IPv4 or IPv6

ali.g

With the fear of us runningout of IPv4 addresses IPv6 seems to be the next and only solution to IPv4 exhaustion so far. But some people reject the idead of using IPv6 addresses for certain reasons. Can anyone give an open discussion on what they think?

le_dazzler

I don't think ipv4 is going to hit the scrapheap anytime soon tbh. For one thing, NAT goes a long way to conserving ip addresses. Also, anyone running ospf as their routing protocol in a cisco environmeny won't be able to abandon ipv4for sometime: http://blog.ioshints.info/2008/04/ipv4-forever.html

rmacm

Homework per chance?

Google might help you with this. How about posting what you think before the rest of us do?

ethernet

Running out of addresses. I found this article, from just a few days ago, interesting.

ali.g

scientists such as geoff huston have estimated IPv4 will run out of addresses around 2012 mark which is not far off.....in this event a contingency plan needs to be deployed to assis with the IPv4 exhaustion. yes NAT helps conserve IPv4 addresses but with the use of IPv6, NAT is no longer needed, .
IPv4 supports up to 4.5billion addresses.
IPv6 i think supports somethin ridiulous like 34 000 000 000 000 000 000 000
(340 undecillion) addresses. which is more numbers than the star in our solar system.
it seems to be a step in history where we are converting to IPv6.
Google recently launched an IPv6 version of their homepage
ipv6.google.com
Also the RIR's such as Apnic, RIPE etc now sell IPv6 address space and have done for quite a while, they still allocate IPv4 but from Feb2009 they are making IPv4 addresses obsolete and will only sell IPv6.
the white house announced that all federal agencies must convert to IPv6 by june 2008.
Also when Ipv4 first came out the majority of those addresses were allocated to the US , not for racism or power but because the internet first was a military project in a university and most growth of the internet was in north america at the time. Because of this other continents such as Asia are now experiencing conflicting ip addresses.
Ive come to the conclusion that IPv6 is inevitable , not because it has better features and performance, but because there is an element of IPv4 exhaustion. And at the moment it seems to be the 'trend' in upgrading to IPv6 addresses. It is a mark in Internet history though where Ipv4 has nearly reached the end of its life and there is the birth of Ipv6.

_CreeD_

A lot of the most prominent and lauded improvements with IPv6 are actually based in OSI's protocol (not the 7layer model the actual protocol they developed that competed with and ultimately failed against TCP/IP all those decades ago). One major concern with v6 is security, it has stronger security principals than v4 built in but it will be quite a while before appliances and software can secure it to the level we currently can with v4. Considering how malware has evolved into a thriving organized business now we will be dealing with serious well researched and implemented threats right off the bat, and considering the immaturity of security products and the lack of experience of most IT staff in securing v6 it's going to be a big problem - the most obvious is already there with Vista using teredo and essentially bypassing a lot of your existing firewall appliances as it tunnels through v4, the IETF response was that there were so many potential addresses that it shouldn't be an issue...being a small fish in a big pond might have been a reasonable assumption of low risk a decade ago but not now. Anyway, I think anyone considering moving to v6 had better have a VERY well researched security plan before doing so.

Cormic

ali.g wrote: »

(340 undecillion) addresses. which is more numbers than the star in our solar system

Sorry to be a pedant but there is only one star in our solar system

Xcellor

Cormic wrote: »

Sorry to be a pedant but there is only one star in our solar system

I believe you mean pedantic

Sorry for being pedantic!

seamus

"a pedant" will do just fine.

I don't think we're in any great fear of IPv4 "running out" any time soon. The main problem I feel with it is that it seems to have run away with itself in the early years, such that it's a bit messy. http://xkcd.com/195/
Or maybe that's just my own ****

Best plan for the medium term would be to reclaim any address spaces allocated to corporations and force them to use internal addressing and NAT.

What I feel the main problem with IPv6 is (from a techie POV), is that it makes us a whole heap more reliant on DNS, as few of us would have the inclination to work with 32 hex digits in our head. To avoid having complete nightmares in support scenarios, network services will need to evolve in such a way that there's no requirement to have people even see the IP address.
Could you imagine trying to guide your mother through setting up an IPv6 home router, inputting a static IP address, or even trying to browse to the router config page by IP address?

Talisman

There are over 4 billion IP4 addresses. That is more than enough for the planet. What needs to happen is for the addresses to be recycled. Around 10 years ago I was working for an Irish company that was allocated a x.x.x.0-255 IP block, as of four years ago the company was only using 3 of the addresses. I very much doubt that they have used any more of the addresses since.

Marlow

Well, current anticipation is actually, that we're running out of IPv4 in 2010. There are 5 x /8 left, which will be assigned to the 5 regions and there are made attempts to charge and trade for IPv4 ip space.

The end of the story is simple: Once we run out of IPv4, the segments allocated will be traded like domains are traded today. For any company that is depending on IPv4 this will mean a significant cost and be a good incentive to migrate to IPv6.

Obviously all of this is not fully finalized yet, but it's certainly the way it's going.

In regards to Ireland, only 12 out of the 22 assigned IPv6 prefixes are correctly announced these days: http://www.sixxs.net/tools/grh/dfp/all/?country=ie

The ISPs that allocate IPv6 to end customers to my knowledge are Net1 and ourselfes. Whoever can't get IPv6 from their provider can always opt for a SixXS tunnel. In Ireland those are provided by Heanet and soon from us.

Essentially, IPv6 will to the enduser make zero difference, because most of'em don't even know what a IP (IPv4) address is and barely know how to turn on their computer. Most *nix based systems (incl. Linux, *BSD, MacOS X), Windows XP and Vista all support IPv6 and a lot of the applications like Mozilla Firefox etc. are ready, too.

Anybody who is on IPv6 will still be able to access IPv4 sites, just not the other way around.

Bottom line, there's nothing to fear, as long as YOUR ISP does something about it .. And you can force'm to it by requesting to get IPv6 assigned.

/Martin

Alun

Talisman wrote: »

There are over 4 billion IP4 addresses. That is more than enough for the planet. What needs to happen is for the addresses to be recycled. Around 10 years ago I was working for an Irish company that was allocated a x.x.x.0-255 IP block, as of four years ago the company was only using 3 of the addresses. I very much doubt that they have used any more of the addresses since.

I agree .. I have known companies that had complete class B blocks allocated that they used for a while before later going down the NAT route and never gave them back. They're probably still clinging on to them to this day. I'd be willing to bet that a lot of recycling could be done in this way.