IPv6 Tested in Space

An anonymous reader writes "Remember the Cisco router orbiting on a satellite in space? Well, it's now also the first to run IPv6 in space. Since no-one is choosing to run IPv6 on the ground, isn't this a bit pointless?"

Pointless? No.

[dreamchaser]

If you're going to start putting Interplanetary WAN infrastructure in place, might as well go IPv6 from the get go. Then once there are a few billion nodes scattered about the Solar System we won't have any addressing problems ;)

Gee, why is no one switching to IPv6?

[kimvette]

Since no-one is choosing to run IPv6 on the ground, isn't this a bit pointless?

Why is no one running IPv6 on the ground? Well, I'll tell you why I don't run it:

• Neither of my ISPs (work or home) supports it
  
• NONE of my routers support it
  
• A lot of applications I run don't support it
  
• Dealing with it on apache would be a PITA, wouldn't it?
  

Besides, who wants to deal with IPv6 when dotted quads are easier to memorize? Just wrench the class A address assignments away from the current assignees (not a single one of them needs a class A block) and reallocate them reasonably. Apple does not need a class A block, Merck doesn't, HP doesn't, GE doesn't, IBM doesn't, MIT doesn't. Halliburton doesn't, and the DoD certainly does not need multiple /8 assignments. Besides, isn't the DoD largely on IPv6 now? Reallocate the IPv4 space reasonably, force organizations such as Apple, HP, IBM, Merck, and Halliburton justify their IP allocation request like I had to for my puny /27 block, and then there will be plenty of space for all.

Re:Not true

[pla]

There are many large business models that depend on it.

Such as?

First, what does a networking potocol have to do with a business model; And second, how can any company survive with a business model dependant on something not supported by most ISPs?



Serious questions, not sarcasm.

Re:Gee, why is no one switching to IPv6?

[thegameiam]

I agree about the downsides of running IPv6, but pulling the /8 assignments from the current assignees would be a lot of headache and trouble for not so much benefit - yeah, a couple of those could be returned easily (probably not the DoD ones - they already returned the ones they don't need anymore) (and you forgot to mention that Level3 currently owns 3 /8s due to their purchase of BBNPlanet (AS1), and that would add maybe an additional year at our current run rate, but we'll come to a point where we need to do something different.

Whether that something is IPv6 or is wide-scale NAT, or some other protocol entirely, I don't know. IPv6 implementation and deployment has been hampered by the protocol designers attempting to fix every known problem with it, rather than simply fixing the address space...

-David

Re:Gee, why is no one switching to IPv6?

[Ephemeriis]

While it is certainly true that there aren't a whole ton of home routers that support IPv6 yet, it's on the way. Vista installs IPv6 by default and it's a pain to get rid of it. Vista tells you you've got full IPv4 connectivity, but limited IPv6 connectivity...and I've already had one client ask me what that meant, and how he could get full IPv6. Folks will buy an IPv6 router just because it's got a bigger number...and now that Vista advertises IPv6 connectivity, people will be aware that there is a bigger number to be had.

Plus, some stupid applications insist on trying IPv6 if it is installed and wait forever for the packets to time out... A common problem I ran into with folks who tinkered under XP was massive slowdowns with Firefox after someone had installed IPv6. Remove IPv6 and everything was fine. Of course...Vista doesn't like it when you try to remove IPv6... Haven't had any calls about slowdowns yet...maybe Vista handles the stack better than XP did...

As far as "no-one is choosing to run IPv6 on the ground"... Well, that's just not true. Many ISPs are running IPv6 on their internal networks. You'll never see it because your modem/router/LAN live in an IPv4 tunnel...but it's there. I know I've seen Job Ads for the local hospital asking for IPv6 experience as well...though I don't know if they're actually using it yet or just preparing for the future.

"Dotted quads" may be easier for you to memorize...but I suspect this is largely because that's what you're dealing with on a day-to-day basis. Remember when you were little and it was hard to memorize addresses or phone numbers? Now that seems incredibly simple, doesn't it? Remember when you were just learning IP and wondered why you couldn't use DNS for absolutely everything (because names are so much easier to memorize than numbers). Plus, IPv6 supports a couple different ways to abbreviate [wikipedia.org] addresses...such as stripping leading 0's or replacing them with :: Which makes our old friend 127.0.0.1 something much easier to remember - ::1

And simply re-allocating the IPv4 address space just isn't going to cut it. There aren't enough addresses out there. The only reason we've been able to stay with IPv4 for so long is NAT, which causes problems [wikipedia.org] of its own. The bottom line is that we need more addresses than IPv4 has.

Re:Gee, why is no one switching to IPv6?

[thegameiam]

I'd challenge the assertion that "many ISPs are running IPv6 on their internal networks" - the only ISP which has made any sort of argument that running IPv6 as a core service (rather than an edge service across the existing IPv4 core) is Comcast, and that has to do with the number of devices they're trying to manage with regard to set-top-boxes.

Comcast is nowhere near implementing this, either.

The US ISPs either run IPv6 as an edge service (in a VRF, say) or using tunneling approaches, or on limited deployments on specific hardware - but nobody's tunneling IPv4 inside IPv6 (although theoretically that'll work)

I wonder if that Cisco has been patched...

[mnemotronic]

For this configuration exploit [securitytracker.com], this SNMP vulnerability [cisco.com], this IP sequence generation problem [securityfocus.com], this ICMP vuln [auscert.org.au], this H.323 problem [auscert.org.au], and this buffer overflow [auscert.org.au].

NOTE: Some of the listed problems indicate a "Cisco 3200 Catalyst", which may not be the same as the orbiting "Cisco 3200 Mobile Access Router". IANACG (I am not a Cisco geek).

Re:Gee, why is no one switching to IPv6?

[Ephemeriis]

Perhaps I am wrong... One of our larger local ISPs is rolling out its own fiber and offering a comprehensive package that includes broadband, unlimited phone, and video - and they're using IPv6 on their internal network. The end user doesn't see that though...they get an IPv4 address on their broadband router, just like with a regular cable/DSL connection. I just assumed that if a local ISP here was doing IPv6 internally that more worldwide would be doing so.

You want IPv6 adoption? Make it reasonable.

[shaitand]

Start an open site dedicated to CONTENT providers who have made their content available for IPv6 and give blue ribbon graphics to IPv6 only sites. Then.. and this is the biggest one.

Make getting address space cheap and easy!!! IPv6 is huge, why do I have pay ridiculous recurring fees to get a block? Make small allocations free, registration free and online, then just make me return a confirmation letter/call/email once every 5 years to renew. IPv6 space is monstrous, it is terrible that you have to pay outrageous fees to become a member organization and then huge recurring fees for addresses. Why do ISP's have to go through the same backflips and outrageous pricing schemes that served to reduce demand for IPv4 addresses.

Once you have major content providers onboard and make it free and easy to get address space, then ISP can advertise access to the 'NEW AND IMPROVED' internet.

Re:Not true

[Kizeh]

Cellular carriers have looked at it very seriously for the next generation (4G?) networks, as one potential idea is to do packetized voice, and the number of addressable devices is potentially huge, and depending on how mobility is done, each device may need several addresses.

The U.S. federal government has mandated it, so anyone wishing to get into that business needs it.

That being said, my university has been running IPv6 for a few years now -- we luckily have native IPv6 feed from I2 -- and all of our routers (Cisco IOS), servers (various variants of Linux) and clients (MacOS X, Linux, Windows XP) have supported it just fine.

Re:Gee, why is no one switching to IPv6?

[Tony Hoyle]

It's quite common not to route 6to4. The ISP I'm with now is the first I've had in 3 years to route 192.88.99.1 and they've got native ipv6 anyway.

Tunnels I can sympathise. No quality. Abysmal uptime, and nobody to complain to if it goes wrong.. not to mention that 90% of the people who were providing them have packed up and gone home when the 6bone went titsup. I eventually gave up on my hosting machines' ipv6 after I did the uptime graphs.. uptime was about 30%, and the latency never got less than 500ms to the first hop.

ipv6 is still going backwards - it's *far* harder to get connectivity now than it was 5 years ago.

Re:You are already are using IPv6

[thegameiam]

Oh believe me, I'm familiar with ARIN's policies: I'm one of the people who argued for the adoption of PI (provider independent) allocations as opposed to PA-only allocations, which was the policy for a very long time.

IPv6 was designed by a lot of smart people who work on end-systems, with not a whole lot of folks who actually run very large networks being involved - that's why multihoming still remains a problem (yes, yes, I know, get some PI-space, or is Shim-6 still the suggested approach? Oh wait, that's right, there isn't a working implementation of shim-6...), and to a great extent, IPv6 solves problems which have already been solved for most ISPs and enterprises.

Other than address shortage.

Yes, I agree that there is an IPv4 address shortage, and there is a concern about depletion. But deploying IPv6 requires changing a lot of operational paradigms of the network (middlebox proxy vs. end-to-end), and also the firewall behavior is quite different.

So yeah, I think that there's a v4 address issue: I'm just not sure that v6 is the answer. Time will tell.

Sprint & Verio

[thegameiam]

I assume by "Verio" you mean NTT (AS2914). NTT is an incumbent Japanese telco, which bought the US-based Verio some years ago. I know that NTT offers IPv6 services, and their brochure is here [ntt.net], which claims that they're running dual stack on all of their routers. That brochure also claims that they have 500 customers for their IPv6 services, and claims that they're the largest provider of IPv6 in the world.

As for Sprint, they often brag about their L2TPv3 core, with MPLS, and other private-IP services offered as edge services. It would make sense for them to run 6PE and just treat v6 as yet another edge service which doesn't interfere with their core. BTW, Sprint's documentation on this [sprintv6.net] indicates that they have a grand total of seven IPv6 speaking routers.

So while you might have a point about NTT running v6 in the core, they're not that big an ISP in the US: the weekly routing table analysis [apnic.net] doesn't show them in the top 20 in either the ARIN region or the APNIC region. From the map on their website, they've got all of 9 POPs in the US... Their focus seems to be on business and webhosting customers, rather than on end-users - they don't offer a TDM product below a DS3.

In any case, the idea that having 500 customers of a given technology shows the provider as the most deployed/largest in the world misses the scale of the Internet entirely: Cablevision might have more than 500 customers in a single building who are IPv4-only.