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posted by janrinok on Thursday June 07 2018, @03:05PM   Printer-friendly
from the don't-give-huge-blocks-to-businesses dept.

Things are looking up for our next-generation internet.

[...] But the shortage of IPv4 elbow room became a steadily worsening issue -- have you noticed all those phones that can connect to the network now, for example? So tech companies banded together to try to advance IPv6. The result: World IPv6 Day on June 8, 2011, when tech giants like Google, Facebook and Yahoo tested IPv6 sites to find any problems. For a sequel, they restarted those IPv6 connections and left them on starting on World IPv6 Launch Day, June 6, 2012.

Back then, there was still a risk that IPv6 wouldn't attract a critical mass of usage even with the tech biggies on board. The result would've been an internet complicated by multilayer trickery called network address translation, or NAT, that let multiple devices share the same IP address. But statistics released Wednesday by one IPv6 organizer, the Internet Society, show that IPv6 is growing steadily in usage, with about a quarter of us now using it worldwide. It looks like we're finally moving into a future that's been within our grasp since the Clinton administration.

"While there is obviously more to be done -- like roll out IPv6 to the other 75 percent of the Internet -- it's becoming clear that IPv6 is here to stay and is well-positioned to support the Internet's growth for the next several decades," said Lorenzo Colitti, a Google software engineer who's worked on IPv6 for years.

[...] How much room does IPv6 have? Enough to give network addresses to 340 undecillion devices -- that's two to the 128th power, or 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 if you're keeping score.


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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 07 2018, @04:23PM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 07 2018, @04:23PM (#689907)

    I used to be (years ago) responsible for the firewall rules at my employer and at the time, deliberately disabled IPv6 until I could spend the time to learn all its ins and outs. Of course, having the time to sit down and do that never happened, so when I left that role, we still didn't have it enabled.
    The little time I did get to look at it spooked m though: it seemed that there was a lot of internal info that could be gleaned from looking at the IPv6 address assigned to a device. Is this the case or was I just confused?

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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 07 2018, @06:05PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 07 2018, @06:05PM (#689986)

    I have had the same experience with IPv6 research as you. And like you have been waiting to see how things roll out and improve, or not. This is a "game" where there is little to no downside of waiting for the early adopters to run into a majority of the problems. Reminds me of a true story...

    When cable was rolling out internet access in the mid/late 90's one of the VPs in our company got it installed in their home. He opened up his network tools and was shocked that he could see the computers of every house in his neighborhood as if they were on his local, in-home network. The cable/ISP has not put up the proper networking separations between clients. It was literally open to everyone. I see IPv6 as being potentially similar to that today - just with a much higher technical bar.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 07 2018, @06:17PM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 07 2018, @06:17PM (#689993)

      one of the VPs in our company got it installed in their home. He opened

      How did you conclude this makes sense?

      Here: one of the VPs in our company got it installed in his home. He opened...

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 07 2018, @06:46PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 07 2018, @06:46PM (#690006)

        Don't assume xhis gender.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 07 2018, @07:04PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 07 2018, @07:04PM (#690020)

          The "masculine" forms in English are only masculine in that they are "not explicitly feminine". The "feminine" forms are explicitly gendered.

          Basically, you use "she", et al., to denote things that are special, unique, or cherished—such as females, or boats. If you use "he", et al., you are not actually specifying a gender. That is why a law may be written in terms of "he", but yet still applies to women.

      • (Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday June 07 2018, @06:49PM

        by frojack (1554) on Thursday June 07 2018, @06:49PM (#690010) Journal

        Consistentcy in virtue signaling has not gained wide traction yet.
        Same as IPV6 it seems.

        --
        No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
  • (Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday June 07 2018, @09:29PM

    by sjames (2882) on Thursday June 07 2018, @09:29PM (#690076) Journal

    It's really not that complicated. It's just that instead of relying on NAT (which was never intended to be a security measure), you rely on a much less resource intensive stateful firewall rule.

    If you just use autoconfig for addresses, it is possible to derive some information about machines inside the firewall (that has good and bad points). If you use IP privacy, they pick random addresses and change periodically to hide that information.