IPv6 to Finally Go Mainstream in June 2012

If SOPA and PIPA get passed we will have more IPv4 addresses available.... happy to see IPv6 finally going "live".

Good to hear. Now the problem: We've all been disabling IPv6 on all devices, computers, servers, etc for yers now becuase it wasn't being used and unnecessary. Now we'll have to go and enable all of that again and reconfigure. I'll assume IPv4 will be compatiable as well and work just fine during the transition..... but now I wish I left IPv6 turned on for all my devices and servers, lol.

This just in...

MPAA Calls the Internet Society's IPv6 Launch Day Dangerous and Irresponsible!!

Where is IPv5?
I want a BJ.

My end device is IPv4 only. I hope new local routers will continue to convert v4-v6.

Nobody likes odd numbers..... or BJ's.... ok, maybe just odd numbers...

Tomato and DD-WRT are your friends! Don't buy a router that doesn't allow custom firmware.

This quote:

[citation]For the uninitiated, IPv4 only supports approximately four billion IP addresses. But due to the "explosion" of people, devices, and web services now accessing the global network, that large number is nearly depleted. To resolve this, a next-generation protocol -- IPv6 -- is slowly being introduced which will provide more than "340 trillion, trillion, trillion" addresses. That should be enough to sustain the Internet's growth "indefinitely."[/citation]

Will go down with the now infamous, "...you'll only need 640k of memory".

No, they don't; because IPv6 addresses are tied to devices thus giving grounds to overturning the fact that an IP address is not a person. Making it easier to hunt people down and wreck their lives for fun.

Censorship too hard? Having trouble pushing bad legislation? Ha!
Just implement IPv6 on your country's network, push it as an "technological advancement", and you can finally track people on a device-based level (the MAC address of the machine is embedded into the IPv6 address).

If someone accesses sites that aren't friendly to your country's (or business's) views, just ship them off for re-education somewhere.

Plus, the 128-bit address is a clusterf*ck. You can memorize 12 numbers but you can't do that for a very long string of numbers.
So when DHCP isn't working, who are you going to call?
When you have to have a static IP, how are you going to remember those numbers and letters? How about hundreds of devices that need them?

You wanted NAT? Oh, sorry; there's just no conceivable need we can see, so we'll not put that into the standard. Of course you couldn't see that; it was 1996 when you thought that up! Of course, someone's come up with a solution but that should NOT have been necessary!

Oh, and the group that created this standard won't change it to be more useable.
So there's that too.

I'm sorry, but I don't buy into IPv6. Make version 7/8, do it right, and then I'll join you.
But as it stands IPv6 just isn't ready and shouldn't be implemented because it's not the protocol we need.

I don't think you have a grasp of just how big 2^128 is. To put it into prospective you could have the entire IPv4 space (2^32) 79,228,162,514,264,337,593,543,950,336 times. This is not some memory analogy since these units represent hosts, where as a host could be a giant system that scales on it's own independent of it's host ip. I think the statement "indefinitely" is quite valid.

Jesus...

@LuckyDucky7
While I agree with IP tracking becoming more of a problem you're a bit of an oaf if you think IPv6 will be used on private networks.

You just need a cable modem/dsl modem/t-1 cisco/ whatever that is ipv6 capable or at least can be flashed to support it.

Youre existing internal network will continue to function just fine.

And on June 5th, the major players ( AT&T, Comcast, Free Telecom, Internode, KDDI, Time Warner Cable and XS4ALL) will announce that they aren't ready yet, they've been too rushed to implement this properly and need another 10 months, maybe a year - plus they have to raise proces because it's costing them a fortune to make the changes.

News From 2030:
Due to the explosive use of nano machines which each carry their own individual IP address, people are now being forced to IPv8 (IPv7 apparently disappears just like IPv5 due to being an odd number).

In other news... looks like it may be time to upgrade my old wireless router soon...

Do I get free IPv6 IPs to go along with my current static IPv4 IPs?

This. If every person on Earth got a new device every single second for the rest of their lives that each required its own IP address, we still wouldn't even come close to using 1% of the available addresses. Indefinitely is a very valid term to use.

Except it has to be. IPv6 requires every device to have a uniquely addressable address to enforce "end to end" connectivity. If your internal network is IPv4 it won't be able to access IPv6 address's. 6 to 4 NAT is not automatic, you need to configure it for each site on the router.

Anyhow this is all moot, as NAPT66 has been created, and it works.

http://code.google.com/p/napt66/

The very thing the IPV6 working group was trying to avoid, an ad-hoc non-standard creation of NAT ended up happening because they refused to make their own standard.

I understand perfectly how big this is. I also understand that they have assigned ranges to the various planets. The point is thus, the internet is only about 40 years old and we almost used up every IP address under IPv4, if it weren't for things like NAT, we'd have exhausted IPv4 several years ago.

Likewise, when the 640k memory comment was made, that was 20 years ago (at the end of the 80s, start of the 90s), and yet now we see a lot of systems that require 2G minimum to run effectively, some run effectively on less. Look no further than the amount of RAM that has gone into Smart phones in just the last 3 years.

So, saying that you'll have more than enough IP addresses, other areas show exactly the opposite is the case. Will it be 40 years before we're looking at IPv8? Who knows. But saying that with IPv6 means you'll have all you'll ever need, that's been proven wrong before in several cases.

LuckyDucky7 said:

"Plus, the 128-bit address is a clusterf*ck. You can memorize 12 numbers but you can't do that for a very long string of numbers.
So when DHCP isn't working, who are you going to call?
When you have to have a static IP, how are you going to remember those numbers and letters? How about hundreds of devices that need them?"

My friend, a little news about IPv6. First off, you don't ever have to worry about static addresses. IPv6 supports stateful and stateless configurations. In other words, you can use DHCP, static (like IPv4), or publish the IPv6 prefix on an IPv6 Router for a particular link (subnet).

Moreover, IPv6 requires mandatory support for IPSec. This means any system using IPv6, no matter what type of system it is, will have to support it. All we need then is a general consensus that all communications should be encrypted.

I sincerely believe that the future of Internet communications will have the "Expectations of privacy". In Canada, this means that you can't sniff or decrypt without a warrant. Plus, decrypting AES-128 or AES-256 ain't no easy task.

I'm actually looking forward to implementing IPv6 in our company and at home.

LuckyDucky7, just wondering... how much solid technical knowledge do you have about IPv6? Is your understanding about it based on abbreviated blurbs on the net or are you a CCIE with a PHD?

Also, do you know that IPv6 will have hierarchical routing? No longer will Internet Routers have 30-40 thousand routes to manage. Plus the maximum hops will be greatly reduced. This should reduced latency and improve efficiency.

I know that with the current state of affairs my home is given a grand sum of 2 IP addresses, a main, and an alternate. Inside my network I have ~10-15 devices that use an IP which is assigned by my router. My biggest feat about this is that my ISP (in all their infinite wisdom) will charge me per IP address because each one is it's own 'internet connection' rather than paying for a base bandwidth to spread among my devices. Also, it is public information what IP addresses are assigned to a person's home, but not the devices within the home. When this is implemented will I then have to register each and every web enabled device I own to my ISP? And then could someone look up how many devices I own rather than the current model where they just know that I exist? That alone creeps me out a bit, much less the encryption issues that come along with all of this open and direct connecting. One of the many reasons to upgrade to a newer Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge processor, as they have dedicated hardware for this soon to be required encryption.
Don't get me wrong, in many ways I like it and the open simplicity that it will bring, and the faster/less hoping connections that will be involved. It's just that in the wrong hands (like any technology) it could bring more power to bigger governments and organizations rather than freedom to the users.

While the absolute amount of I addresses is staggering and should last 'forever'; do keep in mind that not every address will be used !
Addresses are assigned in blocks. Some users, organizations or even countries may receive a block that is much larger that needed but the unused addresses in there are still 'off the market'.
Think of it this way, if the IP address space assigned to the USA is exhausted and Zimbabwe has a few hundred unused ones they can not simply be used by Us customers.

Still, that's a lot of addresses. Maybe we can give each stream processor on a graphics card finally its own IP address. I don't see what practical use it could have, but we did not know what to do with the Wright flyer either at first :-)

I live in Japan with an extremely fast fiber connection and IPv6. I've been on IPv6 for years now and I have an internal router set up as well running IPv4 and NAT. It works.

And I live in South Korea. I have 100Mbps cat-5 "internet". Basically the major ISP's run 10g fiber to each apartment then internally run a fiber distribution layer with each apartment having a 100mbps wall switch that runs the copper to the individual rooms. No models, no dsl, no cable, just plain Ethernet. Tested 90+Mbps down 60+Mbps up to a server located a few hundred km away. All this for 36,000 KRW a month, or about $30 USD.

Your not using NAT64, your using carrier grade IPv4 NAT. You using your IPv6 connection to access IPV4 devices, which is automatic, otherwise your running dual stacks. Going from an IPv4 device to access an IPv6 host is impossible as the IPv4 device doesn't' know how to address the IPv6 host. What you do instead is run a NAT GW that visualizes the IPv6 connection over a local IPv4 address and the IPv4 device would instead access the local vitualized address that the GW would then route to the IPv6 host. Because there are more potential IPv6 address's then reserved private IPv4 address's, you must manually configure each external IPv6 host your IPv4 device would need to access.

The whole point was that if you want to access IPv6 hosts dynamically you are forced to use a IPv6 stack and thus expose your network topology and device information to anyone listening. There is no such thing as a "private" network with IPv6, it was designed with the concept of exposing every single connected device in the entire world to every other connected device.

Now we could try to speak about bogey men hiding in the shadows, but honestly that's not the biggest issue. Your ISP is the most threatening entity to you. Their the ones who write the contract that you must sign to get service, their the ones with the capability to legally enumerate and meter your network. And there the ones who will use your now exposed internal topology to maximize "new and untapped revenue streams". Basically charge my device and service rather then a single flat rate.

$19.99 for "basic" IPv6 service that includes http / ftp access and email. Another $9.99 to be able to download streamed movies. Another $6.99 to be allowed to play online games with your console, but at a reduce speed. Need the power gamer pro pack at $19.99 to get access to all servers without restricted speeds. If you want your cell phones or tablet devices, need to pay $15.99 for two devices, or $19.99 for the bargain family pack.

Your "communications" bill will explode from $20~40 USD a month to $80+ once they get done tallying all the extra devices and gadgets you have.

Don't believe me, look at what the wireless ISP's are doing right now.

I think I may take the day off on June 6th, switching to IPv6 may be a good idea but surely there will be a human error in the implementation and things will FUBAR

Just finished reading Neal Stevenson's "The Diamond Age" and that was the first thing I thought of when I read this article.

Balister: "I understand perfectly how big this is."

That's what she said