"On 2011-02-03, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) issued the remaining five /8 address blocks, each containing 16.7 million addresses, in the global free pool equally to the five RIRs, and as such ARIN is no longer able to receive additional IPv4 resources from the IANA. After yesterday's large allocation (104.64.0.0/10) to Akamai, the address pool remaining to be assigned by ARIN is now down to the last /8. This triggers stricter allocation rules and marks the end of general availability of new IPv4 addresses in North America. ARIN thus follows the RIRs of Asia, Europe and South America into the final phase of IPv4 depletion."
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by mendax on Thursday April 24 2014, @05:48AM
Think of it. Here is this scare resource, IPv4 addresses, and no more are going to be allocated in North America. I see great potential in profit, online exchanges opening up allowing the trading of IP addresses, etc. etc. To quote the Ferengi, my lobes are tingling.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 24 2014, @06:23AM
For the majority of users the lack of a private IP does not actually matter. There are already options to allow the ISPs to assign multiple users to one public IP, so they will not be implementing it in the near future, unless they see a marketing opportunity in it. I would not expect widespread adoption of ipv6 until the current backbone infrastructure has crumbled into dust and needs replaced.
(Score: 2) by crutchy on Thursday April 24 2014, @07:37AM
i agree
NAT is a cheap (and potentially infinite) resource
(Score: 3, Insightful) by pe1rxq on Thursday April 24 2014, @10:53AM
Large scale NAT is not cheap. You have to keep state information about each and every connection.
(Score: 2) by crutchy on Friday April 25 2014, @01:08AM
there should be enough ipv4 for backbone stuff. at most would only need NAT at ISP exchange level. everything else would be localized further
though it seems like we might end up with a hybrid of ipv4, ipv6 and NAT in the end... fun
(Score: 1) by tftp on Friday April 25 2014, @08:17AM
Large scale NAT is not cheap. You have to keep state information about each and every connection.
You need to store just a handful of bytes; what is the cost of RAM these days, per gigabyte?
It's much cheaper to do CGN in a single expensive box than to manufacture millions of new routers, send them to households for free, and then deal with unavoidable problems on the customer's end. All customer's networks are IPv4 today, except a few geeks here and there. Customers do not want change. ISPs do not want change either.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by edIII on Thursday April 24 2014, @06:24AM
Ah, yes. Greed AKA Ferengi Foreplay.
That's why we haven't really run out of addresses by a long shot. So many addresses out there not in use, not to mention with changes you could "defragment" the space into smaller allocations and still be just fine.
Too much technology these days enables multiple use of a single IP address. A lot virtualization technology helps with that.
There is a lot of money to be made because some people have a large address space with 32-64 addresses in their pool and they are only using 11. I'm sure people will come to an agreement pretty quick that they can switch to a new smaller block if it meant a big payoff. I also don't know what the contracts say. Some providers may not allow you to own it contractually forever and they can change it within reason.
If you think about it, the other end of the spectrum is fucked. They are a growth network still forced to deal with IPv4 to support older consumer devices and networks. For whatever reason they are out of space and can't give a new customer even a 4 address pool, and they are down to 17 free addresses network wide.
Are they going to start turning down new customers? That's pretty bad :)
This should be making a Ferengi very excited. There are now pockets of extreme demand, the illusion of scarcity, and an ample supply left for a few more years for the "war profiteers".
Unlike domain speculators, this has real money in it.
In 6 months things may be so bad that anybody that owns a large block is like Jed from the Beverly Hillbillies
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Hairyfeet on Thursday April 24 2014, @11:33AM
I would just add that the "geniuses" that designed IPV6 pretty much screwed the pooch, by refusing to make it backwards compatible with what came before they made damned sure nobody is gonna switch until they have zero choice in the matter. if it would have been backwards compatible it could have been rolled out a little at a time and switched over gradually, but now the cost and environmental impact (as literally tens of millions of modems and routers have to be shitcanned) is gonna be insane so no shit the ISPs and everybody else is stalling, would YOU want to tell your customers they are gonna have to throw out all their home networking gear and replace it with the clusterfuck that is IPV6?
Frankly IPV6 reminds me of Windows 8, it LOOKS pretty but IRL its a PITA with no thought to actual real world use cases. I can talk someone by phone into setting up an IPV4 address on their machine in a couple minutes and because its laid out like a phone number mistakes are minimal. You just try that shit with IPV6 and watch how long it takes...what a clusterfuck.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by kaszz on Thursday April 24 2014, @03:38PM
Routers should be possible to reflash with an upgrade? Either by hacker community or by environmental fine to manufacturers for noncompliance.
And 100 MHz ARM should be enough to deal with IPv6.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday April 24 2014, @05:45PM
A damn good point.
One way or the other you could have the firmware done for a lot of different models.
Government subcontracts out Best Buy to offer router upgrades for free to switch to the new IPv6 networks. "Here's your free router upgrade citizen. The NSA is ready for you now."
That stuff can be done pretty cheaply and practically automated with software and an ethernet port. Most time consuming part would be hitting the factory reset when requested.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday April 24 2014, @10:45PM
Won't work, the average router is a 200MHz or less ARM DSP that has the least amount of transistors required to do IPV4 and it has if you are REAL lucky 4MB of RAM. In my area the three I see the most in customers homes are netgear white top (240Mhz, 4MB of RAM) Trendnet wired (200Mhz, 2MB of RAM) and Zonenet blue box (300MHz, 4MB of RAM) and that is just too little CPU and RAM to be "upgraded'.
The simple fact is routers are a cutthroat busines where profits are measured in pennies so its all done on the cheap...too bad that this translates into a landfill nightmare, but so does all those non-replaceable batteries in all those tablets and phones, government still lets 'em get sold. Oh and just for full disclosure I have a netgear white top and I haven't found any way to slap tomato or anything else on it so without a bridge my router will have to be shitcanned too.I looked at tomato but there is only a "should be possible one day" kind of page where at the bottom it looks like the only thing they've ben able to do is get it to crash. Naturally, that is what I get for buying a high end router with 16MB of RAM figuring it would make it easier to upgrade some day.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Friday April 25 2014, @01:25AM
I'm wondering why we don't just get back to the point where we have customized hardware and chassis and just run our own FOSS firewall and router operating systems.
That's how I started before they were selling residential routers anyways. These days we can get quite a bit of power in small form factor.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1) by cykros on Sunday April 27 2014, @05:54PM
This would be awesome. The difficulty seems to be in keeping power consumption to a minimum while doing so. Like it or not, commercial routers, while being pretty bad at a lot of things, are pretty good at not running up your electric bill. There's a reason we're not all running around with one of our old desktops running a firewall/router setup.
Perhaps something in the arena of the Raspberry Pi and similar products can come together to bring about some more open hardware router solutions. I'd kickstart it anyway. Seems a pipedream though, what with market realities and all.
(Score: 1) by kaszz on Friday April 25 2014, @02:26AM
Why would IPv6 require such huge computing demands?
In most situations packets is received via DSL regardless of protocol and then processed by a routing and firewall table. A side process is DHCP. Neither is really computing intensive. Even Unix with X11 graphics can be handled with a 200 MHz x86 CPU with 32 MB RAM, and that capacity would not be enough for plain IPv6?
The real show stopper is lack of documentation on peripherals integrated n the circuit board. And incentive to support various models.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Friday April 25 2014, @08:45PM
Because we are talking about a marvel or aetheros 200MHz ARM CPU with 2-4MB of RAM....to compare it to X86 you would be talking about a 40MHz 386 with 2MB of RAM. You have to remember the "CPUs" in those are more akin to a DSP than to a general purpose CPU and they aren't really powerful enough to even do IPV4 at full capability (I've found most will choke with more than 2 wired and 1-2 wireless connections) and the additional overhead of IPV6, small though it may be, would simply be too much for it to handle.Not to mention most of them have a flash memory in the neighborhood of 1MB so good luck doing an update with so little to work with.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 1) by kaszz on Friday April 25 2014, @09:37PM
I recall a 286 at 20 MHz with ISA bus working as a IPv4 router providing about 500 kB/s. What is that makes IPv6 so intense to just shuffle from port A to port B ..?
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Friday April 25 2014, @11:35PM
Because again you are comparing a GENERAL PURPOSE CPU to a DSP. It would be like expecting to run a server on a Realtek sound chip, it just can't be used in that manner. These chips are stripped to the bone and not a single nm of silicon is there that doesn't absolutely positively HAVE to be there because these chips sell in bulk for a buck or two a chip. As for what makes it so intense? lack of memory combined with an anemic CPU, again you are talking on average 1-2MB of memory and probably half of that is taken by the router code itself. Now if you can show me how you can code an IPV6 router in 1MB of memory I'll be happy to concede your point but I honestly don't think you can do it.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 24 2014, @04:26PM
What are you talking about? Do you even know how networking works? Why would anyone want to set their "IP address by phone"????
There is this thing called DHCP that allows you to set IP addresses, including IPv6. There is this other thing for IPv6 called autoconf that allows a machine to be plug-and-work, with no configuration at all. Why would anyone need to directly deal with any IP addresses??
(Score: 1) by tftp on Friday April 25 2014, @08:27AM
There is this thing called DHCP that allows you to set IP addresses, including IPv6
DHCP does you no good if you want to access the box. Sure, you can use static allocation in DHCP, and I do that - but I have to enter hardware (Ethernet) ID and the static IP address for that. In many situations it is just as easy to enter static IPs directly into the devices.
There is yet another catch. Your DHCP server has to be either on battery backup, or has to boot up faster than any other device on the LAN. This is pretty hard to do because some of the devices that I have are booting up and start asking for DHCP response within one second. If you lose power at your home or office and then get it back, it may well be that your DHCP server will be ready after some of the clients got tired of DHCPREQUESTs and picked a static IP as a fallback.
You can live happily on DHCP either when you do not care what IP address is assigned to what box, or if the network at the site is well designed. There are many offices that are neither there nor here; they have a few servers, a few printers, a few other computers, and they all need to play nicely with each other. Static IP is a valid solution for those simple situations. All you need to maintain is a sheet of paper; that sheet of paper never needs rebooting, and always works.
(Score: 2) by pe1rxq on Friday April 25 2014, @09:46AM
If you need to access the box you can use dynamic DNS together with DHCP, no need to remember IP addresses!
If you really want to you can keep using IPv4 together with IPv6, that is what dual stack is all about.
But if your solution really is just a piece of paper, than that paper could just as easily contain an IPv6 address.
Just use a lot of zeros in the last 64 bit and they will get almost as short as an IPv6 address.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Friday April 25 2014, @08:58PM
If you need to access the box you can use dynamic DNS together with DHCP, no need to remember IP addresses!
Here we are talking about people who cannot setup static IPv4 addresses without assistance. What is the chance that they will setup DDNS? Otherwise - sure, there are several excellent ways to do what they need.
Just use a lot of zeros in the last 64 bit and they will get almost as short as an IPv6 address.
The address 2001:cd3:155f:3937::3 does not look as simple as 192.168.0.3. Hex letters alone will be fun.
(Score: 2) by pe1rxq on Friday April 25 2014, @10:13PM
If they already have assitence now they can just keep using assistence.
And the equivalent of a local address like 192.168.0.3 would be fc00::3, it is actually shorter.
For people who don't know anything about it a few letters and semicolons won't be any more confusing than a bunch of numbers and dots.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Thursday April 24 2014, @07:55AM
Here is this scare resource, IPv4 addresses
I am not afraid, though :-)
I have the LAN running IPv6 and IPv4. Most of my boxes are dual-stack. Some are only on IPv6. I have the DNS and DHCP servers for IPv6, and they work. What I do not have is an IPv6 connection to the Internet. I do not want to bother with tunnels. When time comes the problem will resolve itself.
(Score: 2) by mendax on Friday April 25 2014, @03:11AM
Well, they don't have to be scarce. That's why we use routers and private intranets.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Friday April 25 2014, @07:40AM
That's why we use routers and private intranets.
True. This goes counter to the original, founding ideas of the Internet, where every device would be a visible, accessible host on the net. Those thoughts are far behind. The society threw their rose-colored glasses out a long time ago. Instead of all devices being on the net, we want no devices on the net - not visible, not pingable, not accessible. The role of serving content is now delegated to special servers, and to the people who spend all their time on protecting those servers from never-ending attacks of hackers, spammers, and other hostiles. A typical household exposes no ports (open or closed) to the Internet; their router is not pingable. When they need, they open an outgoing TCP connection to Skype, YouTube, or any http server out there. This is all they need today - and as technology moves forward, fewer and fewer popular services depend on customers serving anything, or fiddling with anything. I would expect household connections to devolve into basic consumer pipes (they aren't far from that already.) If you want anything beyond that, you need to buy a "professional" connection that may come with unique public addresses, with open ports, and such. Lots of people will be happy about that because their consumer equipment will be easier to protect; lots of companies will be happy about that because they get more control over their message. And professionals... they will be going their own way, as they always do. In the end, they do not matter.
In the end, IPv4 crisis is caused by the fact that ISPs issued at least one IP address for each consumer connection. (Setting aside the fact of large early allocations to certain companies.) However most consumers do not need a unique public IP address. They do not even know what it is. They only want to be able to connect to web sites. If ISPs fix this by deploying CGN, they will release hundreds of millions of IPv4 addresses back into circulation, as each IP address will be sufficient for hundreds of customers, limited only by the number of sessions that each customer initiates.
Why not to go with IPv6 and skip all this headache? Because IPv6 is also a headache. Worse still, IPv6 is a headache at the customer's site - in homes and apartments of simple folks who only want to read news and watch videos. CGN leaves all their setup intact, and instead moves the complexity to ISP offices, where there are people trained to deal with the issues.
The root of the IPv6 problem is that too few devices on the market support it; most do not. Windows Vista and later, and Linux, support IPv6... if it is properly configured at the router. I do not know what routers do that. It's not written on the box, even if a router does support some form of IPv6, and if the ISP also supports it. Those are complicated issues. I have an IPv6 network, but my DNS and DHCP are running on Linux. I do not know if a common man can buy a cheap router, plug it into a common ISP's uplink, and immediately get IPv6 running. Chances are that it won't work.
(Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Thursday April 24 2014, @08:49AM
Didn't we hear this same crap last year, and the year before.?
They just making this up now to try and get everyone on a technology no-one really wants.
(Score: 4, Informative) by pe1rxq on Thursday April 24 2014, @10:57AM
No, you probably didn't understand what exactly happened last year and the year before.
(IP address blocks are allocated to RIRs (such as ARIN) by the IANA and the RIRs then allocate them to ISPs and such).
This means that each will run out of addresses at a different moment.
IANA has ran out.
now ARIN has ran out.
Soon ISPs will run out.
Then the end users will start noticing a lot of differences.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Thursday April 24 2014, @09:05AM
What idiot ever thought we could transition the entire Internet to a new addressing scheme that provides no backwards compatibility?
Can we please just discard IPv6 and move on to IPv6.1? IPv6.1 would provide variable-length addressing; if an IP address consists of 4 bytes, it is interpreted as IPv4, otherwise as IPv6. There is no need to break the whole damned internet, just provide backwards compatibility and let time take its course.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1) by knorthern knight on Thursday April 24 2014, @10:17AM
> What idiot ever thought we could transition the entire Internet to
> a new addressing scheme that provides no backwards compatibility?
Sorry, not possible. Blame Vint Cerf and friends many years ago, when they set up a protocol that was *HARD-CODED* for 32 bits. Any change/extension breaks IPV4, by definition.
(Score: 1) by jorj on Thursday April 24 2014, @11:54AM
This.
After years of IPv6 evangelism, I'm thinking that the problem here is a combination of "I don't feel the pain so it ain't broke" coupled with the average person's lack of understanding of the stack itself, leading to fanciful ideas of "fixes" which aren't actually practicable.
(Score: 1) by ObsessiveMathsFreak on Thursday April 24 2014, @02:52PM
That's a nice definition, but if all it is doing is preventing people from coming up with creative solutions to the backwards compatibility problem, then it's not much use as a definition.
Just emulate IPv4 in IPv6 infrastructure. Be open about this. Tell IPv4 users that they will experience slower speed until such time as they upgrade.
Then, the last remaining problem will be to tackle the ridiculous IPv6 address shortcuts.
(Score: 2) by pe1rxq on Thursday April 24 2014, @03:07PM
What are you suggesting to emulate?
And what problem does it solve?
The problem is that IPv4 only equipment simply cannot address anything that does not have a 32bit address.
The only way to stay compatible with that is to not use more than 32bit addresses, which is not a solution at all!
(Score: 1) by ObsessiveMathsFreak on Thursday April 24 2014, @03:19PM
Why does that mean that the network which these devices are on cannot have more addressed? The network does not have to be restricted to the lowest common protocol of the devices on it.
Are you going to stand by this? Are you going to stand by the assertion that it is impossible for human beings to design a network which is both compatible with older IPv4 devices and simultaneously supports an upgraded IPv6 type network? I would regard such a view as either revealing a profound lack of imagination, or an adherence to dogma, and in particular as an impediment to finding a solution to the major problem we now find ourselves in.
(Score: 2) by pe1rxq on Thursday April 24 2014, @03:42PM
I am standing by it, but you seem to misunderstand me.
I never said the network couldn't handle it. It can handle it just fine. IPv4 and IPv6 can coexist on the network just fine. Go to google and type 'dual stack'.
But equipment that handles IPv4 only will NEVER be able to leverage the extended part of the network. Because it simply cannot address anything outside its 32bit range.
(Score: 1) by unauthorized on Thursday April 24 2014, @10:28AM
We already have backwards compatibility on the network stack level, implementing compatibility on the protocol level is not going to improve the situation. IPv6 aware software can already talk to IPv4 hosts just fine, the problem is going the other way around. Allowing variable length host addresses doesn't solve the problem with IPv4 software being unable to connect to hosts with address length !=4.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 24 2014, @12:33PM
Say, if I have a privileged super-duper internet that has not only ipv6 but also ipv4, can I talk to every host on internet using standard (v6) socket api and without resorting to the following pattern:
if (ipv6) {
dothis();
} else {
dothat();
}
(Score: 1) by unauthorized on Friday April 25 2014, @10:32AM
Why would you ever resort to that silly pattern? The standard paradigm for programming protocol-neutral sockets applications is getaddrinfo() with hints.ai_protocol=AF_UNSPEC.
But to answer your question, yes [ietf.org]. Your super-duper IPv6 ISP can transparently do that for you. The IPv6 address range ::1:1:1:1 - ::FF:FF:FF:FF is reserved specifically for that purpose. Not that you should rely on networking infrastructure to do your job of future-proofing your code.
(Score: 2) by pe1rxq on Thursday April 24 2014, @11:01AM
Great idea, lets use the first four bits of an IP packet to set the length.
If it is set to '4' then the addresses are 32 bit, if you set it to '6' then the addresses will be 128 bit.
If we then run out again we will just set this value to '7' or something like that.
Seriously: Educate yourself about the internet before you start calling people 'idiots'.
Right now you are the only one looking stupid.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday April 24 2014, @11:40AM
Without backwards compatibility its gonna cost between 5-50 BILLION dollars (no way to tell for sure since we have no idea how many routers and switches are out there) because damned near every router and switch at every office and home is gonna have to be shitcanned...are YOU gonna pay for it? Well you are, as the ISP will be passing along the costs of lost customers, increased service calls, and every single headache they have along to YOU.
Now who's the idiot smart guy? Hope you didn't actually want to keep that paycheck for something else because I would be frankly surprised if we don't see a 40%+ "surcharge" for the clusterfuck that is IPV6.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 1) by artman on Thursday April 24 2014, @12:33PM
Don't need backwards compatibility.
Run v4 to your hearts content no plans to not router v4 that I have ever heard of.
If in the US ( my only point of view not because I think everybody is ) does your TV from 1985 still work ?
Run Dual stack when you can and upgrade over the next 5 to whatever years I assume you would be upgrading this equipment anyway.
Only real reason to be running v6 is for getting to a company that ONLY has v6.
I plan on running v4 for management forever.
BTW where where you when they was developing v6 so you could point this out ?
No Sig for me Thanks
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday April 24 2014, @01:52PM
Where was I? Pointing out how stupid not having BC was only to be shouted down that I should "embrace the innovation"...just like what happened with Windows 8 and we all saw how well THAT panned out. And does the TV from 1985 work? NO, no it does not without an expensive adapter, which will be most likely what will happen with IPV6 and just like with the TV it'll be YOU that is paying for all those adapters.
And it might do you good sir to remember that almost none of the consumer gear being sold NOW has support for IPV6, much less all the gear sold in the last decade and what is more most of them CANNOT be upgraded by software due to weak ARM CPUs (average router is in the 200MHz range) and not enough RAM (average 2-4MB) so this will be an environmental clusterfuck if some sort of bridging technology isn't used in every home and office in the country. Then of course you run into what I call "The OS/2 Problem" where there is no real incentive to switch because "hey it still works with the adapter" so you end up with a big mess.
Either way you go lack of BC is a clusterfuck and the idiots that decided something as widely deployed as the Internet didn't need BC were foolish. Hell why do you think its taken 14+ years and we still haven't gotten shit by way of deployment? because the added complexity (as I said I can walk someone through setting up IPV4 in a couple minutes by phone and thanks to its layout like a phone number with minimal risk of error, try that shit with IPV6), the lack of BC, its a mess. And we won't even go into the field day that the *.A.As and government types will have with a system that is setup to assign everything its own personal IP (no more revolving IPs, its all traceable to the individual) nor the major headache the field techs will have with a system that is so hard for a human to parse. You can look at a network topology in IPV4 and spot in seconds the fuckups...you ever try that with IPV6? Good luck pal, it'll turn what took a couple minutes into a couple hours...what a mess.
I agree with the other poster, IPV6 needs shitcanning and we need a human readable IPV7 that is BC and easy for field techs to setup and admin, otherwise the costs are gonna be insane.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by pe1rxq on Thursday April 24 2014, @02:49PM
Human readable IPv7 and backwards compatible???????
Do you really want those poor weak ARM CPUs to be doing string compares?
Please, please tell me what this magic protocol would look like o great wise hairyfeet.
Where in the IPv4 header are you going to place those human readable strings?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 24 2014, @04:35PM
Frankly, you are the idiot.
1. you have no clue how routing works
2. you do not know how IPv4 works
3. you have no idea how IPv6 works - hint: easier on routers!
4. "human readable"? please stop confusing DNS with IP address space.
But alas, your first comments are "everyone but me is idiots!"... You really need some serious training how networking works.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday April 24 2014, @05:07PM
Can we PLEASE have a choice to block ACs? Please? because this is ALL you get with ACs...fucking trolls. they know they can shit on the page and NEVER see a response so shit they do, all over the place.
if YOU think there is value in AC trolls? then YOU can have 'em but this is a perfect time to show this is NOT Slashdot and ACs don't get the same treatment as registered users. i really don't think it would be hard to code a simple checkbox that blocks anyone that doesn't have a UID, so can we please have this?
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by pe1rxq on Thursday April 24 2014, @05:27PM
So far this AC 'troll' has shown more insight into networking than you.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday April 24 2014, @10:28PM
What "insight"? calling me an idiot? so if I call you a drooling fucknuts I must be smarter than Albert Einstein by your logic, yes?
As for what a human readble IP address looks like...are you REALLY that dense? humans have NO PROBLEM with IPV4 because it uses numbers in a "dot dot dot, dot dot" like a fucking phone number, how many people do YOU know that reads hex? if I were to type out a stream of hex IP addresses could YOU tell us WITHOUT looking it up which ones didn't belong? yeah thought so.
LOSE the letters, if you HAVE to have letters ONLY as a beginning, and keep it in short 3 number bursts, again like phone numbers...is this REALLY so damned hard to comprehend? For the love of Christ I wish I could drag every damned cubicle sitter and force them to work front line work for a week, field tech or help desk just so they could SEE what their "insight" creates on the front line...a fucking nightmare which is why its been 14 god damned years and most places still don't even have the beginning of a plan to switch over, instead we are talking about carrier NAT and anything to KEEP from using the precious IPV6 mess. Protip...if people would rather spend millions of dollars than use your shit? your shit do stinketh.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday April 24 2014, @11:34PM
Yeah, great, let's only extend it by another octet, so we can go through this whole fiasco yet again in a couple years.
You are proposing to extend 32 bits to 40 bits. IPv6 is 128 bits. Your scheme would last maybe a few decades -- and it's practically taking a few decades just for the transition, meaning by the time we'd finally switched over, it would be time to switch AGAIN! IPv6, on the other hand, will almost certainly outlast the internet.
IPv6 addresses can be shortened. You can remove some unused sections. So you don't really have to remember the full 128 bits. Of course, you really shouldn't be memorizing IP addresses anyway. That's what DNS is for.
When I was 15 I used to carry around my home IP address on a slip of paper in my wallet 'cause I couldn't remember it. Could easily do the same for IPv6. Of course, these days I have a domain. It's only a couple bucks a year, and that's EXACTLY what they're freakin designed for! Slap each system on a subdomain and be done with it. And if you're too cheap for that go grab a .tk or something, christ...
(Score: 2) by pe1rxq on Friday April 25 2014, @12:27AM
I didn't call you an idiot, but you sure start to sound like one.
IPv4 does not 'use' numbers with dots. That is just a representation of a 32bit address.
The internet does not operate on dots and numbers.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Friday April 25 2014, @12:52AM
Sigh...I really wish there was a "hit with a fish" button like Monty Python had, because if I REALLY have to explain to you we are talking about INTERFACES and NOT the transmission? Then you aren't even qualified to be in this conversation, good day sir.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 1) by evk on Thursday April 24 2014, @06:17PM
That's what moderation and thresholds are for. Though it seems like the system isn't working very well in this special case.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday April 24 2014, @08:59PM
You mean, people trolling about how ACs are bad? Because I've seen a lot more of that than I've actually seen AC trolls on this site.
And no, not all AC posts are troll posts.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 24 2014, @10:51PM
Thank you!
(Not the above AC, but I do think hairyfeet's more or less a dipshit, so there's that.) :)
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday April 24 2014, @11:23PM
They aren't trolls.
Please explain how the hell you would build IPv6 such that an old, IPv4-only device could talk to it. Because you keep saying it needs to be backwards compatible, they keep trying to explain why that's impossible, and all you can say is 'NO IT ISN'T YOU TROLLS!'. If everyone else is wrong, *PROVE IT*.
And if you mean making IPv6 understand IPv4 addresses -- that's exactly the situation we have today with dual stack. There's nothing being sold that's IPv6 only.
So, tell us, EXACTLY how are you going to cram more than 32 bits of information into a 32-bit IPv4 address field?
If you're so brilliant, prove it. Otherwise, shut up.
(Score: 2) by pe1rxq on Thursday April 24 2014, @12:49PM
Switches don't work on IP level. So no need to can them.
Most routers found today (especially in homes) do routing in software. There is no reason they couldn't also route IPv6.
The problem is not caused by the guys who came up with the protocol. (They even added a version field especially for cases like this). It is caused by the idiots buying that 5-50 billion pile of crappy hardware.
How much of that 5-50 billion dollar pile is less than a decade old?
The IPv6 standard was laid out in 1999, if your equipment is not capable of handling it by now you deserve pay dearly for it.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday April 24 2014, @01:38PM
Go look at how many IPV6 routers are currently being sold at Newegg (hint pretty much none) and you are gonna blame the CONSUMER for not buying something he can't buy? Arrogant much? And yes there is a GOOD reason why a good 90%+ of ALL routers will have to be shitcanned (making an incredible environmental mess) and that is because they don't have the CPU nor RAM to process IPV6. Your suggestion is as ludicrous as saying a Pentium 1 can run Ubuntu 14, there just isn't enough memory nor processing power in the average router (which working in the trenches I can tell you is a 200-400MHz ARM with 2-6Mb of RAM) to run IPV6.
At the end of the day none of what you said changes the fact that YOU WILL BE PAYING for the lack of backwards compatibility as no way in hell the ISPs are gonna eat that cost. Again enjoy your higher bills that will likely never go down.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 24 2014, @02:21PM
Go look at how many IPV6 routers are currently being sold at Newegg (hint pretty much none)
Here's a "top 5" list of from way back in 2012. Even if there were only 5 back then, I'm pretty sure there are more now.
http://www.cnet.com/news/top-5-ipv6-ready-wireless -routers/ [cnet.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by pe1rxq on Thursday April 24 2014, @02:30PM
Do you really think routing IPv6 is that much harder than IPv4??????
Most CPU in a router is spent on NAT, not the actual routing.
I have several small ARM based routers in the range you mentioned, they can handle IPv6 just fine.
And this yet again is a problem NOT caused by the guys designing the protocols.
Are you sure you are in the trenches? Or are you just sticking your head in the sand?
(Score: 1) by tftp on Thursday April 24 2014, @07:13PM
Do you really think routing IPv6 is that much harder than IPv4?
Look at the Arduino. It will never be able to run IPv6 (without a new Ethernet shield, at least) because the Ethernet controller (W5100) is IPv4-only. This means that all the home automation that you built around Arduinos will fail on a new network. Wiznet shipped millions of those controllers; millions of devices will have to be obsoleted and thrown out, then replaced with what?
Look at lwIP: Support for IPv6 is currently being added to LwIP. An experimental version can be downloaded from git. You can't use an experimental version of a stack in a production device. (Atmel uses lwIP in their libraries, for example.)
Look at WinXP. It never had a true IPv6 stack. There are many devices out there, from PCs to NAS and equpment controllers, that will never be able to connect to IPv6.
Look at millions of SIP phones. Very few of them are IPv6 compatible. Generally, small and cheap devices are all IPv4 - not just to cut costs, but because embedded IPv6 stacks are rare as hen's teeth. You have to pay big bucks to QNX or WindRiver for the pleasure of using them. An IPv4 stack is free.
IPv4 devices are being developed and manufactured right now, and there is no easy way to switch to IPv6. This is not because developers are fans of IPv4, but simply because they do not have a wide enough selection of software and hardware to do it.
As things are, CGN is a far cheaper approach for the ISP than to replace all the routers in the world and then have fun with remote maintenance of so many pieces of entirely new equipment. The consumer does not need IPv6; he only needs his YouTube to work.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday April 24 2014, @08:47PM
Since your router will still be able to route IPv4 traffic, no, it will not fail. It certainly will not be able to access IPv6 hosts, but only a fool would let a home automation device speak directly with the internet anyway.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Friday April 25 2014, @12:50AM
THANK YOU!! Finally some common sense! From pretty much every router and switch to alarm systems to...well damned near everything that isn't a PC there is almost ZERO support for IPV6 because as i pointed out it jacks the cost and complexity of support and as YOU pointed out the hardware and software stack isn't even beta quality yet.
You just can't expect them to dump what works for some shit that hasn't been tested or isn't even available. look at the guy below you that goes "herp derp, newegg has 18 IPV6 and only 13 IPV4" while ignoring the fact that the majority are NOT listed under those terms and there is nearly 200 routers on the site! So if Joe Citizen were to buy a router on newegg tomorrow he has MAYBE a 1 in 9 chance of getting IPV6 capable hardware, MAYBE. Are we then gonna penalize Joe because he doesn't know about some (frankly asinine IMHO) new IP addressing scheme cooked up years ago that nobody adopted? Really?
The simple fact is you can't argue with the numbers and so far IPV6? Its a flop. if it wasn't a flop ya know what? companies would be adopting it instead of spending millions for carrier NAT, the fact that a multimillion dollar carrier NAT is even considered a reasonable option? To me shows that IPV6 is a clusterfuck. the IPV6 fanboys can join the Win 8 fanboys in "embracing the innovation" but the fact that companies will spend millions NOT to use their product? honestly that should be all the proof you need that its not the right solution.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 1) by artman on Thursday April 24 2014, @03:49PM
Newegg search
router ipv6 returns 18
router ipv4 returns 13
No Sig for me Thanks
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday April 24 2014, @11:41PM
Dude. The router/modem combo I got *for free* from Verizon a few years ago handles IPv6 just fine...if only their damn network would already! The cheap TP-LINK router I just added to my network has no problems with it either...
Besides, who really gives a crap about consumer gear? They can keep running IPv4, slowly losing access to newer sites (or using a 6-to-4 tunnel) until the heat death of the universe. The networks are going to run dual stack. But those damn networks are the ones who are holding this back refusing to upgrade.
(Score: 1) by artman on Friday April 25 2014, @12:25AM
I agree.
Was not a direct point but just because a device doesn't say it supports it doesn't mean it wont.
I found it funny that less said they supported v4.
No Sig for me Thanks
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday April 25 2014, @12:44AM
Yeah, I'm sure we could come up with a decent list of models which, for example, don't support IPv6 on the default firmware, but will on something like DD-WRT. I bet the original WRT54G would be on that list, unless Linksys actually pushes out firmware updates (I've never owned a router that actually got a firmware update. Ever.)
(Score: 1) by artman on Friday April 25 2014, @12:32AM
sorry I assumed this was a relay to me some people seem to do it one way some do it another.
No Sig for me Thanks
(Score: 1) by ObsessiveMathsFreak on Thursday April 24 2014, @02:59PM
And what would be wrong with IPv6 devices and routers being able to emulate IPv4? Sure it might be slow, but at least it would facilitate a transition. This might require hardware hacking, and even heuristics, but it is not the insurmountable, inherently contradictory challenge some people are making it out to be.
Yes, we've got a hard wired IPv4 network. But the problem is not how to replace this with a hard wired IPv6 network. The problem is how do we transition from the IPv4 network to something else.
That is the problem. Anyone who refuses to look at this, or consider a transition plan, is a part of the problem. Until a transition plan exists, IPv6 and any other alternative network technology is simply adding to the problem instead of solving it.
(Score: 2) by pe1rxq on Thursday April 24 2014, @03:39PM
Google dual stack.
It is not the problem.
Running IPv6 allongside IPv4 has been possible from the beginning.
The problem is that a large group is either ignoring it or shouting stupid stuff like 'just add another dot and digit'
(Score: 1) by artman on Thursday April 24 2014, @11:57PM
"Google dual stack."
They have fingers in everything ;)
No Sig for me Thanks
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday April 24 2014, @08:41PM
You seem to have no idea how much address space 128 bits actually is. If you turned the matter of the complete planet earth into smart devices of a single gram each, you still could give each single device a 16 bit block of IPv6 addresses.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by pe1rxq on Thursday April 24 2014, @08:51PM
I know how much 128 bits is. I simply forgot to put the tags... I figured the post as a whole would be clear enough.
(Score: 1) by jim302 on Thursday April 24 2014, @12:48PM
This would still require changes to routers and other network equipment... given how much everyone has been dragging their feet on IPv6, another protocol change is the last thing we need.
I wish ARIN and the other RIRs would have implemented a policy several years ago to not issue any more IPv4 allocations unless the customer would provide IPv6 transition plans (real plans that are implemented, not just talk). For ISPs, Carrier Grade NAT should not be part of those plans unless it is deployed along side IPv6. Unfortunately it is a bit late now to implement this policy. This might have provided some incentive to transition rather than wait.
(Score: 1) by Bytram on Thursday April 24 2014, @01:32PM
How would you like your own /8?
Back in the day, it was possible for a company or educational institution to get their own. Or even more than one! According to this Map of the Internet, the IPv4 Space, 2006 [xkcd.com], BB&N Inc. had three! I wonder just how many of those IPv4 addresses are actually being used?
To take a slightly different perspective, look at these lists of oldest currently registered domain names [wikipedia.org] and how they map to the IPv4 address space distribution.
It would be a fun project to gather all the IPv4 address assignments over the first several years, and present a time-lapse map of the assignments. Maybe even allow a drill-down to a /16 on a particular /8?
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday April 24 2014, @05:02PM
So now, on the positive side of the balance sheets, companies can register their IP range, right after their patents, customer databases, and cash.
Beancounters think everything else (products, buildings, employees, stockrooms...) is a liability. What a great world!