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On Wed, 24 Nov 2010, Simon Waters wrote:
On 24/11/10 15:40, Gordon Henderson wrote:Personally I feel that *we* ought to be hassling our ISPs and demanding IPv6 *now* and not next year when we really do run out of IPv4 addresses...We've been running out of IPv4 in the next few years for about a decade, and we will be running out for probably another decade. Last time I looked ICANN still had something like 14% of the address space in reserve, it claimed 10% start of this year, but that depends on what you mean by "unused" - i.e. whether it is a political decision or a practical one - ignoring bits allocated and unused, or underused. Note that ICANN isn't accounting for reserves in RIR, that is 14% of all possible usable blocks are either assigned to dead entities, reserved, or not yet assigned from ICANN.
Estimates I've been reading suggest 5% left by the middle of next year. They're dwindling fast...
I know when one of my previous employers was taken over by one of the largest UK ISPs, the ISP was pleasantly surprised to find a computer consultancy with 30 employees had rather more IPv4 space than they did. Let us say early allocations were "generous" and inefficient, and it might well be easier to reclaim low hanging fruit here.
I think in 6 months time there will be (another) squeeze and some corps. may well be persuaded to give up their olde allocations, but that'll just delay the inevitable.
Afterall, IPv6 has only been going for 10 years, so it really shouldn't be new to anyone.Given the number of broadband routers out there with no IPv6 support, it simply isn't happening for most broadband users.
That's the biggest issue right now. the BT wholesale network is ready and have been for some time - it's just the connectivity ISPs who need to get their act together - then the hardware makers.
They're getting there though - the matrix held by RIPE is showing promise: http://labs.ripe.net/Members/mirjam/ipv6-cpe-survey-updated-september-2010/?searchterm=None
Do you see any practical benefits?
Right now? No. Other than being ready.
I'm guessing that given most services you have to use a different URL to get IPv6 version of their website,
There's no reason for that at all. You can have IPv4 and IPv6 DNS entries that exist side by side - e.g. lookup watertower.drogon.net:
gordon @ unicorn: host watertower.drogon.net watertower.drogon.net has address 81.31.100.110 watertower.drogon.net has IPv6 address 2001:4d48:ad51:8900::1Linux in dual-stack mode prefers IPv6 if it's avalable, but will fall-back to IPv4.
and most clients machines are IPv4 only, that even with IPv6 client network and public addresses the main practical benefit will be no NAT for SIP to other clients of your own who do the same.
Yes - No NAT - I look forward to the day!!!However that will bring with it a lot of other issues - people will have to re-learn how to firewall again...
As far as I can see the main practical benefit to me if I replace, or risk bricking my router (vendor looked blank when I asked for a copy of the original firmware - "just in case"), is I'll no longer have to switch IPv6 off to stop some services attempting it or doing IPv6 DNS lookups when the results won't work on my network. Oh and I'll have to check the network security in IPv6 (more carefully as NAT does kind of work as a poor man's firewall).
The latter will be a bigger issue in the short-term, but it will be helped if the router makers put in some good and sensible defaults for the firewalls.
I can see a few people doing back to the old 2-box system for a while - which is effectively what I'm doing - ADSL modem/bridge to a 2nd router running PPPoE to the modem.
My co-lo hasn't quite got themselves up to IPv6 yet, but I'll be ready for when they do, then be persuading my clients to setup IPv6 DNS for all their sites once I've got an allocation for my servers.
Gordon -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq