at all.
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Read up on the privacy extensions, which are essentially like ephemeral ports except they're just randomly-changing addresses. They work quite nicely.
Furthermore, why would you ever want to reuse an address, unless it's static? There's effectively no limit.
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Could you further explain this attack vector, cause I've not really understood it so far. The bad guy has your IP address. Exactly what is the additional harm in letting him know your MAC address?
I understand the issue of "probable iphone MAC => iphone specific vulnerabilities", but that doesn't seem to be what you're talking about here. (And really, that's not a significant barrie
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once they've excavated what your MAC address is, telling your router to route traffic to your node is trivial.
If they can administer your router, it is trivial to discover your MAC address whether you use IPv4 or IPv6 and whether you pick static or automatic assignments. The MAC address is kept in the ARP table for IPv4 and in the neighbor table for IPv6.
Anyway, every modern OS supports privacy extensions to autoconf, so just enable that (they will likely be enabled already). It's a bitch to write firewall rules when the IP address changes daily though.
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Can you assign multiple IPv4 addresses to your network card on your PC?
You can, and if they are in the same subnet it will even work. If they are NOT in the same network, it works until it doesn't. There are important cases where it works flawlessly, like if every other machine in the same subnet ALSO has an address in both subnets. Good luck enforcing them.
And yes, I'll likely get a hundred replies with "multiple addresses in different subnets work for fine me". Good for you. Don't touch anything, and if you do, don't complain when it breaks.
In IPv6 it actually works, as long
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Since my work laptop isn't allowed to join my "home" workgroup, there is no DNS which will work between by laptop and my machine.
At least assign a static IPv6 address to your laptop then add it to your HOSTS file. The biggest issue people have moving from IPv4 to v6 is they're not used to have many IP addresses per machine. This will be the standard for IPv6. Create static addresses.
The only way to do file/printer sharing is by IP address.
On my Win7 network, my $60 HP printer can be addressed via name because of P2P name resolution protocols. Should work if you're in the same broadcast domain and same subnet assuming your systems and devices support the protocols. Even the PS3 resolves and
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For internal to my own network, I'm not sure what IPV6 offers *me*
Probably nothing. Most small internal networks won't benefit.
IPv6 has private addresses, just like IPv4 except the chance of collision is vanishingly small. With IPv6 you can properly route packets to your buddy's lan without requiring one of you to change their private IP addresses.
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"Possibly a limitation of Windows"
There you go.
And no, if it's your home network you don't need IPv6. You don't need IP either, really. You could use something else. Nobody cares.
IPv6 is for when you want to talk to someone who isn't part of your home network.
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IPv6 is for when you want to talk to someone who isn't part of your home network.
With IPv6 autoconf, you can just plug your computers into your network and you don't have to configure them at all. Isn't that how a home network is supposed to work?
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On my home network, I've got my own machines, and I have my work laptop. Since my work laptop isn't allowed to join my "home" workgroup, there is no DNS which will work between by laptop and my machine. I can't change that part of my network config either.
There is Zeroconf, which Apple calls Bonjour. Your machines probably already speak it.
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We could then stop having people throw hissy fits over the numbering convention. They could stick to their AOLesque corner of the internet for as long as they like.
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Actually, that's one of the first things that the IETF tried - making the first 12 bytes of the address all zero, and just overlaying the last one to be what was called 'IPv4 compatible IPv6 addresses'. This was deprecated in 2004. Another set of addresses, which were ::ffff:w:x:y:z, which was called 'IPv4 mapped IPv6 addresses' also existed, but while that's not been deprecated, it's rarely used, its support is implementation dependent and its use is generally discouraged.
Unlike IPv4, where addresses w
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Are you really afraid of colons instead of dots?
I'm not sure about the parent, but using colons as separators was insanely stupid. For example:
fe80:0000:0000:0000:0202:b3ff:fe1e:8329
fe80:0:0:0:202:b3ff:fe1e:8329
fe80::202:b3ff:fe1e:8329
The first two examples are a complete IP address. I know that the address is complete and doesn't contain a port number at the end. HOWEVER, the third example doesn't tell me shit. Does "fe80::202:b3ff:fe1e:8329" actually stand for an IP address of "fe80:0000:0000:0000:0202:b3ff:fe1e:8329" or does it stand for "fe80:000
Re:Exactly why we don't need IPv6 (Score:5, Informative)
Does "fe80::202:b3ff:fe1e:8329" actually stand for an IP address of "fe80:0000:0000:0000:0202:b3ff:fe1e:8329" or does it stand for "fe80:0000:0000:0000:0000:0202:b3ff:fe1e with port 8329"?
The former, your ip:port example would be [fe80::202:b3ff:fe1e]:8329
RFC3986
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> most geeks, can't just auto convert hex in their head or spot patterns easily in hex, its just not how we work.
As it was once, so again it shall be.
You couldn't be a geek prior to 1980 without knowing how to convert hex to decimal to binary to octal.
Re:Exactly why we don't need IPv6 (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you HONESTLY say that if someone showed you a pile of IP V6 addresses and said "One of these has a problem in either the address or the subnet" you could just pick it out on the fly?
Don't we have, like, computers, that do that kind of thing?
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Can you HONESTLY say that if someone showed you a pile of IP V6 addresses and said "One of these has a problem in either the address or the subnet" you could just pick it out on the fly?
Yes. Learn about IPv6 addresses, you can pick up a ton of information just looking at the address. First subnets (called links now) are all the same size, to do something like you ask you only need to look at half of the address. My address block is 2001:1448:201::/48 - very easy to tell if an address starts with that or not! Compare that to IPv4 subnets that requires a calculator to find the first and the last address included in the subnet (192.168.102.252/21 - give me address range please, only the most
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If you need that many words to explain how simple something is, you've already lost.
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IPv6 is just annoying! What's the deal anyway with 2^64 devices on your personal network? This is way over-specified.
Having more addresses than you need is annoying? I'd have thought having too few (i.e. the current situation in v4) would be the more annoying situation.
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It's not annoying, but I do think the IETF could have defined it better. Instead of only the first 12 bytes being used for the global prefix, the first 16 bytes could have been so assigned. After that, the subnet could have been assigned 4 or 8 bytes, and the interface ID the remainder. Advantage of this would have been a more hierarchical structure to it, especially at the subnet level.
I understand the auto-configuration argument that has been made - Ethernet link-layer (MAC) addresses are 48 bit, whi
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Fragmented routing tables is a BIG issue. Route table fragmentation is in
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Like drilling for oil, more efficient extraction techniques can efficiently harvest the (many) remaining IPv4 blocks. And let's face it: IPv6 is not favored by the man on the Clapham omnibus. He understands the clean format of IPv4, but IPv6 is just annoying! What's the deal anyway with 2^64 devices on your personal network? This is way over-specified. Some practical geeks need to come up with a clean extension to IPv4 (48 bits should be plenty) that uses the current dot formatting.
This is an incredibly stupid post - who ever bothers remembering any IP addresses - be it v4 or v6? It's just something the devices use to communicate w/ each other - other than that, people use DNS and easy to remember names. There is a fine argument to be made about colons vs periods, but beyond a point, it's just being anal. And I agree that having 2*64 for a link is overkill, although this was probably done to enable auto-configuration. This is one thing where I think that the designers of IPv6 coul
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Actually, the ad hoc way in which IPv4 address blocks were first assigned is primarily responsible for the situation we are in today. The way it's being done now by the IETF, IANA and the RIRs is the right way of doing it.
Imagine you were a company in those days - the 70s - you'd typically get even an entire Class A block, even though you would probably never have 16 million employees at any given time. Your admins set up your network so that nothing is subnetted, you have a beautiful, flat address spac
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Come on, no one is rolling out a data center with a million new boxes. And all of them internet facing? Really? No multi-tier architectures?
Apple sells 13 millon iPhones in a quarter. They're ALL internet facing, no multi-tier architectures, and they ALL need IP addresses!
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You dont see them howling for more.
Why not google for:
www.nokiasiemensnetworks.com
"Nokia Siemens Networks Moving to Ipv6: An urgent priority"
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> 1 by federal law require that all routers (even the rockbottom cheapo ones) be able to deal with IPv6 when sold after %date%
What in the US Constitution gives the US federal government authority to regulate the protocols supported by routers?
> 2 require that all ISP provided equipment be IPv6 capable by %date%+15 days WITH NO CUSTOMER COST
What in the US Constitution gives the US federal government authority to regulate ISP provided equipment with regard to network protocols?
> 3 require that the IS
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What in the US Constitution gives the US federal government authority to regulate the protocols supported by routers?
If those routers are crossing state lines then it's well established that the federal government can require that they are all painted green.
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