6Bone IPv6 Network Shutting Down Tomorrow

theberf writes "On June 6, 2006 the experimental IPv6 network, the 6bone, will be shut down. All 3FFE:: addresses will revert to the IANA and should no longer be used. All IPv6 traffic should now be using production IPv6 addresses delegated by Regional Internet Registries. The 6Bone has been in operation for 10 years." Here's some more information about "IPv6 day."

IPv6day.org slowly being slashdotted

[thib_gc]

From the website:

In March 2003, the IETF decided that was the right time to start the phase-out of the IPv6 experimental network (6Bone), which started in 1996. This included a phase-out plan that defined that on 6 of June of 2006, no 6Bone prefixes will be used on the Internet in any form.

Moreover, the IETF IPv6 working group has started the process to advance the core IPv6 specifications to the last step in the IETF standardisation Process (e.g., Standard). IETF protocols are elevated to the Internet Standard level when significant implementation and successful operational experience has been obtained. Vendors with IPv6 products are encouraged to participate in this process by identifying their IPv6-enabled products at the IPv6-to-Standard site.

This event want to acknowledge the efforts of all the 6Bone participants, the IETF community which developed IPv6, other organizations engaged in the IPv6 promotion, and operators and end-users that have been early adopters. All them have been key contributors for the success of IPv6. Service Providers and other organisations that provide on-line IPv6 services are encouraged to register those services in the IPv6 Day website.

On June 6, 2006, end-users will be able to connect to the above web site to learn about issues like how to turn-on IPv6 in their operating systems, how to obtain IPv6 connectivity and how to try some of the available services.

With the occasion of this virtual celebration, we have a couple of quotes from two key people on this subject:

        * Bob Fink (6Bone Project): "After more than ten years of planning, development and experience with IPv6, with efforts from all around the world, it is gratifying for me to see the 6Bone phase-out on the 6th of June 2006, having served it's purpose to stimulate IPv6 deployment and experience, leaving IPv6 a healthy ongoing component of the future of the Internet!"
        * Brian Carpenter (IBM, co-author of multiple IPv6 RFCs and IETF chair): "It's very encouraging to see IPv6 moving forward both technically and commercially, with its address assignments now routinely managed by the same registries that look after the rapidly diminishing IPv4 address pool. I look forward to the day the Internet reaches ten billion active nodes with public addresses, which will only be possible with IPv6."

Experimenting with IPv6

[Midnight Thunder]

I feel that while we don't need IPv6 yet, waiting until we do need it would be foolish. Think of this in the same terms as the Y2K issue, which never became an issue because people took proactive action.

Some useful IPv6 related links:
    - http://www.simphalempin.com/dev/miredo/ [simphalempin.com]
    - http://evanjones.ca/macosx-ipv6.html [evanjones.ca]
    - http://www.bieringer.de/linux/IPv6/ [bieringer.de]
    - http://www.hexago.com/ [hexago.com]
    - https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/590/ [mozilla.org] - displays ipv6 address in firefox, if it has one
    - http://www.ipv6.org/impl/windows.html [ipv6.org]

All that is really needed is for the pockets of IPv6 networks to join up, rather than staying as pockets. Maybe an IPv6 based P2P or something of the sorts might help provide some sort of momentum.

Re:so, is *anyone* outside academia using IPv6?

[El Torico]

I'd really like to see dozens of replies from people using this... because I'd say that IPv6 adoption right now is going about as well as metric system adoption in the US has gone.

It should go faster; at least the DoD is mandating adoption of IPv6 by Service Agencies. This will prove to be an "incentive" for those ISPs that contract to the DoD, which is probably every U.S. Tier One ISP. As for pure IPv6, that may never happen completely.

Re:so, is *anyone* outside academia using IPv6?

[Anonymous Coward]

You analogy of the metric system in the US is a good example of why "everyone thinks [IPv6 is] weird and counter-intuitive."

I remember when I was in grade school they started that big push to get metric used. The biggest problem (at least from my perspective) is that, not being born in to it, I never had a native/intuitive feel for metric. I can visualize 5 1/2 miles... I can break the distance down in my head to a number of city blocks (another imperial measurement), and even spatially in comparison to the size of my city. I can't do the same in metric any more than I can speak French with out an accent.

The gist of it is, if the community wants to move over to IPv6 then make a full switch and not stand in the middle of the road... it'll be painful, but at least the next generation will have been born in to it.

Re:Experimenting with IPv6

[Keruo]

> Maybe an IPv6 based P2P or something of the sorts might help provide some sort of momentum.

Shh. Don't tell anyone, that NNTP(usenet) is ipv6 compatible, and has free servers(ipv6 only) which don't require monthly fees.
And bittorrent doesn't have any issues with ipv6 either.
 

Re:so, is *anyone* outside academia using IPv6?

[lelitsch]

Given that the Federal (US) government is required [govexec.com] by the OMB to switch to IPv6 by June 2008, I seriously hope you are not looking to do any business with them or any federal contractor after that date.

On the other hand, in typical US government fashion, according to the GAO implementation speed is seriously behind schedule [gao.gov].

Re:Privacy Implications of IPv6

[Tony Hoyle]

Don't worry IPV6 has NAT too.

And if you ever have an ISP that supports it they'll very probably give you a /128 and you'll be in the exact same position you are now.

Basically IPV6 is no change to the normal user. Only large coroporate users will see the change, and they'll NAT as a basic security measure anyway.

Re:Privacy Implications of IPv6

[TheGavster]

IPv6 has NAT. The larger address space is only one of the changes that the new standard makes (it's just the most visible, and easiest to describe). IPv6 also allows for better security, QoS routing, and new 'plug and play' autoconfiguration capabilities (ie, generate an IP address from the hardware address)

Sure there is.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

As it stands, there is no real impetus to use ipv6.

Beg to differ.

IPv6 is used in certain foreign countries - at least partly to support mobile computing.

You can't sell networking equipment into some of them (notably Japan) without having an IPv6 solution available.

Re:Well, it ipv6 has to start somewhere

[rcw-home]

Even under IPv6, you'd still get a /128 under the billing schemes that the incumbents prefer.

No, the plan is to hand out a /48 even to dialup customers [x42.com].

Re:Privacy Implications of IPv6

[Ant P.]

IPv6 has better than NAT: Pseudorandom, non-permanent IP addresses.

Re:So--that's it for IPV6 then...

[nsayer]

Not even close.

The 6bone was always meant to be a temporary experimental network. Nowadays allocations in the 2001:: network can be had from some ISPs, and the 6to4 network (2002::) is available for anyone with a single routable IPv4 address.

Re:Privacy Implications of IPv6

[kestasjk]

You'll still be able to use NAT if you want. The difference is you won't have to use NAT, and entire cities which are currently using NAT (Milan for one IIRC) can start to use public IPs again.

Re:So--that's it for IPV6 then...

[DA-MAN]

Good luck finding an ISP that supports the 192.88.99.1 6to4 gateway let alone gives you a proper ipv6 address. All the ISPs shutdown that address a few years ago as far as I can tell.

Done!

http://www.hexago.com/index.php?pgID=20 [hexago.com]

Quote: Freenet6 is powered by Hexago's flagship product, the Migration Broker®, which allows users to take advantage of innovative features such as a permanent IPv6 address and prefix, as well as DNS registration and reverse delegation. Freenet6 users can get IPv6 connectivity from anywhere, including from behind any NAT device or from outside of their home network.

Re:Privacy Implications of IPv6

[adrianmonk]

I honestly don't understand the hard-on a lot of people seem to have for IPv6. I LIKE NAT. I thinks it's neat. I like the idea that my systems can have un-real IP addresses. IP addresses that can actually change!

IP addresses that can conflict with the range of addresses that some Internet cafe chose when you try to VPN into your network from outside! Conflicts that cause routing nightmares! Hey, my home network and Starbucks are both using 192.168.1.0/24 so it's impossible to tell the difference between my 192.168.1.99 and the 192.168.1.99 that another Starbuck's customer is using! Yay! ;-)

Seriously though, the public side of the NAT has to have a routable address. With IPv6, you could have a routable address for the hosts on your private network, but you don't have to have that address visible in any packets that leave your private network. You can still do NAT, and your routable addresses won't be visible to the outside world, just like your 192.168.1.0/24 addresses aren't visible to the outside world right now.

Re:Why the funky addresses?

[petermgreen]

they decided to make the addresses far bigger for several reasons

1: they didn't wan't a repeat of the IPV4 mess of running short of addresses in the space of a few decades and having to implement a lot of additional complexity in network routing to overcome this (classless routing).
2: they wanted stateless autoconfiguration for machines on a lan based on thier mac address (this is why half the address is alocated for use within a lan).
3: they wanted to have a clear demarcation between hirachy levels (/16 for really major groupings, currently 6bone, production and 6to4,/32 for ISPs,/48 for end sites, /64 for lans).

As for the "funky" style (groups of 4 hexadecimal digits) its just to make the human readable form of a 128 bit quantity a bit more concise. It also makes it easier to see how CIDR masks will apply to the address.

Re:so, is *anyone* outside academia using IPv6?

[petermgreen]

its likely just a link local address (it begins with fe80 right?).

first assuming the linux box has a public IPV4 ip and your isp isn't providing native IPV6 connectivity you wan't to setup 6to4 on the linux box.

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Linux+IPv6-HOWTO/configuring -ipv6to4-tunnels.html [tldp.org]

then you'll need to use other parts of that howto to assign a /64 to the lan and set up routing within the /48 that 6to4 gives you.

Re:Why the funky addresses?

[bmah]

The "funky address style" is just a way of expressing the much longer IPv6 addresses in a way that's 1) not onerous to enter manually, for the cases where you need to do this and 2) visually and syntactically different from existing IPv4 addresses.

At one point (~1994) the IPng working group in the IETF was contemplating 64-bit addresses, but roughly, they decided to go to 128 bits with the reasoning that they didn't want to repeat another major transition a few years down the road. (Think long-term...I think the goal was for at least a 20-year lifetime for the protocol.) Well, it's taken quite a bit longer for IPv6 to be widely adopted than was once originally believed, for a variety of reasons, but that was the rationale.

IPv6 got its version number from the value 6 assigned to it in the IP header (the "header version" field is the first four bits). The value 5 was already assigned to an experimental and mostly-forgotten network protocol called ST-II (I think). So "IPv5" was never really an option.

Re:so, is *anyone* outside academia using IPv6?

[igb]

at least the DoD is mandating adoption of IPv6 by Service Agencies

They did the same for OSI at one stage, as did most European governments. It didn't help. Protocols tends to take off fairly rapidly, or die a horrible slow death: I can't offhand think of a protocol which sat unused for years and then suddenly burst forth. Had IPv^ just been IPv4 with longer addresses, things might have been different, but IPv6 suffered from the OSI disease of attempting to standardise things for which there was almost no fielded experience or which were shortly to be solved problems anyway.

Multicast and IPSec haven't exactly taken the IPv4 world by storm for anything other than specific tasks, but they're mandatory in IPv6. More seriously, a lot of comprises were made in order to structure the addresses to make routing easier: well, I've taken my Cisco IGS routers out of service a long time ago, and the horror stories (``IPv4 addressing means core routers will need, like, a GIGABYTE of RAM'') just aren't as frightening as they used to be.

IPv6 claims to solve the problems of the 21st century, but it also attacks a lot of the problems of the 20th (RAM is expensive, comms links are slow). In the meantime, the big wins have been the reclamation of most of the Class A space, the absolute ubiquity of CIDR and the tendency for large enterprises to use RFC1918 for internal systems (1996: you want every client on the Internet; 2006: you hide 20K hosts behind one touchpoint).

ian

Re:So...

[Zarhan]

Use 6to4, not a tunnelbroker. Google for 6to4 Linux if you need help (Windows XP starting from SP1 supports this automatically). Anyway, with 6to4, the nearest gateway is found by IPv4 anycast address (192.88.99.1) so you don't even NEED to know the tunnel brokers.

New technology lets you search the WWW

[shani]

The 6bone dying means the last ipv6 broker I know of just went out of commission...

Intersting... perhaps you should try a "search engine" to find a new tunnel broker. It's a technology that lets you enter in one or more keywords and it will try to find web pages that have that word. Here's a site that I hear it is pretty good for this:

http://www.google.com/ [google.com]

If that's too hard, I can recommend the following tunnel broker. I use it for a server I have in a non-IPv6 network (my server is in Amsterdam, and the broker is in Switzerland, so I have an extra 20 milliseconds of delay for IPv6 traffic vs. IPv4 traffic, but the broker seems to be reliable):

http://tunnelbroker.as8758.net/ [as8758.net]

My ISP at home, xs4all, provides IPv6 for their customers. So everyone who wants it gets a /48. I'll give you the link, which you can use until you figure out this whole "search" concept:

http://www.xs4all.nl/ [xs4all.nl]

Example of route change

[kickdown]

Networks are changing their setups right about now. A series of traceroute6's from just a few minutes ago shows (note the disappearance of the 3ffe address at hop 15, and the new routing path afterwards):

swinter@aragorn ~ $ /usr/sbin/traceroute6 www.kame.net
traceroute to www.kame.net (2001:200:0:8002:203:47ff:fea5:3085) from 2001:a18:1:8:205:5dff:fea1:c541, 30 hops max, 16 byte packets
1 fwint-1.restena.lu (2001:a18:1:8::1) 1.308 ms 0.203 ms 1.282 ms
2 gate-1.rest.restena.lu (2001:a18:0:800::1) 1.066 ms 0.962 ms 2.024 ms
3 gate-2-v8.rest.restena.lu (2001:a18:0:200::2) 1.787 ms 2.768 ms 2.682 ms
4 gate-2-v27.bce.restena.lu (2001:a18:ff:107::1) 3.773 ms 3.205 ms 3.024 ms
5 gate-1-v33.bce.restena.lu (2001:a18:ff:10a::1) 4.273 ms 2.85 ms 3.973 ms
6 restena.rt1.lux.lu.geant2.net (2001:798:20:10aa::1) 3.271 ms 3.149 ms 4.166 ms
7 2001:798:cc:1401:2001::1 (2001:798:cc:1401:2001::1) 7.957 ms 8.184 ms 9.086 ms
8 abilene-gw.rt1.fra.de.geant2.net (2001:798:14:10aa::e) 103.26 ms 103.369 ms 102.861 ms
9 nycmng-washng.abilene.ucaid.edu (2001:468:ff:1518::1) 112.948 ms 105.242 ms 108.61 ms
10 chinng-nycmng.abilene.ucaid.edu (2001:468:ff:f15::1) 137.817 ms 124.527 ms 123.776 ms
11 iplsng-chinng.abilene.ucaid.edu (2001:468:ff:f12::2) 131.448 ms 137.687 ms 127.681 ms
12 kscyng-iplsng.abilene.ucaid.edu (2001:468:ff:1213::2) 135.977 ms 146.231 ms 142.167 ms
13 dnvrng-kscyng.abilene.ucaid.edu (2001:468:ff:1013::1) 146.69 ms 146.515 ms 146.526 ms
14 snvang-dnvrng.abilene.ucaid.edu (2001:468:ff:1017::2) 174.782 ms 171.421 ms 183.414 ms
15 3ffe:80a::b2 (3ffe:80a::b2) 312.12 ms 312.369 ms 312.872 ms
16 hitachi1.otemachi.wide.ad.jp (2001:200:0:4401::3) 312.544 ms 317.784 ms 312.253 ms
17 ve-4.nec2.yagami.wide.ad.jp (2001:200:0:1c04:230:13ff:feae:5b) 315.371 ms 314.195 ms 322.631 ms
18 lo0.alaxala1.k2.wide.ad.jp (2001:200:0:4800::7800:1) 313.097 ms 316.308 ms 317.586 ms
19 orange.kame.net (2001:200:0:8002:203:47ff:fea5:3085) 312.409 ms 312.538 ms 313.941 ms

swinter@aragorn ~ $ /usr/sbin/traceroute6 www.kame.net
traceroute to www.kame.net (2001:200:0:8002:203:47ff:fea5:3085) from 2001:a18:1:8:205:5dff:fea1:c541, 30 hops max, 16 byte packets
1 fwint-1.restena.lu (2001:a18:1:8::1) 1.314 ms 0.868 ms 1.257 ms
2 gate-1.rest.restena.lu (2001:a18:0:800::1) 1.688 ms 0.973 ms 2.072 ms
3 gate-2-v8.rest.restena.lu (2001:a18:0:200::2) 2.723 ms 2.96 ms 1.942 ms
4 gate-2-v27.bce.restena.lu (2001:a18:ff:107::1) 2.189 ms 3.258 ms 3.003 ms
5 gate-1-v33.bce.restena.lu (2001:a18:ff:10a::1) 3.014 ms 3.92 ms 2.814 ms
6 restena.rt1.lux.lu.geant2.net (2001:798:20:10aa::1) 3.55 ms 4.289 ms 3.124 ms
7 2001:798:cc:1401:2001::1 (2001:798:cc:1401:2001::1) 8.03 ms 8.276 ms 8.432 ms
8 abilene-gw.rt1.fra.de.geant2.net (2001:798:14:10aa::e) 104.804 ms 103.79 ms 142.273 ms
9 nycmng-washng.abilene.ucaid.edu (2001:468:ff:1518::1) 108.557 ms 103.712 ms 103.23 ms
10 chinng-nycmng.abilene.ucaid.edu (2001:468:ff:f15::1) 123.748 ms 127.777 ms 122.562 ms
11 2001:400:2005:7::1 (2001:400:2005:7::1) 123.113 ms 128.574 ms 134.733 ms
12 2001:400:2005::2 (2001:400:2005::2) 130.627 ms 134.921 ms 123.079 ms
13 chicr1-10ge-chislmr1.es.net (2001:400:0:a6::1) 123.652 ms 124.411 ms 123.919 ms
14 snv2sdn1-oc192-chicr1.es.net (2001:400:0:54::1) 172.982 ms 171.455 ms 172.394 ms
15 snv2mr1-snv2sdn1.es.net (2001:400:0:97::1) 171.831 ms 172.539 ms 172.444 ms
16 snv1mr1-snv2mr1.es.net (2001:400:0:95::1) 171.445 ms 172.94 ms 176.18 ms
17 snvcr1-snv1mr1.es.net (2001:400:0:9d::2) 171.435 ms 183.06 ms 171.105 ms
18 snvrt1-ge0-snvcr1.es.net (2001:400:0:61::2) 172.712 ms 172.569 ms 172.758 ms
19 2001:200:0:4410::1 (2001:200:0:4410::1) 302.266 ms 301.313 m

Re:Privacy Implications of IPv6

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Milan is not using NAT as an "entire city". Do you think there's some kind of communist regime with a single government-sanctioned network? There are in fact multiple ISPs, each with its own block of public IPv4 addresses. Only one of them, fiber optic-based FastWeb, infamously gives customers private addresses and uses NAT to access the global internet.

Re:Privacy Implications of IPv6

[Ant P.]

Nope. [faqs.org]

Tying of e.g. cable Internet to cable TV

[tepples]

Cartels are illegal, at least in the States.

So the cartels set up shop outside the United States and sell to the United States. This happened with OPEC. Or, more relevantly in the case of residential ISP duopolies, the cartels wait until a big-business-friendly administration (e.g. that of President Bush) is in office.

I'm in Japan now, and my broadband options are DSL from YahooBB (secretly softbank, I think?), DSL from NTT, and cable from the local cable company.

In many parts of the United States, if I get cable Internet without cable TV, the local cable company will still charge me for cable TV, and if I get DSL without a voice line, the local telephone company will still charge me for a voice line.