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Microsoft

Microsoft's Implementation Of IPv6 149

Posted by Hemos from the my-toe-can-have-an-IP! dept.
jinx_ writes: "For those of you who were interested in the OpenBSD IPv6, Microsoft has a site of their own on the subject. 'Microsoft Research (MSR) is writing an Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) implementation to further networking research on the Windows NT/2000 platform. USC/ISI East is our partner in this development. Due to external interest, we have decided to make a beta version of this implementation publicly available in both source and binary forms.' Sounds like it would be fun to play with at least." Anyone know anything more on this? Post below, please.
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Microsoft's Implementation of IPv6 More

Microsoft's Implementation of IPv6

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  • Great, so this means not only will they be claiming that Microsoft was the first one to come up with IPv6, but this must mean that they're also going to make it incompatible with everything else out there. Glad I no longer use windows.

  • Source release???!!!! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    by microsoft isn't that one of the seven signs of the apocalypse?

  • That's KAME's IPv6 implementation.... (Score:4)

    by DaveTerrell ( 923 ) on Tuesday September 12, 2000 @09:10PM (#784018) Homepage
    And the microsoft IPv6 stack has been out for over two years in an unsupported research capacity.

  • Microsoft Research rocks! (Score:3)

    by Fervent ( 178271 ) on Tuesday September 12, 2000 @09:10PM (#784019)
    I don't care what anyone says, I've visited Microsoft Research and they absolutely rock. They are totally disenfranchised with the whole "embrace and extend" tactics of their corporate employer, instead focusing on dedicated research in many awesome fields (think Lucent [Bell labs], Xerox Palo Alto Research Center [Xerox-PARC] and Agilent [HP labs]).

    I'm really considering working there.

  • We're talking about Micro$oft... of course it's going to be their own crappy version. If it follows their SOP, then it will look like it will be months late, yet amazingly ship close to on time, with all the bugs to be worked out in a patch released 4-6 months later.

    Okay, maybe that's a bit harsh, but has MS done anything to not deserve a criticism like that? Frankly, I expect them to bully their way into this market as well. I hope I'm wrong.

    Kierthos
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • This may not be nice, but this prerelease version has been out for quite a while on their research site. I haven't had the nerve to try it yet. I mean, after all, it IS MS-prerelease. I still remember what happened with IE4 beta 1. :) And think, that was only a shell-integrated browser... Not that I dislike MS or anything (NOT sarcasm).
  • Why judge? How do you know that's their plans?

    Many Microsoft Research studies are purely academics. They do some great work. Only after it gets to their employer (and Bill Gates's teams of programmers get to hammer at it) does it become flawed.

    You have to separate the company from the research team.

  • Um, the 2.4 kernel has IPv6 support, I'm using it now.
  • has MS done anything to not deserve a criticism like that

    I'd like to have you run Windows 2000 client for a couple of weeks (burn a copy off your friend if you must) and see if you still have the same sentiment. I'm not a huge fan of Microsoft, but Windows 2000 is perhaps the single best piece of software I've seen them write.

  • $20 says that, when all is said and done, Microsoft's version of IPV6 will be ever-so-slightly incompatible with the standard implimentations.

    "Gee paw...i can't get to this website running FreeBSD anymore...it must be a crappy OS"


    FluX
    After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network

  • The Oldest news I've ever seen on Slashdot (Score:3)

    by Geek Boy ( 15178 ) on Tuesday September 12, 2000 @09:20PM (#784027)
    This is like..... moldy. It's _SO_ old. I have a copy here that I'm sure has been "touched" so the file is even older than the date on it. ...

    -rwxr-xr-x 1 xxx xxx 286720 Jun 1 1998 msripv6-netmon-src-1.0.exe
    -rwxr-xr-x 1 xxx xxx 507392 Jun 1 1998 msripv6-src-1.0.exe

    Talk about missing the boat by over 2 years....
  • The downside is that, like most corporate-sponsored research labs, their mission is to tie up new areas of art with patents.

    Bruce

  • Note that the Fnord! Server is covered by the GPL, rather than our license

    What, Microsoft is now a believer of Discordianism? Or is this all still part of Operation Mindfuck?
    Null Serviam, I say!

  • IPv6 has been around since 2.2.x though I can't remember which x..

    --
  • I wouldn't be so quick to hail this as some sort of victory for the open source movement over its archrival. Microsoft may be greedy and pigheaded, but they're not stupid enough to think that releasing the code its IPv6 implementation wouldn't benefit competing OSes as well. While I'm sure part of this decision is related to Microsoft trying to improve its public image in light of a possible break-up, the company's business plan still isn't going to change drastically overnight. Remember, open source can confer an economic advantage -- the old "many eyes" principles is just one of the reason that Microsoft might want be releasing the source.

    So before you start proclaiming that Microsoft has seen the light, remember that MSFT is obviously acting its own self-interest here. For whatever reasons, some PHBs decided that it would be to Microsoft's advantage to open-source this baby (and it is a neat little project, I'll admit). It's certainly likely that we'll benefit from it too, but at the end of the day, Microsoft is a publically-held corporation and is legally obligated to maximize its profits. Don't think for a minute that they're doing this out of the goodness of their hearts -- they're just trying to make money, whether it be through closed-source software or now open-source software.

  • but this must mean that they're also going to make it incompatible with everything else out there

    No, they will have to make it compatible with the industry standard IPv6, if for no other reason than all the major bandwidth providers - UUNet, Sprint, etc - run on *nix, which offer the same, standard implementation.

    Put simply, it would be wildly stupid for MS to try to reinvent IPv6, simply so that it won't work.

  • Bizarre (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Download .tar.gz(!) source [microsoft.com], see sources with first likes like:

    // -*- mode: C++; tab-width: 4; indent-tabs-mode: nil -*- (for GNU Emacs)

    variable declarations like: char *name = NULL; (where's the char *szName?), and you get the feeling you've entered a parallel universe where Unix programmers have gone to work for Microsoft.

    Paul

  • Research. (Score:3)

    by Matt2000 ( 29624 ) on Tuesday September 12, 2000 @09:35PM (#784034) Homepage

    From da soft: "... implementing IPv6 to further networking research on the Windows NT/2000 platform."

    Translation: "...IPv4 was really really hard. I didn't really get it. One time I was working on the NT4 drivers and I forgot what line I needed to GOTO and it turned out that all network traffic was getting opened as an Excel spreadsheet. I was moved to the talking paperclip project, but now I'm back for IPv6 cause it's easier!"

  • Will you agree to the EULA?? (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 12, 2000 @09:36PM (#784035)
    Funny how when Microsoft asks you to agree to their EULA [microsoft.com], if you click "I do not agree" they ask you again until you do.

    This reminds me of a Simpson episode [snpp.com] where the following conversation takes place:

    Lisa: Please, Dad.
    Homer: No.
    Lisa: Please, Dad.
    Homer: No.
    Lisa: Please, Dad.
    Homer: No.
    Lisa: Please, Dad.
    Homer: No.
    Lisa: Please, Dad.
    Homer: No.
    Lisa: Please, Dad.
    Homer: Oh, okay, okay.

  • Hitachi has had out a 9x and NT 4.0 IPv6 protocol stack out for a while now, and it is free and works well. It's nice to see that 3rd parties can contribute greatly towards the MS platform just to have them poke out and claim that something they did is the first time it has ever been done on their OS. Realisticly though I don't think they will have a stable product till at least 2nd Qrt. 2001. But right now I have an IPv6 only sandbox running on a few FreeBSD 4.1 --STABLE and OpenBSD 2.7 systems thanks to KAME.

  • We need IPv6 sooner rather than later (Score:5)

    by Apotsy ( 84148 ) on Tuesday September 12, 2000 @09:41PM (#784037)

    As more and more devices (cell phones, PDAs) become IP-enabled, 32-bit IP addresses will become increasingly scarce, and eventually they will run out. Some people are predicting this will happen in just a few short years. Moving to a larger address space, such as the one afforded by IPv6 is the only answer.

    Unfortunately, the fate of IPv6 rests in Microsoft's hands. If IPv6 is to ever attain widespread use, Windows will have to support it. The sheer number of Windows machines out there guarantees it. No matter how soon Linux and BSD servers support it, it will be pretty useless without widespread client-side support, and that means Windows support.

    MS has had IPv6 working in the research labs for a long time, yet they are really dragging their heels when it comes to putting it into a shipping product. Beats me why. I suppose they might have some financial interesting in seeing IP numbers getting scarce ("If you want your own IP, you have to sign up for MSN!"), but somehow I don't think even Microsoft can hold back the rising demand for more IP addresses.

    So, sooner or later, they are going to have to include IPv6 support in Windows by default. And not just the server-branded versions of Windows either, but the consumer versions as well. The Windows that Joe Bloe runs on his home PC will have to come with IPv6 built-in. Otherwise, Internet growth will be stifiled. Isn't it scary to think that the future of the net rests in Bill's hands?

  • Kewl, another laptop user! What sort of laptop have you got? Which kernel version have you tried? I've got a Compaq Armada 7400, and I'm running 2.4.0-test6 at the moment, test7 and test8 have problems with sb.o, SIGH!
  • No-one's trying to claim this is some kind of breakthrough. IPv6 has been available on *BSD platforms for 3-4 years too, and for example the standard FreeBSD 4.0 from earlier this year was fully IPv6-enabled (and the more recent 4.1 even more so :-).

    Not sure what your point was?
  • Use your brain, pick up a book, learn some new skills. Don't be so lazy.

  • Holy Shit (Score:3)

    by drift factor ( 220568 ) on Tuesday September 12, 2000 @09:48PM (#784041)
    Satan, get out the snowblower, Microsoft is posting source to what could become part of their operating system.
  • Check out the date on the press release -- March 15, 2000. This is not news.

    Ken

  • I wouldn't touch it though, it would really be snowing down there if it was GPL or BSD, but it isn't. Contributing to that would be like selling out to satan.
  • It's nice to see that 3rd parties can contribute greatly towards the MS platform just to have them poke out and claim that something they did is the first time it has ever been done on their OS.

    And where exactly do they claim that? I didn't see it in the page that was linked to.

    Simon
  • It's some hitachi software, but if you need some MS IPv6 here is your answer.

    Hitachi's IPv6 Stuff [hitachi.co.jp]

    True though microsoft themselves are behind the bandwagon.

  • 128 is not enough? (Score:4)

    by sverrehu ( 22545 ) on Tuesday September 12, 2000 @10:02PM (#784046) Homepage

    From the docs:

    "A joint research effort by our matematicians and IT professionals have concluded that 128 bit addressing will suffice for no more than approximately 25 years into the future. Microsoft has thus decided to extend the protocol to use 136 bits, which will suffice for at least 75 years."

    Just kidding...

  • Folks are still interested in it.

    What about running IPv6 on 9x/NT/2k? Anyone have any reports on it? How hard was it to get running? Did your apps play nice with it? How was performance? Who was there to talk to? Any practical immediate advantages? Are there any ISP's yet offering IPv6 support? What will AT&T @Home (is that their name this 24 hours?) do if I start running IPv6? Did the MS implementations interoperate with other vendors? Which one seems best under WinWhatever? Which one seems best overall (Linux/BSD/etc.)

  • If you are right then the IPv6 implementation will be fully standards compliant and will interoperate with all the other operating systems and routers. If you are wrong then MS IPV6 will break the existing standard. If I was a betting man I would vote that you are wrong. MS has a lousy track record with interoperability and they are not going to pass up this opportunity to own the new inernet.

    Let's check back here when it's out and see who was right.

    A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.

  • It was just the general tone of the microsoft article on their site more or less insinuating that they have created this new mystical IPv6, or at least it has never been done on an MS platform when it has been done considerably before.
  • As IPv6 starts to gain market acceptance and come out of beta with most router, network and OS vendors - we are gurranteed Internet-wide routing stability and scability with BGP4+, almost an unlimited amount of addresses, mobile IP roaming support and local and site specific addressing. No more DHCP - workstations will find and assign themselves their own static addresses.

    Microsoft currently has two IPv6 stacks available for download. One is the TechNet IPv6 Developer Preview, which is a 'snapshot' release for programmers and the other is the Microsoft Research IPv6 stack which they are constantly adding new features to.

    The stacks are currently command-line based. No cute GUI tools, it is cryptic to setup but seems to be quite stable in my IPv6 lab. I use FreeBSD/KAME as my tunnel broker server and GNU/Zebra as my BGP4+ router with a session to Sprintlink.

    The only current weakness is the real lack of applications available for the Microsoft Windows platform on IPv6. No SecureCRT, mIRC, Bulletproof FTP or what not. Now on the BSD/Linux side that is the exact opposite, almost every concievable application has been IPv6'ified.

    For more information, evaluate www.6bone.net, www.kame.net or your BSD/Linux distribution's web site.

    -Pat

  • Talk about missing the boat by over 2 years....

    You can say that again. I remember working for a company in 1996 which distributed FTP Software's products. Their implementation of Winsock 32 (according to the tech docs) had support for IPv6 already then.

  • I had MS Research's IPv6 implementation running for a while on my sacrificial Windows box as part of some v6 experiments earlier this year. While it was still a little bare-bones, it was pretty easy to get running and seemed to play fine with my other v6 machines (BSDs of a couple of flavours using KAME's implementation).
    Naturally, there are few immediate practical advantages as it's still in the research stage and deployment is thin on the ground - v6 is only just beginning the transition from research project to production use, but it's there, and it's just about ready to go.
    As most v6 internetworking links (currently, primarily as part of the 6bone [6bone.net]) are still tunnelled over IPv4, you shouldn't have any problem running v6 over an existing v4 connection if you want to experiment. Home users would probably be best served by checking out Freenet6 [freenet6.net].
    People have all the usual services running in v6 mode over the 6bone, although for me most of the fun is getting packets from point A to point B in the first place..

  • Writing a free Ipv6 competitor for windoze? (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 12, 2000 @10:27PM (#784053)
    How about creating something like Trumpet Winsock. Like in the days before Microsoft implemented Ipv4 in Windows ? In other words, take the Ipv6 spec (from OpenBSD?) and write a driver for windows, and put it in the BSD licence (eventually with a M$ clasule :). Then push the spread of it. Ofcourse writing a windows driver may not be fun. But the cause is good :)
  • it would be wildly stupid for MS to try to reinvent IPv6, simply so that it won't work.

    This is exactly why they will do it. If Micros~1 implemented $STANDARD in a way that was exactly 100% compatible with everybody else's $PRODUCT, there would be no compelling reason to use the MS implementation. It would then follow that one could easily have a hybrid environment composed of MS servers and other OS's.

    On the other hand, if Micros~1 implements $STANDARD in such a way that it only slightly deviates from the way everybody else does it, there will be subtle, annoying incompatibilities evident to end users. Installing a Microsoft server will eliminate those problems. This course of action enhances shareholder value, and any other action by Microsoft that did not enhance said value would be, frankly, irresponsible.

  • Um, idiot, OpenSource doesn't mean GPL. No one could legally incorporate the code into anything.
  • Uh, I think you need to look at this with a little perspective.

    It seems to me a quite absurd notion, even given Microsoft's past track record, that they'd make their IPv6 stack noninteroperable with competing systems. This isn't nonstandard extensions to Kerberos, or application-level embrace-and-extend stuff, or anything like that. It's the fundamental protocols that glue the Internet together, the down-and-dirty nitty gritty protocols that make everything work. If they don't work, nothing else does. And moreover, if they aren't implemented to comply with the relevant standards, the packets thus generated will be considered garbeled, and intermediate routers and switches, as well as destination hosts, are allowed to quite cheerfully drop them right in the bit bucket. It should be obvious to the most casual observer that it wouldn't be in Microsoft's interest for hosts running their operating systems to suddenly lose all their connectivity to the rest of the Internet.

    Sometimes you really can take conspiracy theorising too far.
  • That's rather like saying, "Gosh, those National Socialist Scientists are great guys! I visited their compound and they showed me how they were going to improve quality of life by eliminating poverty, unemployment, and helping to bring peace to the whole world. They don't care a bit about the whole "embrace and extinguish" tactics of their government employer, instead they focus their efforts on such things as rocket power, alternative fuels, and improved methods of soap-making. When I graduate Bremen University, I'm really considering taking the oath to the Leader and working there!"

    This post does not violate Godwin's Law

  • I'm confused. Where did they claim that?
  • MS's IP6 stack has been out nigh on two yrs, btw, so maybe it actually was first.
  • actually i think it was:

    Lisa and Bart simultaneous: can we have a pool dad?
    Lisa and Bart: can we have a pool dad?
    Lisa and Bart: can we have a pool dad?
    Lisa and Bart: can we have a pool dad?
    Lisa and Bart: can we have a pool dad?
    just Bart: can we ha....(lisa motions for him to stop)
    Homer: I understand. Let us celebrate our new arrangement with the adding of chocolate to milk.
  • Man, I bet that Philipino script kiddie is just drooling at the thought of sending I Love You to 2^128 computers.


    "I shoulda never sent a penguin out to do a daemon's work."
  • Hate to be picky, but Agilent is not HP Research. Agilent is a separate company that develops, markets etc all the former HP telecoms, medical and "anything that isn't directly a computer" products. They decided to split the company up because the bean-counters thought it would look better on their spreadsheets! (Not a joke, unfortunately). Anyway, HP continues to do all the computer related R&D itself as always, although it does outsource some of that to small, specialist outfits .
  • Haha...

    I'd like to see you drop "mangled" microsoft packets into the bit bucket. Your boss who is now unable to access the net will be super excitied to hear about IPv6.

    You don't get it.

    What is to prevent them from adding a few extra flags that only are useful on windows based networks while maintaining backwards compatablility.

    That's the whole point of embrace and extend. Add a few flags to kerberos so that while other clients can connect, no one can run the server side of it. Same thing can happen here. Still will work with everyone, but install those "extensions" and you get some extra features (the frontpage extension nightmere).
  • Here is an interesting story about Microsoft, and it (slightly) involves IPV6.

    I went to "Microsoft's Big Day" back in March I believe. This event was (at our town at any rate) just a big propaganda machine for Windows 2000 and Office 2000.

    The hotel where it took place was initally crowded with people from the buisnesses from town, but with each intermission (the "seminar" lasted a whole day).

    Basically the lectures went over the features of Win2k and why you should buy it for your buisness, same thing for Office. The main presenter (other than the boring laywer who read from the EULA... No, I am not joking)was a woman who seemed quite knowlegeable about NT. She was quite sharp I thought.

    I decided to test how sharp.

    I walked up to her during an intermission, where people were asking very very basic questions.

    My turn came up and I asked:

    "When will the Windows 2000 kernel support IPv6?
    Currently it only supports IPv4, and thats a serious issue with the looming IP shortage."

    Just for a second her eyes went a little wide - the first question all day that she had not been able to answer. She glanced quickly at a person nearby sitting in the front row, then looked back at me and said "I don't know".

    This was fine, I did not expect her to be able to answer the question, I wanted to see her true level of knowledge, whether she was plain PR or a techie at heart.

    Now what got interesting is that the fellow to my left who was sitting in the front row of the presentation (dressed in "plain" clothes)and had been the man that the presenter had glanced at, got up and began to praise Windows 2000. He mentioned how "No operating system supports IPv6".

    I replied, "Funny, Linux and BSD support it." He did not believe me at first, and addressed the *nix idea with a wave of his hand, as if the *nix OSes were naught but a bother. We then argued about IPv6 and it's importance, and how it loads routers etc, etc, etc. But, as we did so I noticed that he was leading me further away from the people asking questions to the presenters (I was winning the argument because I had just read Understanding IP Addressing: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know. [3com.com]) I was also declaring things like: "Well, Linux can do that! What do you mean that Windows can't?" Which seemed to irk him.

    (Ok, before someone tells me to read the Advocacy-how-to, I was very polite about it, and not derogitory to MS, I was doing it in more of a "Gee, I thought Windows could do that too... You mean it can't?" Besides, YOU try sitting through an 8 hour MS propaganda session and see if you don't snap!:)

    We finished arguing, I "won" not that it was really important. I did not really care. Still, what I thought was *really* interesting was that I did not recognize him. I live in a small town, and I know ALL the computer people here. They all know me as the local Linux geek. I never saw this guy before, and he *WAS* knowlegable, he *DID* know what IPv6 was, and was able to discuss it. I would have known if there was a guy like this in town.

    I waited until the very end of the seminar, when everyone was leaving. I watched this "plainclothes" guy, (all the MS people had Microsoft shirts on). The "plainclothes" guy left in the same van that the MS people left in. I have not seen him in town since.

    Interesting don't you think?

  • ...go to IP8 or IP12?

  • hah! :)

    Although, knowing microsoft they'd make it 137 bits (gotta have that parity bit).

    Seriously though, if we run out of network addresses with 128 bits, someone ought to be shot. With more than 100,000 septillion addresses for every human on Earth, we better not run out.

  • It's kind of like the first version of Windows 98: you install the software.. and then it asks you for the agreement and key. It's not like you have any choice by then, right?

    Rami
    --

  • Re:We need IPv6 sooner rather than later (Score:3)

    by K8Fan ( 37875 ) on Tuesday September 12, 2000 @11:40PM (#784068) Journal

    My paranoid fantasy is not that Microsoft is holding back IPV6...that the true culprit is Real Networks. They have the most to lose in the world of IP multicasting that IPV6 will usher in. Currently they charge per "stream"...and their revenue model goes out the window when you can feed a multimedia event to the whole world with a single stream.

  • Microsoft .....not stupid enough to think that releasing... its IPv6 implementation wouldn't benefit competing OSes as well

    Well, yeah, if all the competing OSes hadn't had their own stable IPv6 implementation for years already.
    M$oft finally get their arses in gear. About frigging time.
    Can we get on with an Internet now that Grandpa's finally got his coat on?

  • Hum. Our favorite OS has been doing IPv6 for ages already...
  • One of the more interesting posts I have seen on /. today....

    Pity I have no points left....
  • Carry on using IPv4 on internal networks and deploy IPv4->IPv6 translation gateways at your borders.

    From the point of view of addressing, at least, IPv4 is fine for internal networks, but IPv6 may be necessary for new hosts/mobile devices and backbone.

  • Cute, but did you have to demonstrate your own lack of knowledge with you first question? The NT/2000 kernels don't "... support IPv6?" or IPv4, or IPX/SPX or AppleTalk or any transports in the kernel. The protocol stack is essentally a file system shim between the redirector (rdr.sys) and the hardware drivers (also abstracted vis the HAL). That how the IPv6 released 2 years ago was able to install on NT5b2 along side the existing IPv4 stack.

    Didn't have shit to talk to and was not very stable (given the b2 system, anyway) but it did work and did not change the kernel at all. Even installed without a reboot.

  • While it's tempting to think that as windows PCs are pervasive, it is Win/PCs that need to support IPv6, there are other strategies available.

    Each ISP could fit its entire dialup range of IPv4 addresses within a properly assigned IPv6 space, and utilise a NAT facility at the router or firewall level to remap addresses.

    In this way, we could transform the entire backbone into IPv6, and allow each ISP to offer a much increased range of IPv4 addresses to subscribers.

    Then, we can leave all those 'stable' OSs alone to continue supporting IPv4, which lets face it, works fine at the moment. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

  • Each ISP could fit its entire dialup range of IPv4 addresses within a properly assigned IPv6 space, and utilise a NAT facility at the router or firewall level to remap addresses.

    In this way, we could transform the entire backbone into IPv6, and allow each ISP to offer a much increased range of IPv4 addresses to subscribers.

    Then, we can leave all those 'stable' OSs alone to continue supporting IPv4, which lets face it, works fine at the moment. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.


    Unforunately NAT breaks the end-to-end transparency of the Internet protocols. Each protocol (on top of IP) that embeds IP addresses in its packets will break with NAT. FTP is an example. NAT gateways have to rewrite the FTP packets. So, this are a bit broken right now. IMHO NAT is a quick hack and not really a long-term solution. I don't think I'm alone in this opinion.

    IPv6's larger addresses provide a way of regaining end-to-end transparency again. The ugly NAT hack will no longer be needed.
  • Your Forgetting ARIN is charging like $10,000 for something like 6 thousand ipv6 addresses. It will never be accepted if it costs that much to implement. I think the smallest amount of addresses you can buy from arin is something like 16,000 addresses.

    -LW
  • It's kind of like the first version of Windows 98: you install the software.. and then it asks you for the agreement and key. It's not like you have any choice by then, right?

    You do have a choice - reboot in Safe Mode and edit the registry to add a serial number by hand. And I think set the RegDone key to 1.

  • Read the license agreement at M$ download page. They say you have to send back to them any changes you make to the code, and that only them can sell for profit the changes you've made to the code bundled in a comercial product, you can't.

    So if you need IPv6 in any product, you better make it GNU GPL'ed and use the code from linux Kernel.
  • But I would like to have diffrent IP foreach program I running on all my computers and PDA:s.

    /EgU - Have to do something 100.000 IP...
  • You'll pleased to know that I'm switching moderation back on on my account for the sole purpose of moderating your inane crap down as far as I possibly can.
  • I am absolutely on that bet. I'm sure that the guys working on this, programmers like you and me (well, at least, like me), want to screw the public so bad that they're going to to make some MMX'ish joke change.

    In fact, I'm so sure that I've already set a new $20 aside. When I mail it to you, you can use it as a bookmark for your ever-static place in "Learn C++ in 21 Days," page 37.

    Heck, I'm at work right now. I'm going to make sure that our mp3 writer writes invalid frames, so only our applications can read them!

    Excuse me while I hang myself.

  • look great, we now need a gateway for ipv4(standard) over DNS over ipv6(m$) over ipv4(m$) over ethernet for a fully functional msn/replacement-nstp-connection *ggg*
  • The license agreement has a bit in it about not reverse engineering the product. This seems to be a rather strange clause, given that they're also distributing source; when you can look at the source, you don't need to reverse engineer. Of course, this probably just boilerplate text for a license agreement. But my more paranoid side thinks that maybe this is there so that, should Microsoft add any "embrace and extend" incomabatabilites, no one will be able to duplicate those incompatabilites by looking at the source code, since that would break the license agreement. Thus they'd be able to have their cake, and eat it too: get people to peer reivew and fix their code, but no other IP6 projects can get any use out of it.


    Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
  • they can say you cant reverse engineer, but in europe at least you still can. it's allowed.

    //rdj

  • Exactly! They've done it before. And yes, I do mean low level protocol stuff here, not just Kerberos, Java, or any upper level application stuff.

    They've done it with DHCP. With the release of Win98se, they tried to make all network admins switch to NT and an MS DHCP server. How? By doing exactly what augustz said: adding a few flags.

    Win98se machines refused all DHCP offers (following the RFC) from servers if it didn't have one non-functional, previously non-existent flag set. When asked why DHCP seemed broken on the 98se machines, they said "Oh, that's because you're not using a Microsoft certified DHCP server." But the problem was, of course, that there were no MS certified DHCP servers, save their own.

    So in order to make a Win98se machine accept DHCP offers from DHCP servers, admins had to switch to MS for their server, rewrite part of their server to use the appropriate flag, or replace the sys file responsible for DHCP on each client machine!

    But not everybody got 98se right away, so admins had a decent amount of time to come up with a fix before too many users ended up needing to use their 98se machines. I'm sure MS got a number of converts out of that, taking away some of the nix share of the server market.

    But you don't think they'll do that for IPv6? I don't know what they'll do, but I think they could get away with it. Keep in mind how much upgrading it will take to phase out IPv4. Best case scenario, all core networking equipment could have IPv6 functionality added to it within a year and a half, probably more like two years, at least. And that's just the core of the internet, it'll take many years longer to filter down to every JoeBloe's ISP.

    That gives MS plenty of time to woo over the admins in a jam, and though I'm sure it won't get MS everything they want, I know they could get a lot out of it.


    #############
    "Industry Standards are the hobgoblins of people we don't like."
    The Help Desk [ubersoft.net] at Ubersoft.net.

  • Re:The downside (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    So? There is nothing wrong with protecting something you pay a lot of research capital to bring to fruitation... Not everyone wants or can AFFORD to just give it all away.
  • Following up my earlier comment, here are a couple of Internet drafts on NAT:

  • sorry, i don't do OOP (well, not C++ at least).

    if you're trying to imply that you work for M$, then i'm happy for you. You're paid well and you at least work for the richest company in the world.

    If not (probably the case) - then let me tell you, i knew several people that worked in Redmond. They all have good intentions...but intentions are like fuckin' a chick with the clap. You feel good at present, but six months down the road you realize you got fucked.

    (no, i never have...sorry to extinguish your next flame)


    FluX
    After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
  • But they do! Seriously, remember that virus targetting Outlook? The one that wiped out Microsloth themselves? Do you remember the explanation of how it got to them?

    It came in through their UNIX servers, and was then passed to an NT server. So they _do_ run UNIX! It's not just that it _looks_ like they do - they have openly admitted that they do!

    You do, after all, need a stable development environment. :-P

    ...............
    SUWAIN: Slashdot User Without An Interesting Name

  • That's the OLD version... I can ping! (Score:4)

    by ajv ( 4061 ) on Wednesday September 13, 2000 @02:27AM (#784090) Homepage
    Please use the new version from the MSDN site rather than the old crufty MSR stack.

    You can get the newest version here [microsoft.com].

    Here's the stack in action:

    C:\>ping6 fe80::260:1dff:fef6:32b7

    Pinging fe80::260:1dff:fef6:32b7 with 32 bytes of data:

    Reply from fe80::260:1dff:fef6:32b7%7: bytes=32 time=2ms
    Reply from fe80::260:1dff:fef6:32b7%7: bytes=32 time=2ms
    Reply from fe80::260:1dff:fef6:32b7%7: bytes=32 time=2ms
    Reply from fe80::260:1dff:fef6:32b7%7: bytes=32 time=2ms

    That's over my WaveLAN wireless PC Card in my Win2K laptop to my flatmate's Libretto C100 running a recent NetBSD-current which is our WaveLAN - LAN gateway. All of our boxes are IPv6 native. No IPv4 encapsulation for us. And yes, WaveLAN kicks ass! You NEED WaveLAN.

    So, in answer to one of the major questions, Microsoft's stack works with other IPv6 implementations. It doesn't keep settings between reboots at the moment, and it doesn't do ESP only AH.

  • Offtopic? Put down the crack pipe, mister moderator. Sure, I hate MS, but I hope I see this in meta-moderation.
  • hehe, I have a few IBM PS/2s that i got from some P75s. I LOVE those mice.
  • MS presented about this at the USENIX/WinNT
    research conference about two years ago.
  • I get the feeling this explains the windows telnet client. There's few things more depressing than seeing a room of 20 people simultaniously decide that "Linux sucks" because they can't use the cursor keys in vi.


    Of course, after that, I can get credit for doing a major system upgrade by just installing a useable telnet client. =)
  • > the single best piece of software I've seen them write

    My vote still goes to "edit"...
  • >will they be claiming that Microsoft was the
    >first one to come up with IPv6

    yeah, but it should take some of the spotlight off of Al Gore and his tireless work on IPv4.


    :-)

    Ok, ok, I couldn't resist...



    --
    Spindletop Blackbird, the GNU/Linux Cube.

  • Re:We need IPv6 sooner rather than later (Score:3)

    by Cato ( 8296 ) on Wednesday September 13, 2000 @04:02AM (#784098)
    Interesting but a bit too paranoid perhaps...

    Multicast is available today with IPv4, and I'm not really clear why anyone would migrate to IPv6 just to get better multicast. RealPlayer already supports multicast, and it's unlikely webcasting will really hit high volumes without multicast, so Real Networks would just have to find another business model (e.g. paid-for content subscriptions, which they are already doing, though this is even more difficult in the multicast world, since authenticated access to multicast streams really needs a fairly complex encryption setup).

    The main blockers for multicast IMO are that it is pretty hard to deploy, troubleshoot and manage, and is also quite prone to DoS attacks (hey, now I can DoS an *entire multicast group* from a single compromised host!!).

    There are also interesting inter-provider routing and peering issues (how do you set up peering agreements between two providers that take account of some of that traffic being multicast, i.e. it will use a lot more bandwidth potentially than just the amount coming over the provider-to-provider link.)
  • To the contrary, most industry pundits are wondering why years and millions of dollars have really resulted in very little of use or interest coming out of Microsoft Research. MIT's TechReview magazine had an excellent article on this very subject. The article from their Jan99 issue is not online :(, but here is a descriptive quote:

    It's put-up time at Microsoft Research. Seven years after its founding, the lab has yet to make any real breakthroughs.

  • yeah? So?

    ok, 'nuff schoolyard tactics. This would be a perfectly good thing, if only patent's were granted on a more reasonable basis, and for a shorted time period.

    Then we would see companies hurrying up to captialize on their innovations (== happy consumer) rather than sitting on frivolous patents hoping to sue the bejeus out of whomever happened to have the same insight.

    Johan
  • That still comes out to 6.671e5 IPs per square nanometre, or 816 IPs on each side of the square nanometre. It's unlikely that nanomachines will be packed that densely within the foreseeable future. If so, then you can just go to a, say, 256-bit address space, which would give us 1.1579e77 IPs, more than the current estimate of the total number of atoms in the universe. Hopefully that would last us a while.

  • false, 32bit IP addresses are doing fine. (Score:3)

    by toppk ( 135746 ) on Wednesday September 13, 2000 @06:51AM (#784127)
    32-bit IP address are not running out. Do you actually think there is a need for 4.3 billion publically addresses machines? Most computers today are in corporate situations that don't touch the internet except through firewalls, but currently use non-reserved ip blocks for the chance of one day things changing.

    I will say, that without proper management, they could run out, but clearly look at this stupidity: "whois 3.0.0.0@whois.arin.net". Does GE need 16.7 million addresses?

    What we need is variable subnet masking working on All products, and supernetting working on all routers, all the issues go away. That, and have companies justify having thousands of addresses when they only have a couple pingable IP's (and usually those are on a separate network anyway)

  • No, that was the point. (Score:3)

    by Mr. Flibble ( 12943 ) on Wednesday September 13, 2000 @06:56AM (#784128) Homepage
    I chose the question based on that.
    I knew the stack was separate. The whole point of the question was to see how much the presenter knew, not getting an answer to the question.

    I wanted to see if I got back a response like, "No, the kernel and the stack are separate" or "I believe IPv6 is forthcoming" or "what kind of question is that?"

    As you just caught me on the question, I wondered if she would catch me on the question. You can choose to believe that or not, but it was the point.
  • It is in Microsoft's financial best interests to wait as long as possible to implement IPv6. For example, lets jump forward 2 years. Windows 2000 is the current server standard for Windows/Intel environments. Windows ME has a significant market share. Most of the industry leaders who have chosen to migrate to the Active Directory paradigm have already done so. The smaller firms who were happy with NT 4.0 plan to stay with it for some time.

    Then out of nowhere, Microsoft announces that Windows 2002 (due early 2004) will support the next Internet revolution, Ipv6! Unfortunately, due to all the hassles, this upgrade will not be available on legacy operating systems.

    This will force every company that would like to participate in the Internet economy to upgrade all of their operating systems once again. Microsoft will be able to cash in on what should be in a service pack. (Remember FAT32 & USB support on NT4? Neither do I.)

    If there is one thing that Microsoft knows inside & out, it is how to sell product. They will not let an opportunity like this pass them by.

    You might want to look into NAT (Network Address Translation) technologies now, so you will be ready when the time comes.

  • Where are my moderator points when I need them? The most sensible post in the whole thread sitting at 1.

    My whole house only needs 1 IP. I don't have enough money to buy enough devices to use all of the reserved addresses. Who cares if NAT requires rewriting of FTP packets? Computation power is so cheap that it isn't worth tracking the MIPS necessary to rewrite every packet going out over a cable modem.

    Besides, why would my frig need a world addressable IP? I don't need it to call the serviceman when it thinks that it's broke so that he can come and charge me $50 for changing the lightbulb.

    Nearly every problem I see that needs 128bit IPs as a solution are marketing hype or manufactured bullsh*t. I do understand that IPv6 has other features (QOS, multicasting, etc), and these features may be worth the cost of conversion, but being able to address every grain of sand in the world is not what I consider a goal worthy of much investment.

  • Microsoft invented the wheel didn't you know that?

    It does say 'implementation' which means that they are going to make it available for Windows OS.

    I am not that familiar with windows tcp, but my guess is that it does not currently support IPv6. This could mean that they are now going to. The problem I see is that they could potentially do the same thing to it that they did to kerbos.

    I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
    Flame away, I have a hose!

  • While i believe you, that they probably have some fine engineers over at MS the problem is, that it's not them that make the truely important design decisions , but marketing. This can be seen at the example of bundling IE with Windows: while at first this didn't have anything to do with the design of either product (hey they just gave it away for free, you pay the price with MS Windows anyway) later IE was intertwined with the OS so much that it's now really not easy to rip it out without destrying something (for the big userbase). It's obviously bad design to give up modularity and every engineer will tell you that, It's also obviously good design to have clear, well documented interfaces (maybe there are, but the documentation is well hidden) so you can exchange one thing for another.

    It's also very obvious that applications should be compatible with their preceding versions if possible (try to edit a Word document with an older version than Word than what last touched it ... so most businesses who have a lot of correspondence with customers via Word documents use two versions: an old one for creating documents goin out to customers (who might not have updated to the latest version) and the latest version to be able to read their customers documents). Now all these are design decisions no sane engineer would burden a sensible piece of software with, it's just microsoft marketing screwing over the customers.

  • Re:We need IPv6 sooner rather than later (Score:3)

    by WNight ( 23683 ) on Wednesday September 13, 2000 @09:22AM (#784139) Homepage
    They don't have to support it, that's the great thing about IPv6, it'll coexist with older IPv4 implementations...

    Basically an ISP puts all of its old IPv4 customers behind a NAT box and they're happy. The rest of the net uses the full address range and the poor little IPv4 box talks to them via a translator.

    This'll even work for servers, if MS doesn't get on the ball with it, or releases a crippled/broken version, people who want Win2000 for a server (ugh) could simply put it behind an IPv6 NAT computer and the Win2000 box would think it was directly on the network without having to know the details of what the world is like.

  • 1 - What do people need from IPv6? What can we do to make this a bigger need or a need exclusive to us?

    2 - Can I embrace and extend?

    3 - What does this cost me? Support? Development resources?

    4 - Can I release just before a crisis (remember Y2K? - oh maybe just after the crisis) to force an upgrade? Most consumers haven't even heard of IPv6 yet. Thus no economic value.

    Actually I think that this release is more genuine than most people think. MS _has_ to remain compatible with the rest of the market at least to a basic degree. Remember all the articles about the companies, including MS, that use something other than NT for their web servers? They aren't stupid. They would not make their OSs incompatible with half of The Net.

    Hey, maybe they're waiting until all their web servers are NT based. This could take a while...
  • Actually I recently submitted a Slashdot article about a new form of programming that Microsoft Research are pioneering - Intentional Programming. (I can't find the link now.)

    The article got turned down.

    So it's not that Microsoft don't innovate, it's that Slashdot deliberately avoids covering it when they do.

    Anyone with half a brain and a reasonably open mind can see that in fact Microsoft have innovated hundreds of ideas over the last decade, which the Linux crowd is still busy copying. That's why Windows is usable to the average Joe while Linux is restricted to nerds (who think it's cool that Linux is incomprehensible to the "losers" who can't configure an inetd).

    Funnily enough, I used to hate Microsoft as much as anyone when I started reading Slashdot, but Slashdot's utterly biased coverage, and the idiocy of the Linux zealots, has given me new respect for the organization.

  • Also don't forget how they corrupted ppp.

    A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.

  • I believe he's referring to the fact that he's either some type of tech support or in the security field. Think about it:

    M$ bugs + lusers = $$$ for us

    I agree, let them be. Us geeks need to eat too. :-)
  • Seeing as how it is not currently cheap to purchase an IP, I would have to say that 4.3G addresses is no where near enough. Though I agree that not everything needs an IP, subnetting will very quickly decimate the 32bit address space. If things continue for too long, then routers will extremely fragmented and bogged down, trying to allocate every last IP. Prices will most definately go up as demand increases and supply decreases.

    Hell, I predict that subnetting will split up the 128bit adress space within 20-40 years. And the question of necessity of 16.7M addresses is not really one of current use, but future insurance.

    -Michael
  • MS owns 90% of the desktops. If 90% of the desktops can not connect to the internet cisco will rush to patch their OS to conform to the MS "standard" Once Cisco routers are patched the rest of internet has no choice but to follow. Sure I can hope that the sysadmins would simply block out all the MS users and tell them to complain to MS but you and I know that will not happen. MS owns the computer market and therefore a standard is whatever MS says it is plain and simple.
    They have shown that they have no respect for any standard and will in most likelyhood break this one too. We will wait and see what happens but I don't expect eggs from pigs and I don't expect ethical behaviour out of Microsoft.

    A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.

  • Trumpet still do a version of winsock for win9x. Works much better than DUN (for example, DUN connection timeouts work from when new TCP connections are initiated rather than when data was last transmitted. Annoying when you're trying to transfer large files) and has some hand extra functionality.

    Unfortunately, it costs and last I checked, wasn't compatible with Netmeeting (if that's an issue for you). I probably would have forked over for it but in the end, I'm using NAT and a linux box with ppp-on-demand (which has its own annoyances).

    Oh. And it (trumpet winsock) also does IPV6 already.

    Rich

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