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The Internet

Pentagon Wants IPv6 by 2008 376

Posted by michael from the ping-the-forward-torpedo-tubes,-ensign dept.
anzha writes "The constant question for 'when' for IPv6 keeps wandering across good ole /. It seems that the Pentagon has decided to put a foot down and put a deadline on their dark and dangerous portion of the net."
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Pentagon Wants IPv6 by 2008 More

Pentagon Wants IPv6 by 2008

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  • Advantages of IPV6 (Score:5, Informative)

    by Michael's a Jerk! ( 668185 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @01:43AM (#6197658) Homepage Journal
    For those not in the know, here is a brief article [silicon.com] Explaining the benefits of IPV6.

    • Re:Advantages of IPV6 (Score:5, Funny)

      by FunkyELF ( 609131 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @02:36AM (#6197833)
      Crucially, in the header for the new protocol version there are 128 bits for senders and recipients. That equates to several quadrillion IP addresses for every individual alive.

      Damn, thats it...I was hoping for at least a quintillion :(

      oh well, w/ that many available ip addresses, i'll hopefully be able to get a static IP thru my service provider...(if several quadrillion time the worlds population is enough to allow for that)
      • If (, if, if IF ), I've done it right, it's also more than 33 trillion addys per square micrometer [slashdot.org] of the earth's surface.

        • Re:Advantages of IPV6 (Score:4, Insightful)

          by sevensharpnine ( 231974 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @06:12AM (#6198242)
          The math you linked to is certainly interesting, though it raises another point. We can't possibly use that many addresses (though I'm sure somebody said this for ipv4 also...). Unless I'm being entirely ignorant, aren't we just going to end up sending a bunch of redundant zeroes around the net? I suppose we could use the first nybble for other purposes (evil bits!). But I can't help but wonder if they're all entirely necessary.

          • Re:Advantages of IPV6 (Score:4, Funny)

            by Tokerat ( 150341 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @06:25AM (#6198260) Journal

            We can't possibly use that many addresses (though I'm sure somebody said this for ipv4 also...). Unless I'm being entirely ignorant, aren't we just going to end up sending a bunch of redundant zeroes around the net? I suppose we could use the first nybble for other purposes (evil bits!). But I can't help but wonder if they're all entirely necessary.
            This of it this way: We won't need another protocol change when we colonize Mars. :-)

          • Re:Advantages of IPV6 (Score:3, Informative)

            by macshit ( 157376 )
            The point of large address spaces like this is not to use every address, or even come close, but rather to use the sparseness of the space to (greatly) simply the algorithms you can use for address space allocation, routing, etc.

            [The same thing is true for CPU address spaces (at least when you have an MMU) -- which is why the inevitable comments about how you could never afford 64-bits worth of memory are rather silly.]
      • i'll hopefully be able to get a static IP thru my service provider

        No, probably not. IPv6 encourages dynamic addresses, and has several mechanisms in place to aid in their use. This is a managability issue more than anything else -- one of the reasons IPv4 is running out of space is that the existing allocations are inefficient and renumbering would be too expensive. By using more dynamic addresses, the address space wastage can be significantly reduced.
    • here's [he.com] is an ISP that's playing with IPV6 today, and has a IPv6 Tunnel Broker [he.net] that enables you to reach the IPv6 Internet by tunnelling over existing IPv4 connections from your IPv6 enabled host or router to one of their routers.

      This might help it happen sooner than we think.

    • Re:Advantages of IPV6 (Score:4, Funny)

      by Jeremiah Cornelius ( 137 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @04:09AM (#6198042) Homepage Journal
      Damn.

      And I've just hijacked [securityfocus.com] my own [arin.net] /16!

    • Re:Advantages of IPV6 (Score:3, Informative)

      by scottj ( 7200 )
      On that same note, here's a pdf [insane.com] of the memo from the DoD CIO on this very topic.

  • 2008!!!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by kelceylehrich ( 600264 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @01:44AM (#6197664)
    Won't we need IPv7 by then?

    • Ummm.... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Michael's a Jerk! ( 668185 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @01:46AM (#6197671) Homepage Journal
      You do realize that IPv6 offers something like an IP address for every square centremetre of ground on the planet, right?

    • Re:2008!!!! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by wazlaf ( 681158 )
      Not quite. In fact if the available IPv6 addresses get distributed properly, they will last till 2008 easily. The problem is simply that some US organisations have class A networks, which they do not deserve nor require at all.

      • Re:2008!!!! (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Detritus ( 11846 )
        If your organization had made a significant contribution to the early development and deployment of IPV4, they might have a class A network too. If you don't like the address allocations or the structure of the domain name system, too bad. The people who provided the funding, and did the development and deployment, set the rules.

    • Nanotech, interplanetary wont exhaust 128-bit IPv6 (Score:5, Interesting)

      by LinuxParanoid ( 64467 ) * on Saturday June 14, 2003 @05:41AM (#6198205) Homepage Journal
      ...at least if you use a non-ethernet addressing scheme for those bottom 64 bits and get a full 128-bit space.
      I once wondered [slashdot.org] about whether nanotech would present problems for 128-bit addressing and did some back-of-the-envelope calculations to examine the issue. A little math to satisfy one's "what-if geek" tendencies:

      earth's surface area = 5.1*10^11 m2 [hypertextbook.com]
      earth's land area = 1.483*10^11 m2

      That's surface area, but we live in a volumetric space; let's define that space as 1 km high above/below earth's land-mass(part of that 1km being underground, part being in the air.) Thus the volume of human space above/below land is 1.48*10^14 m3. With 10^6 cubic centimeters per cubic meter, and approximately 10^23 atoms per cubic centimeter, we get 1.48*10^43 atoms in our human-habitable slab of space on earth.

      Now, how many IP addresses for that space? Well, 2^128 = 3.4*10^38th.

      Ergo we have enough IP addresses for nanotech devices of 43,600 atoms each, in a human-habitable volume completely covering the land-mass of Earth and extending to fill a volume of space above and below the earth's surface for a full 1 km. Sure, you might get nanodevices smaller than that, but would they be independent enough and sensing/generating enough information to communicate via IP?

      Well, if that isn't a problem for 128-bits, what is? Let's check a few other test cases that your friendly sci-fi reader might imagine...

      Well, that was just land-mass. What if we filled the sea with nanodevices, would that exhaust it?
      The sea is 11km deep at worst, 3.8km on average. Water surface area is little over double land. Thus water basically requires a factor of 10x more devices. Given that you probably won't have more than 10% of the volume of any space being nanodevices (and this would seem to remain an extreme upper bound), this probably isn't an issue.

      So what about interplanetary colonization? Still not too much of an issue for this solar system (ignoring the latency issues.) At least the first few planets (Mars/Venus/Mercury) which only add a factor of 3-4x expansion once 100% colonized form due to the roughly similar size of available nanodevice space on those planets as earth. True, a colonized Jupiter might pose problems down the line...

      And if you used nanoprobes to fill/convert entire atmospheric systems, you end up covering a lot more volume (99% of earths' atmosphere fills approx 8.6*10^19 m3 by my calculations, five orders of magnitude more space than our 1 km slab.) Of course, any nanodevice design on that scale would probably use its own non-IP protocol.

      Ah, but what other assumptions could be misleading us? For example, what is the efficiency of the 128-bit name space? Can we really use all those addresses? Well, I admit, I'm less an expert on this. The issue that Ethernet MACs will typically be your bottom 64-bits definitely chews up a lot of space, but if Ethernet doesn't make sense for nanodevices, we'll probably be using something else, or our self-assembling nanoprobes will build and configure themselves so that they share 1 higher-level IP but under the covers each have an colony-wide (not globally) unique ethernet address. How efficiently allocated is the rest of that (non-Ethernet) space? Well, I think CIDR-like tweaks can squeeze a fair amount out.

      Still, even in the case where 128-bits isn't quite enough(!), I suspect reverting to NAT-type approaches in IPv6 will be workable. Certainly inter-stellar communications which will be limited to a relatively small number of transmitters will scale up with NATs for quite a while, assuming photon-based communications. ;-)

      So I suspect the 128-bit addressing scheme of IPv6 will last us at least another 200 years, not just "decades" as

  • Hardware vendors have to come in line first. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by marbike ( 35297 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @01:46AM (#6197666)
    Before IPv6 can be deployed the vendors of the various routers etc. of hte internet will have to get fully tested and come in to line. Cisco, Nortel, Juniper et al must first finnish testing IPv6 on the hardware that currently creates the backbone of the new protocol.

    While it is good to see someone pushing for this, it really will take the efforts of all major networking companies to make IPv6 a reality.

    • Re:Hardware vendors have to come in line first. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      That's why the pentagon is so significant, I think -- they're so big that no one can ignore them.

    • Re:Hardware vendors have to come in line first. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Cato ( 8296 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @02:02AM (#6197728)
      Cisco has finally released IOS 12.3 which has full support for IPv6 in a production IOS train (see http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/732/Tech/ipv6/ ) - IPv6 has been in the 'T' train IOSes for some time. Their support now makes full use of hardware acceleration and looks very complete.

      Juniper have had IPv6 in production JUNOS releases on the M-series/T-series for quite a while.

      Most other vendors already have production IPv6, so in reality the router vendors aren't a roadblock. The same is now true for host OSs - Linux, Windows XP and modern Unixes have had IPv6 for a while as well. The real issue is getting applications ported (not that hard) and networks deployed.

      • Re:Hardware vendors have to come in line first. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Florian Weimer ( 88405 ) <fw@deneb.enyo.de> on Saturday June 14, 2003 @04:14AM (#6198058) Homepage
        Cisco has finally released IOS 12.3 which has full support for IPv6 in a production IOS train

        With some high-end Cisco routers, the problem is not software but hardware. For example, only very, very few GSR line cards are currently able to route IPv6 traffic at reasonable packet rates.

      • It's the distomakers that are holding it up! (Score:5, Informative)

        by Isomer ( 48061 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @06:52AM (#6198300) Homepage
        IPv6 supports autoconf where you plug your machine in and if there is an IPv6 enabled router on the network it automatically configures itself. IPv6 supports having IPv6 addresses if you are assigned IPv4 addresses.

        In theory, I can install a machine and plug it in, and it will do everything using IPv6. Configuring routers I admit requires some thought, but __nobody__, including the various Linux distributions by the default installs support being plugged into an IPv6 network and configuring themselves.

        They all require installing "extra" tools, recompiling kernels, or manually configuring interfaces. Where is the automatic 6to4 address use in NAT gateways? Where is the automatic ipv4-compatible ipv6 addresses?

        And thats for the PC operating systems, if we look at embedded devices (eg: Wireless bridges/AP's), most of them not only don't support IPv6, they "accidently" drop IPv6 thats forwarded across them!

        IPv6 is designed to be so simple that you aren't supposed to realise that you're transitioning to IPv6. One day you update your OS and you just happen to be using IPv6 instead of IPv4 where possible. Except at the moment you have to spend a week futzing about playing with weird options.

        The reason people aren't using IPv6 has nothing to do with if the core network is upgraded. IPv6 can support tunneling over that automatically if required using 6to4 addressing, the reason is that you have to conciously go and configure every frig'n device on your network to support IPv6!

        C'mon disto-makers, spend a bit of time getting IPv6 support working in your distro by default. Make sure IPv6 tools are shipped by default (where they exist). Make sure that kernels are compiled with IPv6 support. Make sure that your startup scripts configure ipv6-compatible ipv4 addresses on interfaces that have ipv4 addresses, configure 6to4 addressing by default etc. It's not hard!
    • I'm glad that somebody has the backbone to go forward with IPv6!
      • I'm glad that somebody has the backbone to go forward with IPv6!

        I can see the headlines now... The US is invading the Middle East to over throw their IT infastructure for their refusal to use our Zionist IP addressing scheme. We insert puppet US controlled operating systems (via 10240 bit encrypted SSH) and force our Democratic IPv6 networks on them. We say that it will give them freedom! No more 2 hour DHCP leases given out by an autocratic (MS?) OS. We will give everyone their own static IP to do wi
    • Before IPv6 can be deployed the vendors of the various routers etc. of hte internet will have to get fully tested and come in to line.

      This will happen eventually, no doubt, and the DoD won't have much influence here. A major obstacle for moving to IPv6 internally is the lack of IPv6 support in all those devices that are neither routers nor real hosts---e.g. printers. I think the DoD deadline might actually encourage vendors to enhance their firmware.

    • The sad truth... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by bazmonkey ( 555276 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @04:42AM (#6198098)
      ...is that there is no easy way to do this. There will be a major effort of large companies and corportations eventually, but only after someone takes initiative and sticks their neck out above the crowd. We can't all huddle behind each other saying "I'll go when you go..."

      I would like to see something critical go IPv6 exclusively. If... say, most of the world's search engines ran only IPv6, think of how much that would inspire people to adopt it, from the consumer all the way up to the corporations that rely on the consumer's business. We just need someone important enough to put their foot down and say "You must have IPv6... now."

      Not just search engines. Yahoo! could start serving their mail, chat, and games through IPv6 exclusively. MP3.com could only stream via IPv6, hardware corp's could stop producing IPv4 hubs and routers, which would still allow people to use IPv4 (the old ones won't be removed from the market, just no longer manufactured), but at the same time it would make the cost of staying with IPv4 increasingly expensive (as our supply of IPv4 hardware grows thin, the cost of using it will become too expensive).

  • yeah but.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by quiklilo71 ( 557049 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @01:46AM (#6197668) Homepage
    Didn't the government want us to be totally metric by now also?

    • Re:yeah but.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by G-funk ( 22712 ) <josh@gfunk007.com> on Saturday June 14, 2003 @02:02AM (#6197734) Homepage Journal
      God forbid uncle sam tell the US to pull their standards into line with the rest of the planet and use a well thought-out system that makes sense, instead of based on the length of some ancient greeks' gods' feet or some such.

      My car gets three rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it!
      • Actually, I've heard that the original measurement of "feet" was literally just the length of the King's foot, whoever the King happened to be at that time.

        "Hey Jim, how tall are you?"
        "Gee I dunno Bob, how long are the King's feet?"

        Of course, they've since standardized the length so that it doesn't change every time we get a new King...
      • Ahh but see that just isn't how we do things here. For many, perhaps even most, thigns the government doesn't like to lay out a legal, eveyrone-must-do-this-or-else, standard. Things are often just conventions. Like perahaps you didn't know but English is NOT the official language of the United States. True, almost all of the population speaks it, and much of the population speaks ONLY English, but it isn't isn't the offical language. So what is? We don't have one. Any time the debate at state or national l
      • I was about to say, "But what about people like my dad? The carpenters and builders of America??"

        Then I realized, "Oh.. but a 2x4 isn't really 2"x4".. So why not just quietly convert everything to metric and not tell any of them.. They won't know the difference! *shhh*
      • The U.S. government does try to use metric units when it is reasonable to do so.

        Excerpt from NASA Policy Directive 8010.2C:

        b. Require consideration of the metric system of measurement for all new programs and projects and New Capability Construction of Facilities (COF) Projects, and use the metric system of measurement in related NASA procurements, grants, and business activities, unless such use can be demonstrated to be impractical or likely to cause significant inefficiencies or loss of markets to U.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Transitions like this can be quite expensive. One reason why the move to metric is so slow in spite of the system's advantages is that mechanics will require two sets of tools until long after all new cars are 100% metric. I've had several cars from US auto cos that used a bizarre mixture of both metric and standard bolts. A carb might be held onto the manifold with standard bolts, but the manifold is held onto the head with metric bolts.

  • George W Bush (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 14, 2003 @01:46AM (#6197672)
    Maybe the white house could push this through.

    BTW does Bush even know what IPv6?

    I called up one of my customers ISP's for support and asked if they support IPv4 and they said no.

  • True.. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by chendo ( 678767 )
    If the Pentagon takes the initative and starts using IPv6, soon the rest of the US government should follow suit, then companies, corporations, and then the rest of the world.

    Which is a good thing, I suppose. Or does IPv6 have some evil bit that can track down Saddam? :p

    • Re:True.. (Score:5, Informative)

      by JW Troll ( 607432 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @01:52AM (#6197697) Homepage
      ... and then the rest of the world..

      Hate to break it to ya, sonny, but the rest of the world is the reason that the US is finally getting their ball in the game. It ain't America that's hurting because of IPv4, it's China, Japan, Russia, and the world at large: demand for IPv6 in the US is low because Americans have better than 80% of all the IPv4 addresses.

      --porsche_lover@hotmail.com

  • Japan leads (Score:3, Informative)

    by ui9872 ( 679896 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @01:47AM (#6197675)
    Previously discussed... http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/05/22/001221 9

  • Yeah, well,,, (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Kris_J ( 10111 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @01:47AM (#6197676) Homepage Journal
    Governments have set deadlines for turning off analogue TV, but it doesn't mean that will happen either.

  • free ip's (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rengalan ( 228534 ) <rengalanNO@SPAMhotmail.com> on Saturday June 14, 2003 @01:48AM (#6197682) Homepage
    IPv6 has billions and billions of IPs, can't "they" just hand out tons more free IPs to the networks already operating if they move to IPv6?

    • Re:free ip's (Score:3, Informative)

      by insecuritiez ( 606865 )
      It isn't a matter of one person or group moving to IPv6. The backbone support has to be there if they are going to be able to communicate with anyone else. The infastructure needs to be there and it isn't right now.

  • The Military... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Montreal Geek ( 620791 ) <marc AT uberbox DOT org> on Saturday June 14, 2003 @01:48AM (#6197683) Homepage Journal
    ... is at it again. While I dislike military organisations, the US's in particular, one has to admit that they are great motive forces for technological advances.

    I guess it doesn't reflect that well on mankind that we display the most ingenuity and brilliance when it comes to finding ways of beating each other into a pulp, or trying to prevent the others to do the same for us.

    But then again, it's biologically understandable: intelligence is the mean by which groups of human were succesful in preserving food supply, territory, mates from competitors.

    -- MG

    • I like the military (particularly the US's) because they protect my interests, food supply, and territory. We (the US) have accrued the deepest coffers. We therefore have the most to lose - we therefore have the most to protect.

      It should be noted that it is not the human intelligence that elevates us above the competition of our own species, but rather, what elevated us above the rest of the animal kingdom.

      Strife and warfare are part of nature in the animal kingdom. We are part of nature. Our military o

    • Re:The Military... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by mnemonic_ ( 164550 )
      Summary of parent:
      The U.S. military helps push technology.


      The state of the military is a sign of a supposed human preoccupation with violence.

      Intelligence is essential for survival [big insight there]
      Is there any of this that we haven't heard before (especially on slashdot)?

  • That's a long time. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by insecuritiez ( 606865 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @01:49AM (#6197687)
    Address space is going so fast by 2008 the question wont be "What is your ip address?" it will be "Do you have an ip address?"

  • Good to Hear (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Shackleford ( 623553 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @01:52AM (#6197699) Journal
    My understanding is that the Pentagon has been relying on outdated technology for quite some time. In fact, it was only recently that the building was renovated. I understand that they used highly outdated computers for some time. So it certainly is good to see that they are keeping up with the times.

    Anyway, I suppose the reason they are committing to use of IPv6 is because of security. Both security and quality of service were mentioned as reasons they were making the switch, but I suspect that the former has more to do with it. But I suppose that they have been securing their communications, maybe with IPsec or with any other similar method. I don't know as much about the Pentagon's communications. It'd be interesting to find out about them.

    • It's nothing to do with security - IPSec works just as well (or not) on IPv4 as on IPv6. In any case, the military has its own specific ways of securing networks, including specialised encryption and keeping classified networks entirely separate to other networks.

      Also, QoS (both DiffServ and the less common RSVP) works fine on IPv4 and IPv6.

      IPv6 makes sense to the military for the same reasons as everyone else, I'd guess. Addressability and avoidance of NATs is the most obvious benefit.
    • I don't know as much about the Pentagon's communications. It'd be interesting to find out about them.

      Have men in black suits shown up knocking on your door yet? (I'd post AC, but hiding from the DoD is like trying to fit 5 cows into a Honda Civic.)
      • Have men in black suits shown up knocking on your door yet? (I'd post AC, but hiding from the DoD is like trying to fit 5 cows into a Honda Civic.)

        Not yet. Actually, I'm surprised that they didn't show up within a few minutes of me posting that message. They seem quite inefficient these days. :)

        Seriously though, it is now public knowledge that IPv6 is what the Pentagon will be using. So why would what they are using now be classified information? While the U.S. governemnt keeps plenty of secrets, it is

    • I'm familiar with what the Pentagon uses. I have friends and former co-workers who work there. It's no different than any large corporation as far as tech being up to date (for unclassified systems, that is). It's not the latest screamer, but it's not too old, either. Systems are usually bought and auctioned on a three year cycle. Whoever told you that their stuff is outdated was either full of shit or misinformed themselves.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • just curious (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    what exactly would an ipv6 whatever IP actually look like compared to the normal 1.2.3.4 i see these days.

    • Re:just curious (Score:5, Informative)

      by nsayer ( 86181 ) <`moc.ufk' `ta' `reyasn'> on Saturday June 14, 2003 @01:59AM (#6197718) Homepage
      IPv6 addresses are printed in groups of 16 bits in hex, separated by colons. 3ffe:1200:301b:1:a00:20ff:fec0:ffee, for example. Notice that the '1' is really '0001' - leading 0s within a group can be left out. There are more little tricks, but you can go look at the various IPv6 RFCs if you're really curious.

    • Re:just curious (Score:2, Informative)

      by ZorbaTHut ( 126196 )
      2001:04b0:1e41:23ab:9090:263f:94b3:1202

      Like that.

      Yes, that's hexadecimal - yes, that's 16 bytes.

      (That's also part of the registered AOL/Time Warner [216.239.39.100] block, incidentally.)

  • Wired article (Score:2, Informative)

    by phalse phace ( 454635 )
    There's also a write up of this over at wired news [wired.com].

  • Actually, smart move by the DoD (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 14, 2003 @02:14AM (#6197768)
    I think this is a good idea. After all, they created the internet, so I'd be inclined to trust the DoD on this. Moreover, the milirary is moving to be a more and more integrated organization. The battlefield is quite rapidly becoming wired, or unwired.

    Recently in one of our training excercise out in the California desert, every soldier, truck, helicopter, etc. was connected in a very integrated and dynamic network which allowed the commanding officers to witness the mock battle in real time, seeing which forces were where, and how to adapt to a changing situation extremely quickly.

    In military theory, and well in any competitive environment, the goal is to gather information, assess the situation, decide on a course of action, and execute that decision. Whoever can complete this loop or cycle first has the clear advantage. By connecting everyone on the battlefield so that they can gather and pass on information as fast as possible is clearly a necessary step for this to work.

    So, if all our soldiers need to be connected to the information infrastructure, it is clear that this will be accomplished with information technology. And how else to do this? Well, over cheap, abundant, and "easy" to configure systems. And what do these systems use as an underlying framework?

    IP addressed based systems. (right? im a soldier, not a network architect, so my appologies if i am wrong)

    So, from the military's standpoint, it would be a good idea to have as many IP addresses as possible. They will sure need them when there are hundreds of thousands/millions/billions of information nodes dispersed across the battlefield of the not too distant future.

    • Cooool. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Faust7 ( 314817 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @02:38AM (#6197840) Homepage
      every soldier, truck, helicopter, etc. was connected in a very integrated and dynamic network

      Just need to add the black-armored bodysuits, exotic eyepieces, conspicuous tubes, deathly white complexion, and Windows networking.

    • Re:Actually, smart move by the DoD (Score:5, Funny)

      by Eythian ( 552130 ) <robin@kallisti.ne t . nz> on Saturday June 14, 2003 @02:42AM (#6197854) Homepage
      In military theory, and well in any competitive environment, the goal is to gather information, assess the situation, decide on a course of action, and execute that decision.

      I found this was generally made easier by pressing [ESC], selecting 'Options', 'Video', and turning 'Fog of War' to be off.

    • Actually, these theories are hotly debated (Score:4, Interesting)

      by aphor ( 99965 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @05:07AM (#6198147) Journal

      Modern warfare is theorized by two overlapping schools of thought: "Maneuver" warfare and "Traditional" warfare (or whatever you want to call it).

      In military theory, and well in any competitive environment, the goal is to gather information, assess the situation, decide on a course of action, and execute that decision. Whoever can complete this loop or cycle first has the clear advantage. By connecting everyone on the battlefield so that they can gather and pass on information as fast as possible is clearly a necessary step for this to work.
      The model of the period of iteration in decision making to action is from the maneuverist camp, but it has been more widely accepted. As maneuver types propose it, the decisions should be as distributed as possible, hence your IPv6 address for every device on every soldier inference. However, in this model, every node does not need to be addressed by every other node, and indeed the maneuver warfare proponents usually say that communication should be as decoupled as possible from the central structure. A global namespace/address space is (on the surface) antithetical. It provides means for centralized Command and Control, which is the opposite of what you suggest IPv6 would do for our soldiers.

      I suggest that the generals would be crippled by the human manipulation motive in an attempt to micromanage everything, because their orders can reach the sub-soldier granularity: "Tune all of the field units' fire-control to safe. We don't want any hot-heads escalating right now."

      Hours later: "Sir, we just lost a whole platoon because they couldn't return fire ..."

      True, there is LOTS of theory saying why this kind of order is bad, and it is starting to become a dominant influence in military doctrine (field manuals), but neither of those preclude that particular order from being executed in a battle situation.

      Reference: ISBN 0-89141-518-1 [amazon.com]

      Not that IPv6 is bad: it just won't work like that.

  • New version (Score:4, Funny)

    by Eythian ( 552130 ) <robin@kallisti.ne t . nz> on Saturday June 14, 2003 @02:46AM (#6197862) Homepage

    From the article:

    John Stenbit, assistant secretary of defense for networks and information integration, said the new version of the Internet will offer better network security and improved quality of transmission.

    I think I only have the old version of the Internet installed. Does the new version have better warez and porn support also? Where can I download it from?

    (Yeah yeah, I know. I run IPv6 too:)

  • IPv6 by 2008 or ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by teklob ( 650327 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @02:47AM (#6197867)
    IPv6 by 2008 or else. What are they going to do? Cancel the internet?

    • Re:IPv6 by 2008 or ... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Phroggy ( 441 ) * <slashdot3@ p h roggy.com> on Saturday June 14, 2003 @03:18AM (#6197940) Homepage
      IPv6 by 2008 or else. What are they going to do? Cancel the internet?

      Liberate it.
    • I think the rest of the military will take note of what Rumsfeld just did to the Army high command (eviscerated it) and take the appropriate lessons. The military's 80%+ Republican so they'll be pushing for GWB in '04 and that means that Rumsfeld'll be there to shitcan them if they screw this up.

      In other thoughts. It's not just the military that will likely go over but the major military contractors as well. After all, who wants to have to make connectivity with your major customer hard? So it'll end up be

    • Re:IPv6 by 2008 or ... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The notice was to contractors and bidders to DOD or defense associated public works...

      They don't need to cancel the Internet, just VOID your lucrative military contracts unless you comply.

      This is standard governmental practice and works on pressing the only button industry responds to (IE: the wallet button). Virtually all major software companies foreign AND domestic do business with the DoD so yes, this will be an effective way to escalate IPV6 propagation.

  • Damnit! (Score:5, Funny)

    by teamhasnoi ( 554944 ) <teamhasnoi AT yahoo DOT com> on Saturday June 14, 2003 @02:48AM (#6197874) Journal
    I was promised flying cars, why aren't they working on the flying cars?

    IPv6 sounds great but I see that we will need more TLDs and a domain name will be absolutely necessary.

    Frickin' Rainman will be the only one able to remember xxxx.xxxx.xxxx.xxxx.xxxx.xxxx.

    At least the giant corporations that are our new overlords will have to spend some serious $$$ to cover all the new 'name.new tld'. Perhaps after all this is done, they can work on flying cars. 'cause we are like 50+ years behind the times here, people.

    But all that has to take a back seat to hard to remember IPv6.

    Here's a plan, why don't we just take the internet away from all the AOLers, the Flash greeting card senders, the 'Great Story! Read this LOLRFLOLRLOL!!!!'ers, Zone Bejewled players and the cheaters at Counter Strike and we'll have enough IPs for all of the elitist bastards that are going to make my toaster talk to me.

    Tell you what. I will trade all my IPs (192.168.x.x) for a friggin' flying car.

    Let's make it happen. I'll even have a bumper sticker, "IPv6, but my doctor says I'll be fine!" with a smiley!

    Gimmme my flying car.

  • Get Your Free IPv6 tunnel (Score:3, Interesting)

    by spudchucker ( 680073 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @03:37AM (#6197983)
    http://ipv6tb.he.net/

  • Regional Networks (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Detritus ( 11846 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @04:10AM (#6198045) Homepage
    How much hardware will have to be replaced in the networks owned and operated by the telcos and cable companies? Most of my computers are IPV6 capable but my ISP may try to postpone supporting IPV6 if it requires massive network upgrades.

  • What is IPv6? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Xeth ( 614132 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @04:18AM (#6198064) Journal
    All I've heard is that Duke Nukem: Forever is supposed to have built in support for it...

  • shortsighted fools! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 14, 2003 @04:21AM (#6198065)
    Come one, this is stupid. Trust the army to screw up and fight the last battle. 128 bits was what we needed in the 1990's, now we need, at minimum, 1024 bits.

    Proof:

    numOfPeople = 7000000000

    def uniqueIP(n):
    return 2**n

    def ipPerPerson(numOfIP, people):
    return numOfIP / people

    >>> ipPerPerson(uniqueIP(1024), numOfPeople)

    256813304980330843961329312969860676231139568420 32 95103906144016539038225792870901895835390320107657 44457305542673419082369699669734880889275496329484 96303482538270489266497896614602800178013445636154 70744071510983402152604892326878198758722011817673 7621501526369471177135320848354245186405050904232

    By my calculations, that is the minimum number needed per person. With all the nano-devices we will have by 2008, that number will go quickly, trust me.

    Even if there are production delays and the nano-devices are not here by 2008, they will still be coming soon, so we may as well be prepared.

    Also, for those who are going to complain, having 1024 bit IP addresses will not be much overhead.

  • What I'd Like to See... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by suwain_2 ( 260792 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @07:59AM (#6198414) Journal
    ...is an ISP that offers IPv6. I don't expect small residential ISPs to support it right away, but it'd be a huge step toward IPv6 integration if data centers could bring in another OC3 or whatnot that ran IPv6. With the recent story about people stealing netblocks because there's the impending shortage, I think data centers would be eager to be able to offer IPv6. Until at least a big backbone ISP supports it, we won't see 'true' IPv6 to the household.

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