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The Internet

IPv6 and Wireless Networks 67

Posted by CmdrTaco from the match-made-in-heaven? dept.
bemis sent us an article that talks about IPv6 and Wireless, and how the two seem to fit together pretty well. (Especially since at the rate we're going your home stereo is gonna need its own class C)
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IPv6 and Wireless Networks More

IPv6 and Wireless Networks

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  • I think it's time for ./ to list WHO moderated WHAT on the post in question.
  • I'll be honest here: I would *love* subnets with more IPs. The people who built our network put in more network drops (for mobile computers) than IPs were available on particular subnets. The way the network is wired (each subnet having it's own 'gateway' to the rest of the network) if too many mobile users connect at once some are left out because there aren't enough IPs available. This happened on the desktop subnets too, and I think our network guys have sorted it all out (eg. re-allocate the subnets to ensure that there is an IP available for each drop).

    <blockquote>
    <i>Also, the powers that be recently carved out a huge chunk of address space for 6to4, so that every IPv4 address can have a /48.
    </i></blockquote>

    That makes sense...

    DNS issues...Currently, I can type 192.168.1.100 to get to a machine if the DNS is down... what happens with IPv6? 123.456.789.111.123.456.789.0? Actually, I'll shut my ignorant mouth and go RTFM. I've wanted to learn some more about IP anyway... ;)

    Verbatim

  • I'm waiting for IPv7, which will finally and fully link the Wired and the Real World, connecting everyone to the Wired (and each other) without using devices.

    "Doko ni datte, hito wa tsunagatte iru." (No matter where, people are all connected) - from Serial Experiments Lain
  • get my own IPv6 subnet? Or does it already cost money to 'lease' your part.
  • IPv6 and 3G Wireless are perfect for each other because both are blind alleys, technologies that are vastly oversold. Neither is half as good as its supporters imply, and IPv6 itself is a huge loser.

    Cut to the chase: The main reasons that the referenced article states that IPv6 is useful are 1) security, and 2) end-to-end voice. NEITHER is materially better in v6 than in v4! IPSec (which has its own problems) works in v4; v6 doesn't make it more secure. And contrary to the bushian Big Lies going around these days, IPv6 does NOTHING for QoS by itself! It got flows wrong too. You can run IPv4 over MPLS and get QoS; IPv6 by itself doesn't get you QoS. QED.

    IPv6 is a bad protocol, a political compromise from the NSFnet days of yore, which has a high cost of adoption and few benefits. The IPv4 address space ain't done yet -- first off, NATs solve a lot of problems. Second, the former "class A" space 64-126 is still reserved; it could free up a LOT of CIDR space, if ICANN weren't playing games.

    TUBA was a better proposal, but the IETF dropped it at the last minute because it was tainted by the whiff of OSI -- kind of a redbaiting approach to protocol design. What's needed now isn't IPv6 but a rethought Internet layer, one that's not devoted to fighting the religious battles of the 1970s and 1980s, but one that's designed to carry diverse applications with reasonable overhead.

    And wireless? Well, 3G has more bandwidth, but not cheap bandwidth -- look up what the spectrum auctions netted and figure out how much you'll need to pay to cover that bill! It's fine for voice, but don't expect to watch on-demand-TV on your cellphone's screen, unless you're willing to pay macro {dollars,euros} per minute. Now the LAST think wireless (land of costly bandwidth) needs is a huge wasteful header overhead! IPv6 assumes basically free bandwidth. Wireless needs its overhead the way the Sahara needs more sand.
  • IPv6 won't be deployed until it is in Microsoft's best interest. So what if the your Linux box and home LAN (or even the backbones) run IPv6. Microsoft controls 90% of desktop computers and a huge percentage of web servers and corporate networks. If these computers don't support IPv6, who is going to use it? Pay for IPv6 hardware, software, and admins? Microsoft will make or break IPv6 by either supporting it or not.

  • Actually IPv6, labs, and firewalls is a perfect place to use this. We are going to VLAN and firewall all of the dorms soon. I just got out of a meeting that talked about wireless, mentioning the labs and carts of laptops for use in a class. This controlled environment (where we won't be assigning public IP anyhow) would be the perfect place to start working with IPv6! It really can't hurt our network. The only thing I wonder about is NAT. Can a IPv6 network be NATed on a firewall which then routes IPv4 onto our public network? Hmmm...

  • I don't think meta-moderate would be viable if we all knew who had modded us down.

    Maybe there should be some method of atonement introduced.

    My karma needs it with these confused moderators who think I am serious when I'm not, and ironically think I'm not serious when I am.

  • From the same people that brought you this... [slashdot.org]
  • That's very much like saying that a true color GUI is less efficient than a text terminal. It is true in the absolute sense, yes. But in the relative sense, it's the norm, and it's not really challenging to today's hardware.

    Back when 10Mb LANs were the height of networking technology and 386-class machines did the routing, v4 took a lot of effort. Today, I can pump data to the desktop at nearly a Gbps (if I choose to pay for it) and I can have routers that approach Tb speeds. The hardware is there today to support 128bit addressing, IP-level encryption, quality of service and the rest of IPv6 features.

    The problem seems to be that the relative cost of all that extra logic makes customers reluctant to buy them, and knowledge of this fact makes manufacturers like Cisco, Bay and the rest reluctant to produce them in quantity. IPv4 is still a "better bargain", and we all know that the Accountants, not the Network Engineers make the purchasing decisions.

    The REAL jabber has the /. user id: 13196

  • If I remember correctly, it's been speculated by many people that the Windows TCP/IP stacks are BSD-derived (perhaps because the bugs they've suffered from seem similar?). However, Microsoft has always denied that claim and said that their stack is a ground-up implementation of their own.
  • I haven't been keeping up on IPv6 since it's a long time comming, but I am curious about a few things that maybe the astute /. crowd could answer:

    1) I hear IPv6 implements security (packet level encryption?) for end-users, but what about tracing origins over the network? Its hard enough with current 32bit addresses, will it be more or less dificult to trace a 128bit source (possibly even if it gets filtered from those 6-4 routers)?

    2) It seems to me that the internet community went through the address space of ipv4 rather quickly due to gross mismanagement - people were given huge blocks of IPs to connect their 5 user LAN... back THEN they didn't believe that we would use up the whole address space... and now... well.. As the article suggests - we could do the same thing by giving IPs for useless reasons. Will there be some sort of control to the assignment of IP addresses? I think they should be treated as if we were running out.

    3) How long will this be? I mean, would it be a good idea to start preparing big systems for a change, or wait and see how the technology developes (eg. is this tech really comming?)

    Oh well.. l8r.

    Verbatim
  • DNS issues...Currently, I can type 192.168.1.100 to get to a machine if the DNS is down... what happens with IPv6? 123.456.789.111.123.456.789.0?

    IPv6 addresses are in hex... I'll let you decide if that's an improvement or not. :-)

  • Need IPv6 (Score:4)

    by jabber01 ( 225154 ) on Tuesday October 24, 2000 @05:23AM (#680861)
    Private use may not necessitate v6, as long as we all have one IP address. But we don't.

    Anyone with a cell-phone will need an IP address soon. Shortly thereafter, anyone with a pager. Then anyone with a car. Then anyone with a major appliance. It doesn't always make sense - is a networked washing machine really necessary? But as soon as there is someone willing to buy it, it will be made available.

    Imagine, having a washing machine that can page you when it's done cleansing your tighty-whiteys? Now, unless you expect everyone in the world who wants a piece of this new technology, to set up their own wireless subnet, you'll have to agree that it's going to require a network which will support this sort of flexibility.

    Personally, I'm all for a car that can self-diagnose, and wirelessly inform my mechanic/dealer of a problem. I'm all for email that will get routed to wherever I happen to currently be: work, home, cell, car..

    The thing here is that v4 is running out of available addresses in a big hurry. A 32 bit address field just doesn't cut it anymore, and subnetting, masking, ghosting, shadowing, blah, blah and all other v4 hacks can only go so far.

    v6 has a great deal to offer, but the acceptance curve is pretty steep. Not for technical reasons, but for financial ones. Networking hardware presents a significant investment, and well designed hardware happily continues to run when new technologies become available. It's very hard to justify the purchase of new hardware, if there is nothing 'wrong' with old hardware.

    Incidentally, this is why very few offices are using fiberoptics, and so many are still on 10Mbps LANs. Stringing new wires (wires, nevermind routers, just wires) is a very expensive undertaking. Replacing old CAT-3 wires with CAT-5, to make 100Mb to the desktop possible (in an older office, for example) requires the office to be shut down, so workmen could gut the walls. Then you buy the switches and routers; and THEN you buy everyone a new NIC.

    It's the COST, not the technical merit of the technology, that is keeping it out of our hands; and we are running out of v4 'tricks' very quickly.

    The REAL jabber has the /. user id: 13196

  • Misconceptions (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    First off, the real reason for IPv6 is greater address space - everyone who wants them can have all the public addresses they desire. No shortage imposed by limited address space of IPv4.

    You can run IPv4 over MPLS and get QoS; IPv6 by itself doesn't get you QoS

    IPv4 over MPLS can only get you QoS while you're running over MPLS, which most links aren't. IPv6 carries the flow label in the header, so you can perform QoS end-to-end.

    NATs solve a lot of problems.

    Unfortunately, NATs create more problems than they solve. Ask any real network engineer whether they wish they could just make NATs go away - you'll get a resounding YES! back. And guess what - with IPv6, NATs can go away.

    the former "class A" space 64-126 is still reserved

    Someone seems to be unclear on the concept of exponential growth. And remember, most of the world isn't on the Internet yet.

    Now the LAST think wireless (land of costly bandwidth) needs is a huge wasteful header overhead!

    This is another point in IPv6's favor, actually. The IPv6 header, being simpler than the IPv4 one, compresses better! So it takes less bandwidth to run IPv6.

    TUBA was a better proposal, but the IETF dropped it at the last minute

    Ah, you're an old TUBA proponent. Your ramblings make more sense in that context. Sore loser, eh?

  • IPv6 includes a variety of MAC addresses within its address format (though the embedded MAC part can also be set to whatever you want).

    The main reason to go to 128 bit addresses is to have a single unique IP address across all the billions (literally) of IP-enabled phones, web tablets, Internet appliances, and so on.
  • Actually you can get QoS with plain IPv4 (or rather CoS, class of service, which is good enough for many situations and much easier to deploy).

    MPLS adds traffic engineering, which is loosely the ability to create virtual circuits a bit like ATM - so you can get harder QoS and load-balance traffic across the network, onto underutilised links.

    Both are independent of IPv6, and IPSec is also a red herring since it works fine in IPv4.

    IPv6 may not be the perfect approach, but IMO it has real benefits in autoconfiguration (renumber from a single point and watch the changes just happen) and many other areas - unfortunately these don't make good soundbites.

    Probably the most important issue is getting rid of NAT - though this may be optimistic since many organisations are very happy with their proxy-based firewalls, even worse for interoperability than NAT, and won't change them in a hurry.
  • actually IPv6 can be written in Base85
    see RFC 1924 [ietf.org]

    this from the RFC :
    Why 85?
    2^128 is 40282366920938463463374607431768211456. 85^20 is 387595310845143558731231784820556640625, and thus in 20 digits of base 85 representation all possible 2^128 IPv6 addresses can clearly be encoded.
  • > IPv4 over MPLS can only get you QoS while you're running over MPLS, which most links aren't. IPv6 carries the flow label in the header, so you can perform QoS end-to-end.

    No. First off, end-to-end QoS is a misnomer; if a router in the middle drops or delays a packet, 'tain't nuttin' the ends can do to make it arrive on time. Second, the flow label in IPv6 is too short to be globally significant, so it's basically useless to the intermediate routers; they will still need MPLS!

    NATs cause problems but solve others (like security; some corporate nets use them even with ample space just for that reason). If you want to address every shelf of your refrigerator, I'd think a NAT address would be adequate. IPv6 does offer more address space, but it's not well thought out; TUBA does it better.

    The 64-126 space, assigned via CIDR, could do quite a bit to preserve IPv4 until something WORTHWHILE is done. The cost of IPv6 is just too high for the few benefits that it actually delivers.
  • wow. that was the coolest first post ever.

    ---

  • IPv6 & Wireless (Score:4)

    by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak AT yahoo DOT com> on Tuesday October 24, 2000 @04:13AM (#680868) Homepage Journal
    I'm very much in favour of IPv6, which (through it's notion of transitional IP addresses) is (IMHO) much better at handling wireless scenarios, where the exact topology is indeterminate over any period of time.

    That, I think, is one of the biggest road-blocks to stable, reliable, large-scale networks. The topology isn't going to be consistant, moment to moment, and IPv4 has no built-in mechanism for supporting that.

    (You can use packet-forwarding, if all the nodes support it, but mangling packets and re-sending them gets messy and lossage is going to be higher.)

    The day when it'll be possible to connect your portable via a wireless link when on the move and via a land-line otherwise, without EVER having to lose connectivity at ANY point, is coming.

  • ...whole new internet while we're at it?
  • I want a stereo, with a simple interface to get songs like a jukebox. Have it networked to my computer so I can add new songs easily. would be sweet.

  • What a great idea! (Score:3)

    by Enry ( 630 ) <enry AT wayga DOT net> on Tuesday October 24, 2000 @04:08AM (#680871) Journal
    No, really. Wireless is still being developed, whereas landline networking is already established. Get wireless working with IPv6, get any of the remaining bugs out of the protocols and implementations, then get it going with landline. The chicken-and-egg problem will already be solved.

    Plus, IPv6 gives all the advantages that wireless requires such as encryption and easier routing.
  • So, is IPv6 done as a international standard yet? I realize it's in a few of the *nixs, but afaik (which may not be much), it isn't being implemented in a large scale way anywhere ('cept maybe Internet2). If it is a done standard, why not? MS is still beta-testing their implementation for Win2k, but why, if it's backwards compatable, isn't it sticking up all over the place yet?
  • Does anyone know the reason nobody is doing a mass rollout of IP v6? It was my belief that it was supposed to present a heap more address space; even my web hosting company told me they couldnt give me a real IP for my domain because of "Arin's restrictions" referring there to arin.net. I was told a year ago that v6 was "almost here" however everyone seems reticent to incur a mass rollout... why?

    ---
  • One of the biggest problems with wireless networks is latency. Dropped packets and so on really screw things up when you're going throw tunnels and behind hills. IPv6 won't fix that. Sure, its a nice way of assigning an identifier, and it'd be groovy to have a similar system on both wired and unwired networks, but the entire IP system was never designed to be robust enough to cope with the crapness of a wireless network. The October issue of Scientic American has a pretty indepth report about wireless networks regarding WAP.. read it online at http://www.sciam.com/2000/10 00i ssue/1000alpert.html [sciam.com]
  • Basically you have to use a special IPv6 router. It is called a 6to4 router, in that it works to send the ipv6 packets across ipv4 networks with no knowledge of ipv6. You have to understand that packets won't really go anywhwere if the routers don't support it. Check out this article [kfu.com]. It was posted in a slashdot story [slashdot.org] yesterday in the bsd section.
  • IBM is planning to add IPv6 to it OS/400, Linux, WebSphere and Tivoli offerings. Hm, Linux already supports IPv6, actually since some time (which version?). Vincent
  • However, Microsoft will not ship a commercial version of Windows 2000 with built-in IPv6 for another two years, admits Tony Hain, program manager of IPv6 for Microsoft's Windows Networking group. Hain says Microsoft is focused on getting application developers to support IPv6 first, so the technology will be useful to consumers and businesses when it ships.
    Yet another example of the chicken and the egg situation. Why can't Microsoft release IPv6 stacks for both Windows 200 and Windows Me now? I'm sure businesses would then find ways to make the technology useful. I mean it's not as if there's a lack of useless features in Windows 200 as it is...
  • I don't think the cellular phone companies are planning to use mobile IP; I think they already have optimized mobility protocols.
  • Proponents of IPv6, a controversial upgrade to the Internet's main communications protocol

    controversial? huh? There's nothing controversial about IPv6, it just takes time and money for all the major IPv4 hardware to get upgraded.

  • IPv6 is designed for gross mismanagement. :-) Seriously, they realized that it's much easier to just use longer addresses and waste most of them than to try to conserve artificially scare address space and end up with messy routing tables.

    One example of this is the fact that almost all subnets in IPv6 are /64; of course no subnet has that many machines, but it makes things a lot easier.

    Also, the powers that be recently carved out a huge chunk of address space for 6to4, so that every IPv4 address can have a /48.
  • Conveniently, there are two [slashdot.org] articles [slashdot.org] about this very topic, including instructions for FreeBSD, Debian, and Windows.
  • What MS should do (and probably already has done) is leave room for the protocol to be added later. When MS decides it is time to add ipv6 support to their operating systems, they'll just make it available as a automatic update. Users that need the protocol can then click ok when the update tool prompts them or they can download it manually.

    Clearly, the last thing they want to do is to massively roll out a relatively untested implementation of their IP v6 stack before it is widely used. Imagine the flamewars if there's a bug in the prematurely released stack! Considering this and that there's no point in having client machines support ipv6 if the networks to which these machines connect don't support ipv6 it is perfectly understandable that MS waits with adding ipv6 to their operating systems.
  • As does most every other major operating system.
  • Yes, but each piece of hardware would still need a hardware address, and an address resolution protocol to link IP address to the hardware address.

    Unless you can soft code an IP address to a piece of hardware without requiring the hardware to have a hardware address. But that leaves too many problems open (IE: reflashing your toaster and every other applicance every time you decide to move your furniture).
  • IPv6 is not going to take the world by storm.

    Rather, it's gonna have to happen as a series of foggy-areas gradually coalescing into local showers.

    Why? First there's complacency. All of the problems with IPv4 have been patchable, work-aroundable, or otherwise resolvable. There's no screaming need for IPv6 right now. There are theoretical benefits and additional features built in but no absolute pressing need for it today, tomorrow, next quarter or next year.

    Second there's the additional cost. Developing, testing, deploying, and supporting IPv6 is gonna cost. Apple & Stanford both did massive IP renumberings a few years ago; they cost millions and that's much less difficult then switching IP stacks and network infrastructure. Anybody that rolls out IPv6 in a big way is gonna have to spend a LOT of money doing so and frankly I know of few budgets with that kind of slosh in them.

    Software compatibility. Applications and utilities across the board are hard-coded to use IPv4. From word-processors to chat clients to multi-tier ERP applications they all expect IPv4 and burp & spit-up when fed IPv6. Yes there are work arounds and alternatives and all of that but it quickly turns into a rats-nest of slightly different applications and idiosyncratic configurations and the whole set-up just gums up.

    Hardware support isn't there yet either. Few products support IPv6 yet. Fewer still do so well. Of those almost none do so optimally. From NICS to routers to management systems to contracts and manuals the boxes aren't ready yet. Sure for a lab or two, even a floor or two on a research building but the minute you start plugging in the obsolete, the unusual, the critical stuff you start running into problems.

    That million-dollar super-printer downstairs? No go. The fancy networked building security system? Locks up solid. The black-box encryption system for routing email to our overseas branches? We don't know what happened but now all of the LEDs glow solid and we can't get it to reset.

    IPv6 is deep and untested waters. IS/IT/MIS/etc. is complex enough these days without throwing in a giant wild variable like IPv6.

    Furthermore we've been burnt before. Remember when OSI was going to rule the world? Then ATM was gonna take over. Now IPv6 is the heir apparent. Frankly until it's out there and in significant quantities that it's a standard order most folks aren't gonna touch it. Oh there will be the occasional test and we'll have a favored techie bone up on it as a cookie/insurance-policy but nobody is taking it seriously.

    Even in the wireless phone world IPv6 is finding it hard to roll-out. The equipment is expensive, tolerances are tight, and the requirements are brutal. These are telephony folks - they still have the old tight-ass conservative Bell-ways trained into them even in the wild-'n-woolly new age of wireless. They want many-9's of reliability, flawless interoperability, and the ability to scale quickly and massively before they'll commit.

    IPv6 looks great when you're hacking around on your home box. But when it comes to signing the check for a couple million dollars or more (mebbe much more) for hardware, support, training etc. and you know that this will have significant repercussions on your career it suddenly looks much less appealing. IS/IT/MIS/etc. executives aren't cowards, but to get where they are they have to be survivors. Right now & for the foreseeable future IPv6 doesn't look like a good bet to be making.

    Finally - what are Cisco, Nortel, 3Com, etc. using internally? Ipv4? Uh huh. If it's so great why aren't the darn manufacturers "eating their own dogfood"? Perhaps even with all of the support in-house they know it's not worth running yet, even for the bragging rights.

    -- Michael

    ps On the other hand for students, developers, and the ilk - bone up, design-with-this-in-mind, this could be a sea-change that will make your fortune.

  • Wireless is still being developed

    What about Apple's wireless Airport technology, that has been included with many of their machines for over a year now? From what I understand about it, its "supposed" to provide 11 Mbps, and most of its users have been impressed with it...

    Go ahead and laugh at me for mentioning Apple, but as a networking guy, I respect the fact that they developed LocalTalk (which was revolutionary for its time) and that they helped Novell with ODI.

  • This is all well and good but Remember the Microsoft intends their machines to be servers. whether or not you agrea that they are good servers does not affect the fact that if they want to be a server they should support ipv6. Other wise the topdown roleout from backbone to desktop will stop when it hit's NT/2000 and never actually reach the desktop.
  • Interesting comment. I'd like to thank you for providing me some insight... and giving me something I can share with the students I review before they take their Novell Net-Tech Exam. =)

    I think you made it pretty clear that upgrading to IPv6 isn't as clean-cut as it may appear to be. Many don't seem to recognize the difference between upgrading their Microsoft OS and putting in a new, "improved" heart into the internet -- a heart which most users probably don't even know exists.

    Just picture Joe Shmoe sitting there, tooling away at Win98, hearing on the evening news about ME and throwing his monitor to the ground as he rushes out the door to buy it. He may understand that "Millenium" is "greater" than 98, but does he understand that every time he connects to his ISP (aka AOL), and goes on a "website", that thousands of pieces of information are passed down through the TCP/IP protocol stack? He doesn't even know what TCP/IP means. Neither does he understand, nor particularly care, about what IPv6 could do for him. As far as he's concerned, if there's a problem, the manufacturer of his software will take care of it.

    Although many aren't bothering with IPv6 as of now, I believe eventually that more and more companies will begin to embrace it, or some other new IP technology, as the need arises... because we, the geeks who love IT, aren't going to stop improving it until we can go into VR and have sex with anime chicks!

  • The article is specifically talking about using IP6 to talk to mobile devices. That is what I was discussing. I said "phones" because those are the most common mobile device, and I can't imagine that there will never ever be a mobile phone with an IP stack of some sort. In fact I would be surprised if at least one doesn't already exist. But if not, just substitute for "phone" whatever sort of mobile device _you_ think the article was talking about, and the point stands.
  • Find out about NAT-PT (NAT-Protocol Translation) - this takes IPv6 packets and NATs them, translating to IPv4 at the same time. Useful to talk to the IPv4 world from your domain.

    To talk to other IPv6 domains, investigate the various tunnelling approaches for 6 over 4. In particular, there's one that automatically builds tunnels as required (6to4, I think).
  • You need to read up on IPv6 - the MAC address stays the same, when you move the device it either keeps its IP address (via Mobile IP, which IPv6 is quite good at) or gets a new one via various techniques (not just DHCP). I think ARP has gone away in IPv6, but there's something equivalent that generalises across most L2 protocols.
  • IPv6 already works on linux, {free,net,open}BSD, solaris 8 and some other systems. (among others, cisco-routers, from as-low as 1600, 25xx, ...)

    Just give it a try:
    End-users: http://www.freenet6.net/
    ISPs: http://www.6bone.net

    Cheerio! Kr. Bonne
  • Um...base 85? So you'd have non-letters, non-numbers in it? And both cases? Or is this some really odd troll? I really only have about 90 symbols I can even type with this keyboard.

    -David T. C.
  • Hrm. six billion people at the moment. IPv4 supports 4,294,967,296 addresses. We're obviously short there...now, let's check IPv6.

    it's a 128 bit address space, so let's pretend the entire thing is used. 2^128 is...damn, cheap calculator overflowed. Where's my TI-89...okay, 2^128 is...
    340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,45 6 address.
    That's...I don't know the word. One past dectillion.

    That gives us each...79,228,162,514,264,337,593,543,950,336 addresses. That's seventy-nine octillion addresses each. Now, even assuming we waste a quadrillion for each address we give out and we each use a quadrillion devices with our own IP, we'll be fine unless we manage to cram 80 people on this planet for every existing person. And I have no idea where I'm supposed to fit my quadrillion cell phones if we do that. Acutally, I doubt I could fit a million cell phones in this dorm room. ;)

    Yeah, that's rather silly, so just believe people when they say we'll never run out. :)

    -David T. C.

  • Yeah! Where shcools can prototype new technology, and get high speed, and ...oh wait, that's I2.
  • Somewhat. IPv6 doesn't do checksumming so that may speed up everything a little bit, but overall wireless is just plain slow.

  • Shameless Plug (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    FreeBSD supports IPv6 right now.
  • Since so many technology service providers (although not the majority) rely on microsoft written operating systems (and thus microsoft written TCP/IP Stacks) does this mean that there will be a microsoft enforced 'mandate' on when IP v6 should come into play? I find it distressing at the least that microsoft could be in a position to dictate when IPv6 should be activated on a wide spread basis. At the _least_.

    ---
  • Your home stereo as anything of the sort can
    live on its own private network. There is no
    need for your home stereo to talk directly
    to anything beyound your home.
    When it really has to it will go out on the
    same IP address everything else in your home has -
    the samoe old IPv4 to which it and every other
    device - and your porn download should be translated.

    IPv6 is not to be..just get used to it.
  • I was made to write an essay a couple of years ago about the proposals for mobility within IP6, and then I'm fairly sure that, although IP6 could be used by tunneling through a known "home base" router, the suggestions for making IP6 reliable and sane on mobile devices were not yet part of the official IP6 standard. If you can only get your packets through one guy on the other side of the world who you keep updated with your position, you are entirely dependent on that guy, and your packets are also likely to be going well out of their way.

    To be reliable on mobile devices, IP6 would need built in support for informing the other side of each connection when your location changes. This is in an RFC which I dug up here [utexas.edu], but does anyone know whether that is commonly implemented in IP6 stacks? Or how usable the tunnelling thing would (or wouldn't) be once everyone and his dog has an internet enabled mobile phone?

  • Re:WTF (Score:1)

    by whydna ( 9312 )
    time and money are typically controversial for managemnt types.
  • Money. It will get expensive in a hurry to replace all the routers that aren't up to IPv6 standards. Companies won't spend money until they absolutely have to. They must get the maximum return on their initial investment which means run those routers, etc. until they die or have become obsolete. The good news is that the new equipment is capable and so the ratio is climbing on IPv6 capable equipment every day. My company just leased all new cisco routers and could be ready soon. It isn't a requirement yet so we are still in testing mode and it will be on the back burner for awhile if nothing changes. Anyone want to buy a Motorola 6560 and nine 6520s?

  • Convincing arguement. Do you have more details or just spouting?

  • Makes you think (or least makes me think) about running IPv6 on the network and doing a IPv6 to IPv4 tunnel out to the world. Just sit back wait for the rest of the world to catch up. I probably would do it if I could get support in all the OS's I run.

  • There are two reasons the wireless industry is embracing IPv6. The first is just as a marketing strategy. IPv6 adds functionality and interopability. The second is more serious- the need for addressing. Phone numbers become scarcer and scarcer. Ditto for IP addresses.

  • Actually, you can download IPv6 stacks for Windows 2k already. Just click in at Research.microsoft.com [microsoft.com] and take a look.

    It even works. You can telnet, ping, ftp (using ncftp) etc. It should even be possible to get IE to work with it.

    Personally I'll stick to my Linux system (where I'm typing this right now using Mozilla on IPv6. :), but that's for different reasons.

  • [stupid question time]
    the question that comes to my mind is:

    you mention that 386-class machines did the routing for ipv4. you mention that today we have better machines that can handle more of a load faster. great. but -- what happens when you increase the load and processing time to work with it by moving to ipv6? (uneducated question alert!) would that throw the *relative* strength of those machines back to being comparable to the 386 class machines routing ipv4? would today's networks suffer somewhat from this?

    eudas
  • Offhand, I would say that the need for addresses is mainly limited to wireless - remember that all land based systems have hardware that have UNIQUE 48-bit MAC addresses, so it really is pretty stupid for IPv6 to go to a 128-bit base address unless you either revamp the MAC and ARP protocols simutaneously (which, since it is limited to a network segment, would not be *that* terribly hard, and *in theory*, could be done on a network-by-network basis) OR have a complete new and wonderful system (a la wireless) which can have a new, longer machine address/virtual address per machine.

    Of course, that asks the serious question: how long *are* the machine addresses within wireless technology? Do they really *need* the 128-bit address length, or are we going to need to keep updating the ARP (or whatever follows ARP) protocols every X years? And how about that backwards compatibility issue? If MAC == 48-bit, then ARP; if MAC == X-bit, then ARPv6; if MAC == ad nauseum.

  • I would have thought that the OSes that can do this now would convert when necessary and use a v4v6 translation mechanism when encountering a v4 address.
  • It's a /24 for your stereo. Good god, man.
  • IIRC, didnt MS yoink the BSD stacks for use in Win95? If that is the case, maybe they are simply waiting for the BSD's to "work out the bugs" in their IPv6 implementations. Then voila...free stack.

    rosie_bhjp
  • You should check this program out. I'm feeling lazy so I'm not going to post a link but I'm sure you can find it on freshmeat. I wanna use it as soon as I have an extra machine laying around. Of course the next extra machine I have is going to be a firewall so the second extra machine I get is going to be a networked stereo. :) Well, if you can call a box with mp3s connected to a stereo, a stereo. Sure why not its only another component like a cd player.
  • I don't have a lot of details about IPv6 but in my experience adding more feature (more IPs, more Security, whathaveyou) usually increases the network overhead. Just by switching to 128 bit they add 12 more bytes to the address field. Though this doesn't seem like much it adds up.

    Time is Change.
  • There are two ways to look at the roll-out problem:

    1) Nobody wants to bite the bullet first, since if things go wrong, then they'll be the ones giving everyone else free lessons.
    2) IPv6 should be able to replace v4 very seamlessly, and we might not hear about it being done until it's our turn to switch or lose service.

    This is something that will proceed top down, from the major back-bones to the desktop. Conveniently, the two protocols can tunnel through one another, so until a complete layer/network is ready to make the switch, we're not likely to see anything happenning at all - unless we're directly involved.

    The REAL jabber has the /. user id: 13196

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