Broadening the IPv6 discussion

[Irwin_Lazar]

Since we're on the topic of IPv6, I wanted to gauge the current attitude of
the ops. community toward its deployment. We're seeing a lot more interest
from our enterprise clients in using v6, especially as things like VoIP and
PDAs consume their address pools, and NAT gets in the way of collaborative
apps such as netmeeting and business-to-business connectivity. However, the
road-block seems to be the lack of ISPs that offer IPv6 services.

Given that places like China & Japan are now mandating IPv6 for their ISPs,
does anyone see anything resembling a growing momentum toward IPv6 adoption,
or is it still a moot issue for you guys?

Irwin

[Daniel_Golding8]

Hmm. I'm afraid that I have to disagree with just about everything you've
said . I haven't seen any enterprise folks demanding v6 - If VOIP and
PDA's (?) use up their IP addresses, they can easily ask for more. The more
you use, the more you get. There is no shortage of v4 space.

China and Japan are not mandating anything, AFAIK. I believe that v6
deployment is being encouraged by some countries, and the spread of 3G is
helping things along, but we have yet to see really widespread v6
deployments anywhere.

Basically, major backbone networks will deploy v6 when it makes economic
sense for them to do so. Right now, there is no demand and no revenue
upside. I don't expect this to change in the near future.

v6 is, currently, a solution in search of a problem. v4 space is being
consumed slowly, but we are quite some time from a crisis. Of course, even
when we "consume" all such ipv4 space, there are still expedients that can
be used, including making v4 assets tradable and fungible.

- Dan

Irwin Lazar Said...

[Stephen_Sprunk2]

Thus spake "Daniel Golding" <dgolding@yahoo.com>

Hmm. I'm afraid that I have to disagree with just about everything you've
said . I haven't seen any enterprise folks demanding v6 - If VOIP and
PDA's (?) use up their IP addresses, they can easily ask for more. The more
you use, the more you get. There is no shortage of v4 space.

Most enterprise folks use nowhere near their paltry allotment of IPv4 addresses
because 95% or more of their hosts are on RFC1918 space. Even most companies
with multiple class B legacy allocations use RFC1918 internally and are just
holding the class B's so they can multihome effectively.

Basically, major backbone networks will deploy v6 when it makes economic
sense for them to do so. Right now, there is no demand and no revenue
upside. I don't expect this to change in the near future.

Enterprise networks will not be the driver for ISPs to go to IPv6; NAT is too
entrenched. Perhaps greater adoption of always-on broadband access will be the
necessary push.

S

[Dave_Israel]

Mmmm... me too post.

I have to agree with Dan on this. The only people who ask me about
IPv6 are people who have heard something about it from some tech
magazine and want the Newest Thing. Much of its useful functionality
(except the widened address space) is available in v4, and v4 is
deployed.

There is no commercial demand for a v6 backbone. That's the big
roadblock right now.

-Dave

[Mike_Leber]

Since we're on the topic of IPv6, I wanted to gauge the current attitude of
the ops. community toward its deployment. We're seeing a lot more interest
from our enterprise clients in using v6,

Yes, we see this too.

This is in addition to the continuing rise in tunnels in use we see via
our free IPv6 tunnel broker at tunnelbroker.com.

However, the
road-block seems to be the lack of ISPs that offer IPv6 services.

Ha! Ahem, no. We have IPv6 routers deployed nationally and have even
sold IPv6 direct connections, even in the presence of the ability to get a
free tunnel, because enterprise type clients want to have a business class
level of service where they can call you for support (among other
reasons).

I'd say the observable low usage of IPv6 compared to IPv4 is because IPv6
is still in its early product phase where early adopters are still
considering how it works and what you can do with it and suppliers are
giving out free samples (i.e. all the tunnel brokers and 6to4 gateways out
there).

does anyone see anything resembling a growing momentum toward IPv6 adoption,

Yes, it's an gradual trend. We are seeing and increase over time in
active tunnels and in average traffic per tunnel.

Right now IPv6 is something to research, if the trend of increasing usage
continues it will become commercially significant. How inevitable of a
trend you think this is depends on if you think every cell phone, car,
light switch, tv, washer, dryer, toaster, etc will eventually have it's
own IP address. If you don't think that IP addresses allocations are
based on scarcity then IPv4 should rule for ever. If on the other hand...

Mike.

+----------------- H U R R I C A N E - E L E C T R I C -----------------+

[Petri_Helenius]

Yes, it's an gradual trend. We are seeing and increase over time in
active tunnels and in average traffic per tunnel.

Two easy things to drive v6 traffic:
1) switch your NNTP feeds to ipv6
2) put names which resolve to ipv6 addresses in your MX�s

Both of these have little or no operational hazard. (SMTP fails over to v4
gracefully)

Pete

[Kurt_Erik_Lindqvist]

Two easy things to drive v6 traffic:
1) switch your NNTP feeds to ipv6
2) put names which resolve to ipv6 addresses in your MX�s

Both of these have little or no operational hazard. (SMTP fails over to v4
gracefully)

Driver #1 : Sell p00rn via IPv6 only.

Sad but true. Content and use is all there is.

- kurtis -

[Iljitsch_van_Beijnum]

Hmm. I'm afraid that I have to disagree with just about everything you've
said . I haven't seen any enterprise folks demanding v6 - If VOIP and
PDA's (?) use up their IP addresses, they can easily ask for more. The more
you use, the more you get. There is no shortage of v4 space.

As far as I know, we're still scheduled to run out of IPv4 address space
this decade. But it's anybody's guess if this is really going to happen
(even if you define "running out" as "too hard to manage" rather than
"nothing left"). Address usage will follow an S curve: slow start, then
steeper and steeper, until you come close to "everyone that wants one has
one" and then it levels off again. The question is: where on the S are we
now? There is something to be said for high (close to leveling off)
because pretty much anyone who wants/needs IP in North America and Europe
has it, but maybe we're still quite low, since lots of stuff that could
benefit from IP connectivity is still standalone. (And then there's the
rest of the world, of course.)

Basically, major backbone networks will deploy v6 when it makes economic
sense for them to do so. Right now, there is no demand and no revenue
upside. I don't expect this to change in the near future.

The question is not if they're going to carry v6, because they already
are. The question is: will they do native v6, or tunnel it over v4? Since
next to none of the high end stuff can do native v6 at wire speed, it's
obviously still the latter now, but this is something that can change
relatively easy. There are already many signs of impending v6 adoption:
exchanges such as the AMS-IX are starting to do native v6, OSes have it
built in, router vendors are implementing it deeper inside the hardware
rather than at the main CPU level. However, noone is in a big hurry.
That's probably a good thing. When we really need it, IPv6 will be good
and ready.

v6 is, currently, a solution in search of a problem. v4 space is being
consumed slowly, but we are quite some time from a crisis. Of course, even
when we "consume" all such ipv4 space, there are still expedients that can
be used, including making v4 assets tradable and fungible.

The problem is not so much address space (you can run a fortune 500
company behind a single address with NAT) but routing. This is still a big
problem in IPv6 (as we're hoping to avoid the mess that is IPv4), but I
think we're getting closer to a solution.

Iljitsch van Beijnum

[Petri_Helenius]

Driver #1 : Sell p00rn via IPv6 only.

Sad but true. Content and use is all there is.

Remember that multicast never happened either.
How much it would take to "sponsor" free content over multicast to
get it deployed. Don�t know if this would be approvable for government
subsidies though.

Pete

[Kurt_Erik_Lindqvist]

>Driver #1 : Sell p00rn via IPv6 only.
>
>Sad but true. Content and use is all there is.

Remember that multicast never happened either.
How much it would take to "sponsor" free content over multicast to
get it deployed. Don�t know if this would be approvable for government
subsidies though.

I am not sure it has to be free. It just has to be available. As long as
there is no valuable content in v6 that I can't get in v4 there will be no
user drive to change.

What might happen is that ISPs start using IPv6 for their (as example) DSL
services to work around addressing problems. But that is not a userdriven
demand.

- kurtis -

[Petri_Helenius]

Kurtis Lindqvist wrote:

What might happen is that ISPs start using IPv6 for their (as example) DSL
services to work around addressing problems. But that is not a userdriven
demand.

I'm already aware of installations where IPv6 gets you globally routable
connectivity and IPv4 gets you NATted. No mentionable impact on IPv6 traffic.

Maybe the p2p vendors should implement IPv6, it might also take a while
until RIAA finds them again

Pete

[Iljitsch_van_Beijnum]

Then I hope they'll implement RFC 3041, otherwise the RIAA will go on a
massive MAC address hunt...

[Jeroen_Massar1]

Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:

> > What might happen is that ISPs start using IPv6 for their
(as example) DSL
> > services to work around addressing problems. But that is
not a userdriven
> > demand.

> Maybe the p2p vendors should implement IPv6, it might also
take a while
> until RIAA finds them again

Then I hope they'll implement RFC 3041, otherwise the RIAA
will go on a massive MAC address hunt...

Hmm a MAC... and then (sweet, dude) ?
I still don't get it why that would be a problem, simply because:
- one can change your IP by hand and/or automagically (RFC 3041 like you
mentioned)
- MAC's can be changed (ifconfig hwaddr... )

And then still.. they know that 'something/one' from a certain /48 did
'something'.
So what, if you pay at a store with your VISA or AMEX or simply your
bankcard.
That company holds at least your accountnumber, let's crossreference
that.

Same thing (IMHO as the IP address thing, it pops up at several
places and they
can do many statistical stuff with it for behaviour research, buy styles
etc.
But then again, as long as one wants to be directly addressed you will
always be
'trackable' some how. Or are you changing bank-accountnumbers,
emailaddresses every 10 minutes?

Which pops again into the SPAM problem, where we'd (or at least me
would rather be
capable of verifying who is sending stuff. If one then put that into a
log, one could
trace people too. And the bigger MX's could do that now too ofcourse...

Btw:

Microsoft Learn: Build skills that open doors in your career

echnol/winxppro/proddocs/sag_IP_v6_add_Utils.asp

ipv6 [-p] gpu UseAnonymousAddresses [yes|no|always|Counter]
that's how you turn that stupid feature off, it is annoying IMHO and
quite useless as
usually one is on the same /64 (or /48) so one is quite traceable
already.
Ofcourse if you got a laptop and carry it around the world with the same
EUI-64 one is
quite easily indentifyble, but then still, so what; they know you go to
cool places

Greets,
Jeroen

[Iljitsch_van_Beijnum]

> > Maybe the p2p vendors should implement IPv6, it might also
> > take a while until RIAA finds them again

> Then I hope they'll implement RFC 3041, otherwise the RIAA
> will go on a massive MAC address hunt...

Hmm a MAC... and then (sweet, dude) ?
I still don't get it why that would be a problem, simply because:
- one can change your IP by hand and/or automagically (RFC 3041 like you
mentioned)
- MAC's can be changed (ifconfig hwaddr... )

Yes, but rebooting each time you change the MAC address for your windows
box gets somewhat tiresome after a while...

And then still.. they know that 'something/one' from a certain /48 did
'something'.

Ok, first of all: it was a joke. I guess I should have included a

Second: that the record industry might think it's a good idea has little
bearing on it being actually a good idea. I have no trouble believing they
would subpoena ethernet card sales records from stores to find out MAC
addresses to go after people who trade MP3s if they thought there was a 1%
chance it would do their cause any good. And it might, since most PC users
don't know what a MAC address is, let alone how to change it.

So what, if you pay at a store with your VISA or AMEX or simply your
bankcard.
That company holds at least your accountnumber, let's crossreference
that.

Never heard of cash?

(BTW your post wout be easier to read if the lines were < 80 chars.)

Same thing (IMHO as the IP address thing, it pops up at several
places and they
can do many statistical stuff with it for behaviour research, buy styles
etc.

Yes. I use a static address that is easily correlated with lots of
real-life info about me, and I'm not always happy about that.

ipv6 [-p] gpu UseAnonymousAddresses [yes|no|always|Counter]
that's how you turn that stupid feature off, it is annoying IMHO and
quite useless as

Why is it stupid, annoying and useless?

Iljitsch van Beijnum

[Jeroen_Massar1]

> > > Maybe the p2p vendors should implement IPv6, it might also
> > > take a while until RIAA finds them again

> > Then I hope they'll implement RFC 3041, otherwise the RIAA
> > will go on a massive MAC address hunt...

> Hmm a MAC... and then (sweet, dude) ?
> I still don't get it why that would be a problem, simply because:
> - one can change your IP by hand and/or automagically (RFC
3041 like you
> mentioned)
> - MAC's can be changed (ifconfig hwaddr... )

Yes, but rebooting each time you change the MAC address for
your windows box gets somewhat tiresome after a while...

With NT/2k/XP one can simply disable/enable netcards so that wouldn't be
a problem.

> And then still.. they know that 'something/one' from a
certain /48 did
> 'something'.

Ok, first of all: it was a joke. I guess I should have included a

Smileys always help.

Second: that the record industry might think it's a good idea
has little
bearing on it being actually a good idea. I have no trouble
believing they
would subpoena ethernet card sales records from stores to find out MAC
addresses to go after people who trade MP3s if they thought
there was a 1%
chance it would do their cause any good. And it might, since
most PC users
don't know what a MAC address is, let alone how to change it.

> So what, if you pay at a store with your VISA or AMEX or simply your
> bankcard.
> That company holds at least your accountnumber, let's crossreference
> that.

Never heard of cash?

Internet shopping, most of my day-to-day food-supplies, big acquisitions
happen using plastic; cash is that annoying stuff that fills my pants
and
gets spended too quickly when I pulled it out of the ATM.

(BTW your post wout be easier to read if the lines were < 80 chars.)

Oops

> Same thing (IMHO as the IP address thing, it pops up at several
> places and they
> can do many statistical stuff with it for behaviour research, buy

styles

> etc.

Yes. I use a static address that is easily correlated with lots of
real-life info about me, and I'm not always happy about that.

Not always indeed, but I personally don't mind most of the time though.

Also you are probably familiar with the dutch law for personal
information registration
in which at least dutch companies/organisations have to register
themselves
if they keep information about persons.
Email-lists/access-logs/crossrefs could
quite possibly fall under this law, so every company retaining these
informations
would be in violation of a law

> ipv6 [-p] gpu UseAnonymousAddresses [yes|no|always|Counter]
> that's how you turn that stupid feature off, it is annoying IMHO and
> quite useless as

Why is it stupid, annoying and useless?

Stupid comes from the annoying&useless parts (again IMHO :).
Annoying because one needs to update his/her reverse every x seconds
And I like to have a static IP with a corresponding reverse which
identifies me as me.
If somebody wants to track me or whatever google around, mailinglist
archives etc
tell more than my IP and I don't see anybody (okay there are bound to be
people)
complaining about google mirroring+indexing their sites (hail robots.txt
ofcourse)

Greets,
Jeroen

[Petri_Helenius]

Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:

one" and then it levels off again. The question is: where on the S are we
now? There is something to be said for high (close to leveling off)
because pretty much anyone who wants/needs IP in North America and Europe
has it, but maybe we're still quite low, since lots of stuff that could
benefit from IP connectivity is still standalone. (And then there's the
rest of the world, of course.)

I think we'll have a "double S". Almost all residential broadband providers
here (.fi) have changed their policy from allocating 10/8 addresses and
NATting the tens of thousands of subscribers to the outside to automatically
allocating public IP's with DHCP. Total consumption in order of a few
hundred thousand addresses for our small country alone.

The problem is not so much address space (you can run a fortune 500
company behind a single address with NAT) but routing. This is still a big
problem in IPv6 (as we're hoping to avoid the mess that is IPv4), but I
think we're getting closer to a solution.

Private address space is a pain if you have to redo company boundaries.
Merging two or three businesses who all used the first subnets of 10/8
takes a lot of unneccessary extra hardware.

Pete