News - Just 5 blocks of IPv4 addresses left

[HEXUS]

Remaining net addresses to be shared.

Read more.

[LuckyNV]

I bet there are plenty left if you get rid of all the scam sites

[oolon]

I doubt that, one because many scam sites are run without knowing on other people computers, and two because a one web server can provide many different web sites without having multiple IPs.

[cheesemp]

The silly thing is IPv6 has been around for a while and isn't really any more complicated than ipv4 (its just a longer number really - Things like autoconfig and routing changes are of little interest to end users). Its just people putting it off and companies not wanting to spend money on new software development or hardware . I made my companies software run on IPv6 last year and it wasn't that hard to do.

[Gkpm]

The silly thing is IPv6 has been around for a while and isn't really any more complicated than ipv4 (its just a longer number really - Things like autoconfig and routing changes are of little interest to end users). Its just people putting it off and companies not wanting to spend money on new software development or hardware . I made my companies software run on IPv6 last year and it wasn't that hard to do.

It's not hard to do locally, but the interconnections, like those at peering points such as LINX, have to all be redone. Not too long ago not even the core routers supported this well, so called hardware path only worked for IPv4, so IPv6 was routed very slowly by router software. So massive investments to be done on that..

Also 99% of home routers don't support it, so how this will reach the home users is a good question..

I'm not sure how this will play out, and have a suspicion that no one really has a plan.

[chrestomanci]

Also 99% of home routers don't support it, so how this will reach the home users is a good question..

More than 99% of home routers where manufactured after the spec for IPv6 was finalised in 1998. Most can have their firmware re-flashed if the manufacturers bothered to write an IPv6 aware firmware.

At the packet level routers don't need to be very clever. They don't need to know about all the complexities of the web, they just need to shunt packets from the external WAN interface, filter by IP address and port, modify a few bytes to do NAT, and then forward onto the internal interface. If anything IPv6 makes their job easer as they don't have to do NAT.

I Would bet that in a modern router, more than 90% of the code drives the user interface, and does peripheral things like printer sharing, with less than 10% actually shunting packets. In any case most home routers run Linux these days, which has supported IPv6 for years, so the manufactures could enable it at minimal effort on their part.

The real problem is that there are basically no ISPs who support IPv6. I usually think of my ISP (Zen) as quite forward thinking, but on the subject of IPv6, they are procrastinating. That is one of the reasons that I am holding off signing up to their FTC service.

[Gkpm]

More than 99% of home routers where manufactured after the spec for IPv6 was finalised in 1998. Most can have their firmware re-flashed if the manufacturers bothered to write an IPv6 aware firmware.

That's the difference between theory and reality. In theory it would be all easy and great, but reality is manufacturers will not offer IPv6 firmware for existing routers, even NETGEAR's CEO made a recent sneer comment about how we all would need to buy new routers.

Not even Draytek - one of the few brands which still releases new features years after the routers are out - is offering upgrades... Maybe there's not enough space in the flash ROM? Who knows but them..

Of course ISPs are dragging their feet: first BT does not offer this one their wholesale products, so unless they're LLU they can't do it themselves. Then there's the boatload of money they need to invest to get this off the ground.. Finally there's no service of really of any interest in IPv6-land - not even Google UK works only Google US - so why do it? It's probably a wiser investment to just buy bigger NAT routers for the upcoming future...

Get ready for a future of unstable patched together NAT Internet on IPv4. Real IPs will end up being a premium service option and all normal users will live behind double or even triple NATs. Hey, it's great at controlling P2P too!

[Output]

It seems ridiculous that we are so unprepared for IPv6, considering how long it's been known that it would happen.

[Gkpm]

Was looking through the (very small) list of supported routers and found this little
box that effectively opens a tunnel over the usual IPv4 routers and connects the whole network
to IPv6.

http: //gogoware.gogo6.com/4105/description.asp?product_id=180

They claim to be more cost efficient than replacing all the customer routers out there,
so maybe there's hope.. (not holding my breath though..)