8 ms·

At our current rate of progress, IPv6 will be fully implemented on May 10, 2048

40 points by johnkoetsier 13y ago

jgrahamc 13y ago
There's more data in the blog post: http://blog.cloudflare.com/ipv6-day-usage-attacks-rise http://blog.cloudflare.com/ipv6-day-usage-attacks-rise
ancarda 13y ago
My ISP hasn't given me an IPv6 address so I can't play with it easily so it remains a mystery for me. I managed to get a tunnel up and running so I could test & configure the IPv6 address my server had available for years but I hadn't setup. What needs to happen for IPv6 to take off? CloudFlare is doing a lot by allowing automatic IPv6 for many websites - it makes it very easy to get a foothold in IPv6.
- zanny 13y ago
  > What needs to happen for IPv6 to take off? 1. Consumer grade routing hardware that always supports ipv6 out of the box. 2. ISPs transitioning into supplying both an ipv4 and ipv6 address to households. 3. Major network backbone services (google, amazon, etc) transition to both ipv4 and ipv6. 4. Once a majority of the critical network infrastructure is available on both, ISPs need to start dropping ipv4 addresses from customers, preferrably from new customers. 5. Slowly depreciate ipv4 by using a ISP provided ipv4 tunnel service for a while for those that still need to access the ipv4 web. Basically, it requires most of the work be done on the backs of ISPs. In the US at least, the ISP business is an oligopoly of cable tv and Hollywood and will resist ipv6 because it enables more peer to peer trafficking and open communication over the Internet.
  - bdb 13y ago
    Actually, you'd be surprised -- Comcast is leading the charge on the residential IPv6 front in the US, and Time Warner Cable isn't too far behind. Verizon, the largest carrier in the US not owned by a content company (by my back-of-napkin math), has been slower in deployment of IPv6, by contrast. (OTOH, since IPv6 is critical to LTE deployment, VZW et al have been much quicker on the uptake.) I actually think that the content hosting folks are behind the curve here. Amazon is one of the biggest hold-outs; their IPv6 rollout has thus far been a total joke. No IPv6 for Cloudfront? No IPv6 glue for Route53 authoritative nameservers? No IPv6 on VPC, barely on EC2 at all, etc., etc. From what I've heard, the management at Amazon doesn't really care about the network behind their infrastructure; instead of investing in building a backbone that could do a better job supporting this kind of stuff -- and all kinds of inter-region applications which would be useful -- they want pretend the network doesn't exist and that nothing needs to change. It's too bad. I think we'd see more IPv6 usage if Amazon would get their act together.
    - js2 13y ago
      I have TWC residential service. Coincidentally, I just experimented with setting up IPv6 yesterday on my Airport Extreme. TWC is not issuing IPv6 addresses at my location. So I went with an automatic tunnel (192.88.99.1). That IP is 16 hops and 150 ms away for me (anycast by Congent in my case) and its performance was awful. I switched to a manual tunnel from HE (tunnelbroker.net). I confirmed this worked, that my Apple devices behind the Airport Express all got IPv6 addresses and so forth, and that the performance was decent. Experience in hand, I then tore it all down, since I couldn't think of a good reason why I really needed IPv6 at home. :-)
      - wmf 13y ago
        And now real IPv6 never gets debugged because everyone is using HE.net tunnels.
magg 13y ago
in the meantime, there are many IPv6/IPv4 transition mechanisms to help fight this, like NAT64: https://github.com/NICMx/NAT64 https://github.com/NICMx/NAT64
tptacek 13y ago
Good. IPv6 is a failed experiment. It's time to reconsider the IP service model. The future of the Internet belongs to startups, not to the IETF. My hope is that by 2020, IP will have approximately the same importance to the global connectivity fabric that Ethernet has today; it'll be a particularly flexible next-hop technology, and we'll be routing something more clever than IP on top of it.
- jerf 13y ago
  It's already 2013, so that's an aggressive schedule; it seems to imply the next-hop tech must already exist. Did you have something in mind? (Tone: Honest question. I'm curious.)
  - ghshephard 13y ago
    There is no candidate to replace IP for global routing connectivity in the next 20 years. I'll wager a long-bet at 10 to 1 odds up to $1,000 (you win $10,000) for anybody who thinks differently.
    - tptacek 13y ago
      Ok. Done. My email is in my profile.
  - nknighthb 13y ago
    Thomas always says this whenever IPv6 comes up. He wants some sort of "overlay" network. He's ambiguous on what this would look like, why it would be better than IPv6, and why IPv4 will suffice as its underlying protocol. My conclusion is that his application-level networking experience has fooled him into thinking he knows more than he does about actual network architecture, management, and performance issues. Or maybe he doesn't realize the issues even exist.
    - JoachimSchipper 13y ago
      Um, you're aware that he wrote http://insecure.org/stf/secnet_ids/secnet_ids.html http://insecure.org/stf/secnet_ids/secnet_ids.html, worked for a networking (security) company (Arbor) for years, etc.? He may be wrong, and he may think that he knows more than he actually does, but he does know a thing or two. ;-) Regarding overlay networks: note that HTTP, WebSocket, Skype, BitTorrent and such are already looking quite a bit like an overlay network, and that increasing amounts of NAT-ting are making the classic point-to-point model of the internet more and more irrelevant. I'm not sure I particularly like this vision of the future, and I agree that the performance will be worse, but it's far from insane. (As to performance, note how everything is routed over HTTP these days, despite it being rather inefficient for lots of use cases.)
nknighthb 13y ago
> Prince is hoping that the growth will not be steady-state but exponential, accelerating through the adoption curve. Even if that happens, however, CloudFlare predicts that full IPv6 adoption would take seven years, until January 2020. > Not impressive. Perhaps not impressive, but pretty much as-expected. RFC 2460 was finalized December 1998. I'm not sure why a 20-year +/- deployment process should surprise anyone for what is, ultimately, a telecom standard, one built before it was needed because we knew it would be. Remember, APNIC is the first to hit its last /8 and only did so in 2011, and due to their exhaustion policy, hasn't exhausted that last /8 yet. Other regions are in better shape. As we've always known, the big push will come when the IPv4 supply dwindles so low that it becomes reasonably impossible to accomodate new endpoints.
Qantourisc 13y ago
Still waiting on my ISP. I'd love to implement IPv6 on my servers, but no way to test it atm. (unless using tunnels an alike) Edit: Just rechecked at my provider ... they are rolling it out this year ... I'm actually surprised.

40 points by johnkoetsier 13y ago

There's more data in the blog post: http://blog.cloudflare.com/ipv6-day-usage-attacks-rise http://blog.cloudflare.com/ipv6-day-usage-attacks-rise

ancarda 13y ago

My ISP hasn't given me an IPv6 address so I can't play with it easily so it remains a mystery for me. I managed to get a tunnel up and running so I could test & configure the IPv6 address my server had available for years but I hadn't setup. What needs to happen for IPv6 to take off? CloudFlare is doing a lot by allowing automatic IPv6 for many websites - it makes it very easy to get a foothold in IPv6.

zanny 13y ago
> What needs to happen for IPv6 to take off? 1. Consumer grade routing hardware that always supports ipv6 out of the box. 2. ISPs transitioning into supplying both an ipv4 and ipv6 address to households. 3. Major network backbone services (google, amazon, etc) transition to both ipv4 and ipv6. 4. Once a majority of the critical network infrastructure is available on both, ISPs need to start dropping ipv4 addresses from customers, preferrably from new customers. 5. Slowly depreciate ipv4 by using a ISP provided ipv4 tunnel service for a while for those that still need to access the ipv4 web. Basically, it requires most of the work be done on the backs of ISPs. In the US at least, the ISP business is an oligopoly of cable tv and Hollywood and will resist ipv6 because it enables more peer to peer trafficking and open communication over the Internet.
- bdb 13y ago
  Actually, you'd be surprised -- Comcast is leading the charge on the residential IPv6 front in the US, and Time Warner Cable isn't too far behind. Verizon, the largest carrier in the US not owned by a content company (by my back-of-napkin math), has been slower in deployment of IPv6, by contrast. (OTOH, since IPv6 is critical to LTE deployment, VZW et al have been much quicker on the uptake.) I actually think that the content hosting folks are behind the curve here. Amazon is one of the biggest hold-outs; their IPv6 rollout has thus far been a total joke. No IPv6 for Cloudfront? No IPv6 glue for Route53 authoritative nameservers? No IPv6 on VPC, barely on EC2 at all, etc., etc. From what I've heard, the management at Amazon doesn't really care about the network behind their infrastructure; instead of investing in building a backbone that could do a better job supporting this kind of stuff -- and all kinds of inter-region applications which would be useful -- they want pretend the network doesn't exist and that nothing needs to change. It's too bad. I think we'd see more IPv6 usage if Amazon would get their act together.
  - js2 13y ago
    I have TWC residential service. Coincidentally, I just experimented with setting up IPv6 yesterday on my Airport Extreme. TWC is not issuing IPv6 addresses at my location. So I went with an automatic tunnel (192.88.99.1). That IP is 16 hops and 150 ms away for me (anycast by Congent in my case) and its performance was awful. I switched to a manual tunnel from HE (tunnelbroker.net). I confirmed this worked, that my Apple devices behind the Airport Express all got IPv6 addresses and so forth, and that the performance was decent. Experience in hand, I then tore it all down, since I couldn't think of a good reason why I really needed IPv6 at home. :-)
    - wmf 13y ago
      And now real IPv6 never gets debugged because everyone is using HE.net tunnels.

magg 13y ago

in the meantime, there are many IPv6/IPv4 transition mechanisms to help fight this, like NAT64: https://github.com/NICMx/NAT64 https://github.com/NICMx/NAT64

tptacek 13y ago

Good. IPv6 is a failed experiment. It's time to reconsider the IP service model. The future of the Internet belongs to startups, not to the IETF. My hope is that by 2020, IP will have approximately the same importance to the global connectivity fabric that Ethernet has today; it'll be a particularly flexible next-hop technology, and we'll be routing something more clever than IP on top of it.

jerf 13y ago
It's already 2013, so that's an aggressive schedule; it seems to imply the next-hop tech must already exist. Did you have something in mind? (Tone: Honest question. I'm curious.)
- ghshephard 13y ago
  There is no candidate to replace IP for global routing connectivity in the next 20 years. I'll wager a long-bet at 10 to 1 odds up to $1,000 (you win $10,000) for anybody who thinks differently.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    Ok. Done. My email is in my profile.
- nknighthb 13y ago
  Thomas always says this whenever IPv6 comes up. He wants some sort of "overlay" network. He's ambiguous on what this would look like, why it would be better than IPv6, and why IPv4 will suffice as its underlying protocol. My conclusion is that his application-level networking experience has fooled him into thinking he knows more than he does about actual network architecture, management, and performance issues. Or maybe he doesn't realize the issues even exist.
  - JoachimSchipper 13y ago
    Um, you're aware that he wrote http://insecure.org/stf/secnet_ids/secnet_ids.html http://insecure.org/stf/secnet_ids/secnet_ids.html, worked for a networking (security) company (Arbor) for years, etc.? He may be wrong, and he may think that he knows more than he actually does, but he does know a thing or two. ;-) Regarding overlay networks: note that HTTP, WebSocket, Skype, BitTorrent and such are already looking quite a bit like an overlay network, and that increasing amounts of NAT-ting are making the classic point-to-point model of the internet more and more irrelevant. I'm not sure I particularly like this vision of the future, and I agree that the performance will be worse, but it's far from insane. (As to performance, note how everything is routed over HTTP these days, despite it being rather inefficient for lots of use cases.)

nknighthb 13y ago

> Prince is hoping that the growth will not be steady-state but exponential, accelerating through the adoption curve. Even if that happens, however, CloudFlare predicts that full IPv6 adoption would take seven years, until January 2020. > Not impressive. Perhaps not impressive, but pretty much as-expected. RFC 2460 was finalized December 1998. I'm not sure why a 20-year +/- deployment process should surprise anyone for what is, ultimately, a telecom standard, one built before it was needed because we knew it would be. Remember, APNIC is the first to hit its last /8 and only did so in 2011, and due to their exhaustion policy, hasn't exhausted that last /8 yet. Other regions are in better shape. As we've always known, the big push will come when the IPv4 supply dwindles so low that it becomes reasonably impossible to accomodate new endpoints.

Qantourisc 13y ago

Still waiting on my ISP. I'd love to implement IPv6 on my servers, but no way to test it atm. (unless using tunnels an alike) Edit: Just rechecked at my provider ... they are rolling it out this year ... I'm actually surprised.