Little Interest In Next-Gen Internet

Ant wrote in to mention a Computerworld article that is reporting on the slow acceptance of the IPv6 version of the internet. From the article: "Information Technology (IT) decision-makers, in U.S. businesses and government agencies, want better Internet security and easier network management. However, few see the next-generation Internet Protocol called IPv6 as helping them achieve their goals, according to a survey released Tuesday by Juniper Networks Inc."

just wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

...untill they run out of addresses

Oh Dear

[taskforce]

"There's an education job to be done," said Rod Murchison, senior director of product management for the Security Products Group

Translation: "There's a marketing job to be done"

I thought education was for important things which you need, and marketing was to convince you to use products and services?

Duh

[Heliologue]

Which is why IPv6 isn't going to be in full effect until 2025. They figured that acceptance would be slow. The fact is, at this point, people don't need IPv6. But when the numbers start to run out, they'll be clamoring for it.

NAT works...

[Gopal.V]

NAT is the reason why ipv6 has not really been needed. The idea of having an IP address for everyone on the planet and for his dog too was really not needed.

Once NAT+Firewalls became popular enough, the requirement for large IP chunks for offices and stuff disappeared.

No backward compatibility, ugly naming scheme (tell me , who like ::1 ?) and over all lack of a need helped kill IPv6 from becoming too popular.

Doesn't achieve their goals?

[nganju]

How about providing static IP addresses to DSL and cable modem users, so we can actually use simple DNS (or even just memorized IP addresses) to host things with servers in our living rooms? Seems to me that would be a huge value proposition for any ISP to its customers.

India and China

[naveenkumar.s]

Developing countries dont have an option other than to move to IPv6 due the apparent shortage of IP numbers. And if that's the way, then the rest have to go for IPv6 because, they say v6 cannot inter-operate with v4.

But...

[RemovableBait]

Regardless, what's wrong with IPv4? I've been using it on my network for years and I haven't had any problems or extra requirements. They're gonna have to come up with damn good reasons to switch because, at the moment, it's just not worth the hassle.

I know i'm not the only one who thinks like this.. all of my colleagues are happy with the v4 system, and the (less high maintenance) users know what i'm talking about when I assign IPs or mention '127.0.0.1'. None of them have a clue about '::1', and it isn't worthwhile changing until IPv4 truly becomes defunct and obsolete.

Vested Interest

[Magada]

And Juniper Networks is pushing the idea that IPv6 is not on anybody's agenda because sell routers, NAT boxes and associated services. A severely restricted adress space is what they need to continue to do so. This is just an attempt on their part to establish/enforce a perception that IPv6 is not needed/wanted. It may have misfired, though.

A sound point

[cryptochrome]

IPV6 will involve more digits/typing/remembering than IPV4. Of course sysadmins are reluctant.

Re:Give me an easy upgrade path

[garcia]

For example I am setting up a nature webcam site which will be ipv6 only for exactly this reason.

Until the porn world goes IPv6 only there will be no major rush to upgrade. I really hope that your "nature webcam site" is really nude women running around in the forest or I just don't see it making a difference.

Few articles actually address IPv6 benefits

[SgtChaireBourne]

The biggest problem is probably lack of awareness, just like in many other situations.

Few articles actually address real IPv6 benefits and instead pull out strawmen about a purported shortage of IP addresses. That's got to be the least significant and least relevant change between IPv4 and IPv6. Maybe that's all the 'journalists' can get their teeny minds around, or maybe it's mandated spin because certain key advertising accounts *cough*MS*cough* aren't looking to be IPv6 compliant any time soon.

Some of the main advantages of IPv6 over IPv4 are:

• quality of service
• simplified headers
• multicasting
• security (that's certainly buzzword compliant, why is it never brought up?)
• autoconfiguration
• improved routing
• authentication

Japan and China are already rolling out IPv6 networks. Since the article specifically points out the U.S., maybe it's time that U.S. businesses start getting technical news from sources other than their MS account representative.

Re:NAT works...

[Anonymous Coward]

NAT is not good enough.

Too many things have to work around NAT problems.

I run a small network and all the users running filesharing programs have problems. I have to give them each a port.

What happens when more than one of them wants to run server for a protocol which needs a specific port? SMTP?

Why shouldn't people be able to have full IP connectivity? NAT does not provide that, and UPNP is not enough to fix that.

Re:Duh

[Heliologue]

Substantial portions of that address space is reserved for private network, loopback, etc. You could end up using these addresses, of course, but that would require reengineering every network-capable device that's been built to-date. You don't think that within a decade, there'll be 4 billion mobile phones, each with it's own address? NAT only goes so far.

Re:just wait...

[Martin Blank]

I wanted to hit a colleague not long ago. I mentioned that it seemed that someone on the network had enabled IPv6 on their system, as I noticed some packets that I traced back to an IPv6 stack looking for a DHCP server. He (a network security engineer) said something about this being a threat, and that it was against policy, comments which are normal from him and which I ignore. I commented at the same time that it would be nice if we could begin converting to IPv6, at least on a trial basis for a few systems, and he said something about how IPv6 was "pointless" and "useless" since we have all the addresses we need using NAT. Arguments that NAT is a cludge and gets needlessly complex as you continue to NAT multiple layers went nowhere with him.

Re:NAT works...

[MenTaLguY]

I guess you've never had to merge two large private networks that are behind NAT.

NAT itself is okay, but using private IP ranges behind it doesn't really work for large organizations, especially large organizations that can (and do) need to merge with other such large organizations.

I've been on the receiving end of a couple of these situations; it can cause a LOT of pain.

90/10

[jfengel]

While there are certainly cases where NAT isn't nearly good enough, for the vast majority of users it IS good enough.

That's what makes IPv6 acceptance so slow: your ISP isn't going to rebuild its infrastructure so that you can run a SMTP server. Certainly not for the measly (from their POV) $50 a month you and your friends are paying for that line. If you want a static IP, or a few, you can have it, but you'll start paying $150 a month or more for the service.

Some day, those necessary static IPs will be too rare, and you'll have to switch ISPs to get it. At that point your ISP will need to switch to IPv6 to keep your business. I have no idea when that day is. It may well be soon; I can't say. But as a major investment for your ISP they're going to put it off as long as possible.

So the answer to your question, "Why shouldn't people be able to have full IP connectivity?" is, "Because not enough people want it to make it worth their while, but if you really want it you can pay for it."

Re:Doesn't achieve their goals?

[farnz]

An IPv6 address is the same as 4 IPv4s in the worst case. I have a /48, and even I can remember 2001:8b0:104:1::1 and 2001:8b0:104:2::1 off the top of my head (DNS and gateway for two subnets); it's not much harder than remembering 81.187.250.193 and 81.187.250.201 for both. Plus, DNS deals with the need to remember lots of IPs anyway.

Your Goals != ISP's Goals

[sweatyboatman]

Most ISPs don't want their users hosting ANYTHING out of their living-room. That would use up bandwith which is directly linked to the pocketbook of your ISP. What ISPs want is home users paying a regular rate and using a minimal amount of bandwith (e.g. surfing the web, checking email). Not serving up their home movies or getting slashdotted.

Not to mention that by making dynamic IPs the industry standard, they can treat "static IP" as an extra feature and charge through the nose for it. (Much like text-messaging & ring-tones on cell phones.)

All of which is to say, ISPs see no profit from giving all their users static IPs. IPv4 is a blessing because it makes static IPs precious. Moving to IPv6 would just cut apart that revenue stream (at least in the short-run, which is all most companies seem to be concerned with).

-tom

Little Interest In Next-Gen Internet

[ndansmith]

Well, that's no surprise; there's hardly any interest in today's internet.

IPv6 Myths

[shani]

Read up on IPv6 some time.

Dude, I've been working with IPv6 for 7 years or so.

It's got built in equivalent of IPSEC. That alone would go a long way in improving most computing environments.

"built in equivalent of IPSEC"?? Huh? Rather, you mean the IPv6 standard requires that IPv6 implementations must have IPSEC, I am guessing. IPv6 with IPSEC is no more secure than IPv4 with IPSEC.

"Improved routing" refers to, among other things, route aggregation which reduces the size of routing tables which is helped by the simplified header which reduce router processing loads.

You are confusing two things here. IIRC, IPv4 checksum includes the TTL count, which means it has to be recalculated at every hop. This was fixed in IPv6. It's been a few years, but I think that this is what people normally refer to by "simplified headers".

Route aggregation, OTOH, is directly a result of address allocation policies. The hope is that because we can give "enough" addresses to each ISP, that any given network will only have to advertise a single route, thus minimising the number of routes that routers must maintain. This is a beneficial (and as yet unproven) side-effect... of having lots of addresses!

Someone with more networking knowledge can clarify why the IPv6 functions are much better than the IPv4 ones, where they may appear to overlap.

If you're talking about the socket API, in my experience there is no real advantage to the IPv6 functions. They exist so that you can manipulate IPv6 addresses, nothing more, nothing less.

artificially scarce resources

[j1m+5n0w]

But when the numbers start to run out, they'll be clamoring for it.

One problem is that the united states has a lot more IPs per population than most of the rest of the world (does anyone have exact numbers for this?), so we'll be one of the last to run out, and therefore one of the last to adopt ipv6, which puts us in a very bad position.

A similar problem on a smaller scale is that those who own a lot of IPv4 addresses now have a competetive advantage over those who don't, and these are exactly the people (large ISPs, telco companies) who need to adopt IPv6 in order for it to take off. Their control of a scarce resource gives them a relative advantage against those who don't, so why would they ever want to cooperate to make that resource become non-scarce? It just isn't in their best interests.