IPv6 Deployment Picking Up Speed 158
An anonymous reader writes "The Internet's addressing authority (IANA) ran out of IPv4 Internet addresses in early 2011. The IPv6 protocol (now 15 years old) was designed exactly for this scenario, as it provides many more addresses than our foreseeable addressing needs. However, IPv6 deployment has so far been dismal, accounting for 1% of total traffic (the high-end of estimates). A recent paper by researchers at the Cooperative Association for Internet Data analysis (CAIDA) indicates that IPv6 deployment may be picking up at last. The paper, published at the Internet Measurement Conference (IMC) shows that the IPv6 network shows signs of maturing, with its properties starting to resemble the deployed IPv4 network. Deployment appears to be non-uniform, however; while the 'core' of the network appears to be ready, networks at the 'edges' are lacking. There are geographical differences too — Europe and the Asia Pacific region are ahead of North America."
New Rule: (Score:5, Interesting)
New Rule:
Websites are only allowed to try to garner page-views on IPv6 when all the websites that article is posted on are available over IPv6.
the real game changer: 4G (Score:4, Interesting)
The game changer here is that US cell phone companies have finally figured out that 4 layers of NAT isn't exactly a great way to manage a growing network, and are switching to IPv6 for their 4G networks. That is millions of customers right there, using IPv6 without even knowing about it.
Pieces are falling into place, it's just a matter of time now. And if you lobby your ISP instead of complaining about it, you may get it native too soon enough.
BTW: for those worried about the switch, let me just mention that both ipv6.google.com and www.kame.net (common test IPv6 addresses) are reachable in *less* latency and *less* hops than their ipv4 counterparts. IPv6 rocks.
Non-sensical customary units of fail (Score:4, Interesting)
I learned under metric, for me those "customary" units of height are very hard to grasp.
In metric, everything is in tens, you add or subtract zeros, thats it.
A meter contains 10 decimeters (rarely used), a decimeter contains 10 centimeters, a centimeter contains 10 milliliters, etc.
http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/prefixes.html [nist.gov]
Customary/Imperial units are a mess, and to make matters worse, you don't use a single unit but TWO different ones for measuring things (feet AND inches?). What the hell is an inch? half a feet? quarter? decimal? no... its freaking 1/12. OF COURSE you don't fit 12 feet in a yard, that would be too easy, its 3... AND you also don't fit 12 pica in an inch, but 6...
To make sense of your nonsense, we have to convert to a single unit first (eg. inches), and THEN move to metric, that is not a trivial mental operation for many.
Another American annoyance is paper sheet sizes. But there are many more areas for frustration in those outdated customs.
Let them sink in their isolation, is what we say here.