4 ms·

Comcast Activates First Users With IPv6 Native Dual Stack Over DOCSIS

37 points by there 16y ago

zitterbewegung 16y ago
This is great :-) I hope more Internet Service Providers follow suit! I'm actually glad for once that I have comcast.
ronnier 16y ago
Comcast also caps usage to 250GB per month. http://customer.comcast.com/Pages/FAQViewer.aspx?Guid=3ca5420c-75b0-439c-b8bd-16d89157c333&fss=250 http://customer.comcast.com/Pages/FAQViewer.aspx?Guid=3ca542...
- gergles 16y ago
  FWIW, it's a softcap. I have several friends who have gone well over (we're talking 1TB+) and haven't received the dreaded phone call.
  - pquerna 16y ago
    FWIW, we hit 256gb, and we got a call, threatening if we passed it again in 6 months we would be banned from Comcast for 12 months. (Someone in the house accidentally left a torrent sending for 3 weeks)
    - travisp 16y ago
      Perhaps whether they call you after the limit depends on why you went over the limit. It should be easy to determine if the reason you went over is a torrent (even if they can't figure out what torrent), video streaming, or something else.
- Locke1689 16y ago
  How is this relevant?
hcurtiss 16y ago
18 quintillion . . . why?
- InclinedPlane 16y ago
  Effectively unlimited is better than limited. It turns out that the difficulty of supporting an 18 quintillion large address space is not significantly different from the difficulty of supporting a 4 billion large address space. NTFS5, for example, can support file sizes up to 18 quintillion bytes, and it's a decade old.
  - pyre 16y ago
    > NTFS5, for example, can support file sizes up to 18 quintillion > bytes, and it's a decade old. IIRC, NTFS has loads of advanced features, but Microsoft is slowing "turning them on" by adding support for them in Windows. I'm sure Windows would blow up if you got anywhere near that limit.
- shkb 16y ago
  Well we ran out of 4 billion, and much of the world isn't really online yet. Then factor in having a laptop, a smartphone, gaming console, HPTC, etc. There's more servers and infrastructure too. It's not that much overkill either, only 4x more bits.
  - jmillikin 16y ago
    The article states that 18 quintillion is being allocated to each customer, which does seem a bit excessive.
    - bodyfour 16y ago
      (recycling an post I just made on the same topic on /.) In short: 1. an ISP would be allocated a /32. This sure sounds like a lot (2^96 addresses!) but it only is the same burden as a single address in IPv4! Even if there were millions of ISPs, this would be no burden on the address space at all. We'd lose the ability to route before we'd exhaust the addresses. 2. Then an ISP can assign a /64 to customers. Again, this sounds like a bit much, but its a tiny fraction of their space. Even if the ISP had a billion customers like this they would be completely fine. 3. This leaves a huge amount of space available for the customer to segment however they please. 4. In the simplest case you'd use a single network with 48-bits taken up by the ethernet MAC address (removing the need to do any address assignment!) Alternatively you could segment the space a bit more and run a transnational corporation's network inside the /64. Up to you! 2^128 is a really REALLY big number. No reason not to spread out a little bit.
ballen 16y ago
Odd I've had IPv6 on Comcast in the Northern NM area for at least the last three months.
- Splines 16y ago
  You were probably on the 6RD IPv6 trials: http://www.comcast6.net/faq.php http://www.comcast6.net/faq.php
jtchang 16y ago
Is anyone else surprised that Comcast has actually gotten off their ass and decided to start going ahead with this? I guess my expectation was that Verizon would be headlining IPv6 and not Comcast.
allenbrunson 16y ago
Okay, if we're really starting to do this, then I guess I have to figure out how to upgrade all my code to deal with IPV6. I use the BSD sockets interface for most things. I assume we'll be living in a mixed IPV4/IPV6 world for awhile. Who's got a tutorial for making a connection to a host using IPV6 if available, but falling back to IPV4 if it isn't?
- dfox 16y ago
  See getaddrinfo(3) man page, that should be almost all you want. Making code mixed v4/v6 that way actually seems easier than v4-only solution with gethostbyname(3) and building struct sockaddr manually.

37 points by there 16y ago

This is great :-) I hope more Internet Service Providers follow suit! I'm actually glad for once that I have comcast.

Comcast also caps usage to 250GB per month. http://customer.comcast.com/Pages/FAQViewer.aspx?Guid=3ca5420c-75b0-439c-b8bd-16d89157c333&fss=250 http://customer.comcast.com/Pages/FAQViewer.aspx?Guid=3ca542...

gergles 16y ago
FWIW, it's a softcap. I have several friends who have gone well over (we're talking 1TB+) and haven't received the dreaded phone call.
- pquerna 16y ago
  FWIW, we hit 256gb, and we got a call, threatening if we passed it again in 6 months we would be banned from Comcast for 12 months. (Someone in the house accidentally left a torrent sending for 3 weeks)
  - travisp 16y ago
    Perhaps whether they call you after the limit depends on why you went over the limit. It should be easy to determine if the reason you went over is a torrent (even if they can't figure out what torrent), video streaming, or something else.
Locke1689 16y ago
How is this relevant?

hcurtiss 16y ago

18 quintillion . . . why?

InclinedPlane 16y ago
Effectively unlimited is better than limited. It turns out that the difficulty of supporting an 18 quintillion large address space is not significantly different from the difficulty of supporting a 4 billion large address space. NTFS5, for example, can support file sizes up to 18 quintillion bytes, and it's a decade old.
- pyre 16y ago
  > NTFS5, for example, can support file sizes up to 18 quintillion > bytes, and it's a decade old. IIRC, NTFS has loads of advanced features, but Microsoft is slowing "turning them on" by adding support for them in Windows. I'm sure Windows would blow up if you got anywhere near that limit.
shkb 16y ago
Well we ran out of 4 billion, and much of the world isn't really online yet. Then factor in having a laptop, a smartphone, gaming console, HPTC, etc. There's more servers and infrastructure too. It's not that much overkill either, only 4x more bits.
- jmillikin 16y ago
  The article states that 18 quintillion is being allocated to each customer, which does seem a bit excessive.
  - bodyfour 16y ago
    (recycling an post I just made on the same topic on /.) In short: 1. an ISP would be allocated a /32. This sure sounds like a lot (2^96 addresses!) but it only is the same burden as a single address in IPv4! Even if there were millions of ISPs, this would be no burden on the address space at all. We'd lose the ability to route before we'd exhaust the addresses. 2. Then an ISP can assign a /64 to customers. Again, this sounds like a bit much, but its a tiny fraction of their space. Even if the ISP had a billion customers like this they would be completely fine. 3. This leaves a huge amount of space available for the customer to segment however they please. 4. In the simplest case you'd use a single network with 48-bits taken up by the ethernet MAC address (removing the need to do any address assignment!) Alternatively you could segment the space a bit more and run a transnational corporation's network inside the /64. Up to you! 2^128 is a really REALLY big number. No reason not to spread out a little bit.

ballen 16y ago

Odd I've had IPv6 on Comcast in the Northern NM area for at least the last three months.

Splines 16y ago
You were probably on the 6RD IPv6 trials: http://www.comcast6.net/faq.php http://www.comcast6.net/faq.php

jtchang 16y ago

Is anyone else surprised that Comcast has actually gotten off their ass and decided to start going ahead with this? I guess my expectation was that Verizon would be headlining IPv6 and not Comcast.

allenbrunson 16y ago

Okay, if we're really starting to do this, then I guess I have to figure out how to upgrade all my code to deal with IPV6. I use the BSD sockets interface for most things. I assume we'll be living in a mixed IPV4/IPV6 world for awhile. Who's got a tutorial for making a connection to a host using IPV6 if available, but falling back to IPV4 if it isn't?

dfox 16y ago
See getaddrinfo(3) man page, that should be almost all you want. Making code mixed v4/v6 that way actually seems easier than v4-only solution with gethostbyname(3) and building struct sockaddr manually.