One Step Closer to IPv6

gbjbaanb writes "IPv6 came a step closer yesterday as ICANN added IPv6 host records to the root DNS servers, reports the BBC. 'Paul Twomey, president of Icann which oversees the addressing system, told the BBC News website there was a need to start moving to IPv6. "There's pressure for people to make the conversion to IPv6," he said. "We're pushing this as a major issue." The reason for the urgency, he said, was because the unallocated addresses from the total of 4,294,967,296 possible with IPv4 was rapidly running out. "We're down to 14% of the unallocated addresses out of the whole pool for version 4," he said. Projections suggest that this unallocated pool will run out by 2011 at the latest.'"

Just Like Oil

[mrxak]

Just like how when we run out of oil, solutions will come along, when we run out of IP addresses, solutions will come along. The only problem is people don't get very motivated until we're really on the edge. I don't have much hope for IPv6 for another few years yet. Still, progress is progress.

Re:Just Like Oil

[Anonymous Coward]

the solution came along, its ipv6

Re:Just Like Oil

[betterunixthanunix]

We have solutions to both problems. People just don't want to put in the time, effort, and of course, money to implement the solutions. Would you want to pay higher taxes to help subsidize the creation of bioplastics and wind power? Would you want to pay higher taxes to help subsidize an upgrade to broadband access and IPv6 use in your country?

Re:Sad

[Profane MuthaFucka]

130x10^6 addresses isn't that many. It'll push off the exhaustion of the address space by a year or two at the most, and then we're still going to need IPv6.

Also, without IPv6, there's only a maximum of 2^32 Linksys routers that will be needed. IPv4 is unfairly capping the maximum number of needed NAT routers, and thus unfairly capping the profits of Cisco. We must think of the cost of IPv4 in terms of corporate profits, or we are doomed. Our economy depends on exponential growth, and that applies to addresses on the Internets too.

IPV6, a lame solution for no problem

[Anonymous Coward]

So just because people waste IPv4 addresses by not using NAT and not recycling unused addresses, we want to force everyone to go to a solution that won't work correctly on existing devices that don't support v6, has a completely silly address, makes people get out from behind the elegant and awesome solution of NATs, and is basically poorly conceived, designed and executed?

Forcing v6 will be a disaster. It's better to force people to better implement v4 and take that time to design a system that will expand the address space while not causing so many issues.

This will be anonymous coward because I know almost everyone on /. LOVES change for the sake of change and anything shiny and new MUST be awesome, therefore I'll be modded down as an idiot and a troll for telling the goddamn truth.

Re:Just Like Oil

[Unoti]

If higher taxes would honestly go to bringing high speed fiber right to my doorstep, yes, I'd seriously consider it. I just don't have much faith in the government spending my money properly.

Re:2011

[Tony Hoyle]

We've been hearing this 'addresses will run out by year x' for 20 years, and the predicted date has been wrong every single time. It's very hard to get enthusiastic about something that seems to be run by chicken little... Sure they'll run out eventually, and there's a network there to deal with it when it happens.. until then... zzzzzzz

If google, microsoft, redhat, CNN and the BBC (insert favourite site here) all go ipv6 (and by that I mean google starts indexing it too), that will be the year of ipv6. No way in hell it's going to happen before that.. I know of exactly zero useful ipv6 websites - I'm connected here but it's never been used.

Without any websites to actually *visit* on ipv6 ordinary users aren't going to go through the hassle, so ISPs see no demand and won't implement it (even though it would be a nice revenue stream for them - $10/month for 256 ipv6 addresses for example (and I really can't see them giving any more, seriously.. It's more likely to be 8 or 16 to separate the 'home' ($10/mo) users from the 'business' ($50/mo) users who get 256)).

Of course without any home routers that support it it's all moot anyway (hacked linkysys routers don't count).

Re:I don't expect much to change

[Tony Hoyle]

Exactly... Expect 'cheap' accounts to be allocated within a 10.x.x.x net long before an ISP thinks of implementing ipv6. They'll probably pitch it as a security feature ('let us control the firewall for you! Surf in safety! Only $10/month!').

If a user wants a public IP. That's more cost. If they want a *fixed* IP.. go talk to the business services manager over there.

If they do implement ipv6 it'll be done the same way. 1 ipv6 address per account (ipv6 NAT exists and has done for a while). If you want 8 of them that's more cost. If you want more than 256.. see that guy in a suit waving? Go hand him your chequebook.

And before anyone says 'but but we'll all get 16 million addresses!'.. yeah, over the rotting corpses of every major ISP in the world.

It's a sham - the Internet is mostly dark

[mcrbids]

The sad part is, most of the IP addresses in question are... dark. Nothing there. Even though we're approaching 85% allocation, utilization is probably around 1-2%. No, I'm not kidding.

Try it yourself - hack up some script to randomly generate IPs and then ping sweep the network blocks. You'll probably be quite surprised at the result.

A while back, I wanted to have a way to detect if a host was "offline" so that it could modify its behavior. (EG: halt outgoing SOAP requests if the server's network connection was disrupted, preventing bogus error messages from entering the system)

My first thought was to randomly generate 10 IP addresses, then ping them to see if they were offline, guessing that at least 50% would respond. Basically, none did. So, then I tried randomizing addresses and keeping a list of only those that had, at one time, responded. Even that turned out to be unfruitful. So finally, I took a dictionary and randomly created domain names from 1-2 normal dictionary words, pinging those, and keeping a list. That yielded some 40% usable responses, allowing me to keep a list of fairly trustworthy ping hosts to determine the online status of the server in question.

Bottom line: The shortage in the global IP pool is an artifact brought on by grossly inefficient/incompetent management of the global IP pool. The idea that we're running out of addresses purely ignores the fact that the vast, vast majority of the addresses we now have are simply unused.

IP6 won't matter til Google supports it

[wowbagger]

Wake me up when I can pull up the main page of Google using nothing but packets with IP6 headers.

That means that I can do a DNS query using nothing but IP6 packets - NOT IP4 packets.
That means that I can do an HTTP transfer from Google's servers using nothing but IP6 packets - NOT IP4 packets.

Hell, wake me up when there's a AAAA record for Slashdot.

This is a *baby* step towards IP6 being useful.

Re:Just Like Oil

[discogravy]

well, the PJ O'Rourke line ("We're waaaay out of whale oil, but instead of sitting in the dark we found other oils for our lamps") -- which is the standard American Republican line in this case -- is that we'll innovate a new way. So far the oil/energy problem has the same problem that IPv4/IPv6 have, namely that everyone wants it, but no one wants to be the one to start (or wants it enough to actually *DO* something).

Re:It's a sham - the Internet is mostly dark

[RedHat Rocky]

Ping?

Most large server farms block ICMP/ping at the border. Relying on ping to indicate whether an IP is occupied is just wrong.

Granted, I'm with you on the "large empty pool" theory.

Re:Just Like Oil

[explosivejared]

The Universal Service Fund is evidence enough for you. Billions of dollars of subsidies wasted as windfalls to stockholders. Your lack of faith is wise, and it's only being supported by the new broadband plan laid out by the president.

It would be nice to have a perfectly efficient method of coercion to force ISP's to actually spend their subsidies on broadband penetration, but no one in power seems to be interested. It's the same story as IPv6 up to now. ICANN seems to be taking the lead finally. Hopefully someone will follow suit in the broadband arena.

Re:IP6 won't matter til Google supports it

[gbjbaanb]

This is a *baby* step towards IP6 being useful.

Yup. The thing with first steps is that you have to do them in order to make the second step (obviously), but then you can make a third and fourth steps. Next thing you know, you've got to where you were going.

Now Google can register an AAAA record, do you think they will? If they couldn't register one, do you think they would?

Re:It's a sham - the Internet is mostly dark

[mxs]

You are an exceptionally bad engineer, coder, thinker, and internet citizen.

The sad part is, most of the IP addresses in question are... dark. Nothing there. Even though we're approaching 85% allocation, utilization is probably around 1-2%. No, I'm not kidding.

And you have ANY hard data to back that up ? No. Others are trying to come up with better metrics (http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4/index.html is exceptionally verbose), but you ? You are not kidding about thinking that it maybe probably is around 1-2% ... Wow.

Try it yourself - hack up some script to randomly generate IPs and then ping sweep the network blocks. You'll probably be quite surprised at the result.

Bzzzt. No, I would not be -- nor should anybody be. First of all, it's not a requirement for every address to be routable to (and you can check that much better by looking at what percentage of prefixes are actually advertized). Second, many, MANY hosts and networks are behind firewalls, intrusion detection & response systems, etc. -- a "simple pingscan" can easily land you in a black hole at the network border after a couple of pings -- if access to those machines is even allowed from your network. Sure, in consumer broadband connections you don't often have such firewalls restricting inbound access, but that's not the "entire internet". Hell, go ping amazon.com and see what you get back. Nada, that's what.

A while back, I wanted to have a way to detect if a host was "offline" so that it could modify its behavior. (EG: halt outgoing SOAP requests if the server's network connection was disrupted, preventing bogus error messages from entering the system)

A problem many others have faced and solved before you.

My first thought was to randomly generate 10 IP addresses, then ping them to see if they were offline, guessing that at least 50% would respond.

Accounting for the different classes of addresses, unroutable space, bogons, etc. in that random calculation would be more work than the result is worth, especially seeing as how the state of netblocks can change over time. I wonder, why was your first thought to crap out (at least) 10 packets to the net that really are not needed ? What possible reason could there be for you to automatically ping a cellphone in Singapore ? Just imagine everybody doing this, just to check whether they are "online" ... How about choosing some well-known addresses (such as one of your own servers in a different locale, or possibly "well-known" servers that you know will respond and that don't mind a ping from you every now and then ... Not only do you get a 100% response rate when everything is working correctly, you also forego abusing bandwidth in remote locales you are not at all interested in.

Basically, none did. So, then I tried randomizing addresses and keeping a list of only those that had, at one time, responded. Even that turned out to be unfruitful.

You know, while still a bit dickish, it might have occured to you that most of {a-m}.root-servers.net do reply to ping or DNS requests. So do, in all likelihood, a router in your upstream, or DNS resolvers you know about. Instead, you now latch on to addresses that respond. The cellphone in Singapore, for instance.

So finally, I took a dictionary and randomly created domain names from 1-2 normal dictionary words, pinging those, and keeping a list.

Ah. So now that flooding ICMP out to the net is not enough, you have to litter it with bogus DNS requests the reply to which you are not really interested in. Again, imagine EVERYBODY doing this. Why not pick 10 known domain names and always ping those ? At least the results will be cached, and you may even choose ones whose owners you know and can ask whether they mind to be flooded with icmp every now and then.

That yielded some 40% usable responses, allowing me to keep a list of fairly

Re:Just Like Oil

[rmstar]

Do you know how deep people will drill for oil? Do you know how many kilograms of battery you need to substitute a kilogram of gasoline? No? Thought so :-)

We are not addicted to oil just because we are lazy. We are addicted to oil because it is so god-damn good. We will be badly screwed if it runs out, and no amount of innovation will bring such a wonderfully convenient energy source back. In comparison, and, come to think of it, not even in comparison, IP6 is a complete and total triviality.

Re:IBM may actually use a lot of 9

[Torvaun]

Do all of your machines need to be publicly accessible? Subnets for the win.

Re:Just Like Oil

[Wesley Felter]

Most people don't understand anything about IP, yet they use the Internet just fine. If your OS or router enables 6to4 automatically then you don't need to know anything.

6to4 is pretty similar to configured tunnels, but it structures its IPv6 addresses in such a way that each endpoint can automatically discover the IPv4 address of the other endpoint. Thus 6to4 requires no configuration or state in the network.

Re:Just Like Oil

[nuzak]

Oil is already not all that convenient an energy source. It's a scarce commodity subject to fluctuations, that has to be brought in from far afield and refined. Wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, don't have quite the yield, but when you're sitting on top of those resources like, say, Iceland is, you're doing great, and if you're a big country that has all those resources, it suffices to say the lights aren't going out due to supply problems. And there's nuclear of course, though that does have a few problems besides the waste. Oil is however a wonderful raw material. Just about every damn thing you touch in a given day is made in part or improved on with oil. It's a damn shame we waste so much of it by burning it.

And yeah, the chorus of people screaming about how IPv4 isn't going to run out sound a whole lot like the people who think we have limitless oil -- and perhaps we do, but in both cases, it's going to be damned expensive to retrieve and distribute.

Re:It's a sham - the Internet is mostly dark

[gmack]

You can go out and do things as long as those things don't happen to be on a link that happens to have a smaller packet size than yours. Blocking all ICMP is a common firewall mistake.

Re:Sad

[ACMENEWSLLC]

I'm ready to begin to add IPv6 to my network. 99% of my machines can support IPV6. There is no RFC1918 private space needed with IPv6 since there is so much space. I went to allocate space, but found out that I can't;

http://www.arin.net/registration/guidelines/ipv6_initial_alloc.html [arin.net]

Re:You are right

[DBCubix]

Is that going to be broken the British healthcare system, where I'll have to wait 2 years for an IP address? No thanks.

Re:Oh Noes The Internets!

[timeOday]

Well, it's 64K * 4 billion. The 4 billion does help some.

Re:Sad

[anticypher]

So what is stopping you?

Have you not paid your 2008 ARIN fees?
Are you not an ISP?
You can't come up with the US$35 for a /32?
How is ARIN blocking you in any way?
Are you just trolling /. as a substitute for having a life?

I don't understand your complaint. If you already have an IPv4 allocation from ARIN, getting an IPv6 allocation requires only filling out the form, sending it in, and getting your allocation. They stick the $35 onto your ARIN fee at the next billing cycle. It's even easier than getting an IPv4 allocation now.

the AC