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Vint Cerf urges ISPs to deploy IPv6
INTERNET PIONEER Vinton Cerf raised the spectre of Internet islands in urging businesses to move towards IP version 6 (IPv6).
Talking at the 6UK launch, Cerf said the move to IPv6 needs to happen otherwise the Internet "will stop growing or will not be growable". Cerf added that users on different versions of the Internet Protocol (IP) will suffer from "spotty" access, possibly ending up with connectivity islands.
IPv6 has been around for well over a decade, however its slow deployment has raised the ire of Cerf, primarily known for his work on the transmission control protocol (TCP) back in the 1980s. Currently working with Google, Cerf said that his employer's transition to IPv6 took three years and warned that if firms do not start deployment now businesses could experience expansion problems.
The biggest problem with IPv6 adoption is the initial cost, both in terms of hardware and software and the conversion effort required by the transition between IPv4 and IPv6 to avoid Cerf's aforementioned Internet islands. This relatively short-term pain has to be suffered if the Internet is to accommodate the glut of devices that are connecting to it.
Continual talk of IPv6's increased address space does the protocol a disservice, as it also offers support for multicast and added network layer security and even lightens the load on routers. It also, in theory, should reinstate the validity of the end-to-end (E2E) argument, with the demise of network address translation (NAT).
Cerf's comments are just the latest in a long line by network engineers promoting the adoption of IPv6. The question remains, however, whether Internet service providers (ISPs) will listen before it is too late. µ
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Most of the pressure to move to IPv6 is on the public side. LAN side you can have a full /8 to yourself and no one will bother you. But we're running out of public addresses and we can't present a v4 native host on a v6 address easily. This means we're stuck with a dual home, or putting a subset of services onto v6 addresses, but each needs a v4 otherwise some customers can't reach it. The observant will note that this does not help us use less IPv4 addresses, and so does not in fact solve the problem.
So, major sticking point on the upgrade is the lack of a working 4to6 (and 6to4) NAT tech.
Because we don’t want to go through this pain ever bloody again.
but going from 32-bit to 128-bit is kind of insane. Why couldn't we just go to 40-bit, that would be way more than enough.
Of course, I'm pretty sure I know the reason for 128-bit. At the moment, people are saying you can't be connected to web addresses since they're recycled. But if they move to 128-bit, then you can simply use statistical math to justify suing people. You get 2 of those addresses pointed at a particular person or house and the case would be pretty much open and shut, except for the possibility that someone was stealing their bandwidth.
My current problem is lack of interest from other people using the systems I'm using, so I'm out in the cold trying to do the work required to get our systems on line.
Perhaps this will change but at present people are far more interested in other technical issues than this one.