4 ms·

Well if it wasn't for all the heel-dragging with IPv6, this wouldn't be a problem.

wilhil 13y ago
IPv6 just won't happen fully any time soon... People are just kidding themselves. Too many "big" networks have admins who don't update their knowledge and are clueless about IPv6 - At some events where I see network admins, you can ask simple questions and judging by their body language, you know they are guessing/are clueless about IPv6. On top of this, some really high end network equipment that is still available now from some (high end) vendors is not 100% IPv6 compliant or has weird bugs, and, if network admins have recommended this equipment, they feel uncomfortable telling people it isn't up to scratch after their companies have invested significant money... so... this just makes the whole process stall. (Personal experience, not from the current job!) IPv6 is the future, but, being realistic, I don't see it happening any time soon.
- growse 13y ago
  Except it's happening right now. Google's chart of percentage of requests coming over IPv6 shows that usage rate is accelerating: http://www.google.com/ipv6/statistics.html http://www.google.com/ipv6/statistics.html And my personal experience is the opposite - most 'big' networks are fully IPv6 capable (both in terms of equipment and staff), there's just no business case to enable it for many of them because of the lack of capability on home (consumer-grade) equipment.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- ghshephard 13y ago
  There are some reasons why IPv6 will take until 2015 until we start to see substantial adoption, but technician knowledge isn't one of them. Any competent IPv4 network engineer can come up to speed on IPv6 in a single one-week class. The major reason why we aren't seeing adoption is that there is no commercial need - that's the real driver.
  - TranceMan 13y ago
    anecdotal but in a presentation given by the head network architect at a large (ex national) uk communication provider - training engineers is the main reason ipv6 has not been rolled out.
    - ay 13y ago
      It's a pretty good excuse. But not a good reason anymore.
  - yaantc 13y ago
    > The major reason why we aren't seeing adoption is that > there is no commercial need - that's the real driver. Not entirely true. All big networks using private IP addresses and NAT (recent ISPs, and most cellular networks for example) have to implement carrier grade NAT (CGN), and it's getting painful and costly. Also, a lot of web applications require low latency. The way to do this is often to create a lot of parallel connections to fetch content. For example, a google map can easily span 40+ TCP connection to fetch all the tiles making the MAP. During peak time this can put a very high load on CGN gateways. And when they overload, some sessions lags or time out (missing or delayed tiles => bad user experience). This is why all big players on the web now support IPv6 and use it when possible. IPv6 avoid CGN and does not have such issues. Even if that still makes a small percentage of all traffic, it's steadily rising now. IPv6 is finally happening, because the alternative (CGN) is too painful to scale. Now old large ISP with little growth don't care: they have plenty of public IPv4 addresses, with enough in stock to absorb their limited growth for a while. So they don't need CGN and don't care about IPv6. I don't expect this to change. But with mobile and cellular getting a bigger and bigger share and mostly on NAT with IPv4 there is enough of a pressure to move to IPv6 to make sure it'll be mainstream by the end of the decade.
    - ay 13y ago
      Speaking of latency: one of the big IPv6 news for me in 2013 is that now, on average, IPv6 when it works gives better latency than IPv4: https://ripe67.ripe.net/archives/video/43/ https://ripe67.ripe.net/archives/video/43/
- sillysaurus2 13y ago
  One reason I haven't learned anything about IPv6 is because of how ugly the new format is. It's 128 bits divided into "48 bits for routing prefix, 16 bits for subnet id, and 64 bits for interface number." But the preferred encoding for such a thing is hex, meaning it winds up looking like 2001:0DB8:AC10:FE01:: (the interface number is omitted here, as is allowed by the protocol.) Compare that to an IPv4 address like "99.231.39.210" from the standpoint of visual appeal... I don't have a point. Visual appeal isn't really a valid reason to dislike a design. Neither v6 nor v4 are "easy for humans." I'm pretty sure my illogical prejudice might be due to me growing up with IPv4 and never knowing anything else. Also IPv4 superficially resembles a phone number, which are quite comfortable for humans. So the fact that an IPv6 address contains so many more symbols than an IPv4 address is ... a little jarring. I know for a fact that I can instantly discern between IPv4 addresses (e.g. in log files or any other list) and tend to notice ones I've seen before based on their "shape" (like "8.8.193.39" has a totally different shape from "285.89.15.232") but IPv6 addresses are all visually uniform so it's much harder to recognize addresses you've seen before. This, again, doesn't really matter very much... What are the chances I'm going to be visually noticing oddities in lists of IP addresses? ... but it was kind of a nice feature. Couldn't the first 64 bits of IPv6 addresses be encoded with a-z and 0-9, like domain names? Having a-z and 0-9 means there are 37 possibilities, and log(37^13)/log(2) is 68, meaning 13 a-z0-9 characters are sufficient to encode any 64-bit number. That way, IPv6 addresses would look like "d1mfx888qgnf3" or "fxyotvii435fb". That seems way less jarring of a transition than "2001:0DB8:AC10:FE01::" and it seems easier for people to remember 13 random [a-z0-9] chars than 16 random [A-F0-9] chars. I mean, obviously this is all moot; the protocols probably won't ever change. I just wish some extra thought had been put into making IPv6 pleasant. I've only ever heard people complain about IPv6... no one seems to love it, which is generally a bad sign in a new design. On the other hand, the world will probably need IPv6 pretty soon, so maybe it doesn't matter whether it's pleasing. It would've helped its adoption rate, though. Of course, the most obvious reason I've learned nothing about IPv6 is because IPv4 still works, and I have more important things to learn. Whenever IPv4 stops working, everyone will be forced to learn IPv6 regardless of how painful it is. I wonder when that will be?
  - jlgaddis 13y ago
    > meaning 13 a-z0-9 characters are sufficient to encode any 64-bit number. Heh, you really should think about this for a minute... as eight hexadecimal (0-9a-f) characters are sufficient to encode any 64-bit number.

IPv6 just won't happen fully any time soon... People are just kidding themselves. Too many "big" networks have admins who don't update their knowledge and are clueless about IPv6 - At some events where I see network admins, you can ask simple questions and judging by their body language, you know they are guessing/are clueless about IPv6. On top of this, some really high end network equipment that is still available now from some (high end) vendors is not 100% IPv6 compliant or has weird bugs, and, if network admins have recommended this equipment, they feel uncomfortable telling people it isn't up to scratch after their companies have invested significant money... so... this just makes the whole process stall. (Personal experience, not from the current job!) IPv6 is the future, but, being realistic, I don't see it happening any time soon.

growse 13y ago
Except it's happening right now. Google's chart of percentage of requests coming over IPv6 shows that usage rate is accelerating: http://www.google.com/ipv6/statistics.html http://www.google.com/ipv6/statistics.html And my personal experience is the opposite - most 'big' networks are fully IPv6 capable (both in terms of equipment and staff), there's just no business case to enable it for many of them because of the lack of capability on home (consumer-grade) equipment.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
ghshephard 13y ago
There are some reasons why IPv6 will take until 2015 until we start to see substantial adoption, but technician knowledge isn't one of them. Any competent IPv4 network engineer can come up to speed on IPv6 in a single one-week class. The major reason why we aren't seeing adoption is that there is no commercial need - that's the real driver.
- TranceMan 13y ago
  anecdotal but in a presentation given by the head network architect at a large (ex national) uk communication provider - training engineers is the main reason ipv6 has not been rolled out.
  - ay 13y ago
    It's a pretty good excuse. But not a good reason anymore.
- yaantc 13y ago
  > The major reason why we aren't seeing adoption is that > there is no commercial need - that's the real driver. Not entirely true. All big networks using private IP addresses and NAT (recent ISPs, and most cellular networks for example) have to implement carrier grade NAT (CGN), and it's getting painful and costly. Also, a lot of web applications require low latency. The way to do this is often to create a lot of parallel connections to fetch content. For example, a google map can easily span 40+ TCP connection to fetch all the tiles making the MAP. During peak time this can put a very high load on CGN gateways. And when they overload, some sessions lags or time out (missing or delayed tiles => bad user experience). This is why all big players on the web now support IPv6 and use it when possible. IPv6 avoid CGN and does not have such issues. Even if that still makes a small percentage of all traffic, it's steadily rising now. IPv6 is finally happening, because the alternative (CGN) is too painful to scale. Now old large ISP with little growth don't care: they have plenty of public IPv4 addresses, with enough in stock to absorb their limited growth for a while. So they don't need CGN and don't care about IPv6. I don't expect this to change. But with mobile and cellular getting a bigger and bigger share and mostly on NAT with IPv4 there is enough of a pressure to move to IPv6 to make sure it'll be mainstream by the end of the decade.
  - ay 13y ago
    Speaking of latency: one of the big IPv6 news for me in 2013 is that now, on average, IPv6 when it works gives better latency than IPv4: https://ripe67.ripe.net/archives/video/43/ https://ripe67.ripe.net/archives/video/43/
sillysaurus2 13y ago
One reason I haven't learned anything about IPv6 is because of how ugly the new format is. It's 128 bits divided into "48 bits for routing prefix, 16 bits for subnet id, and 64 bits for interface number." But the preferred encoding for such a thing is hex, meaning it winds up looking like 2001:0DB8:AC10:FE01:: (the interface number is omitted here, as is allowed by the protocol.) Compare that to an IPv4 address like "99.231.39.210" from the standpoint of visual appeal... I don't have a point. Visual appeal isn't really a valid reason to dislike a design. Neither v6 nor v4 are "easy for humans." I'm pretty sure my illogical prejudice might be due to me growing up with IPv4 and never knowing anything else. Also IPv4 superficially resembles a phone number, which are quite comfortable for humans. So the fact that an IPv6 address contains so many more symbols than an IPv4 address is ... a little jarring. I know for a fact that I can instantly discern between IPv4 addresses (e.g. in log files or any other list) and tend to notice ones I've seen before based on their "shape" (like "8.8.193.39" has a totally different shape from "285.89.15.232") but IPv6 addresses are all visually uniform so it's much harder to recognize addresses you've seen before. This, again, doesn't really matter very much... What are the chances I'm going to be visually noticing oddities in lists of IP addresses? ... but it was kind of a nice feature. Couldn't the first 64 bits of IPv6 addresses be encoded with a-z and 0-9, like domain names? Having a-z and 0-9 means there are 37 possibilities, and log(37^13)/log(2) is 68, meaning 13 a-z0-9 characters are sufficient to encode any 64-bit number. That way, IPv6 addresses would look like "d1mfx888qgnf3" or "fxyotvii435fb". That seems way less jarring of a transition than "2001:0DB8:AC10:FE01::" and it seems easier for people to remember 13 random [a-z0-9] chars than 16 random [A-F0-9] chars. I mean, obviously this is all moot; the protocols probably won't ever change. I just wish some extra thought had been put into making IPv6 pleasant. I've only ever heard people complain about IPv6... no one seems to love it, which is generally a bad sign in a new design. On the other hand, the world will probably need IPv6 pretty soon, so maybe it doesn't matter whether it's pleasing. It would've helped its adoption rate, though. Of course, the most obvious reason I've learned nothing about IPv6 is because IPv4 still works, and I have more important things to learn. Whenever IPv4 stops working, everyone will be forced to learn IPv6 regardless of how painful it is. I wonder when that will be?
- jlgaddis 13y ago
  > meaning 13 a-z0-9 characters are sufficient to encode any 64-bit number. Heh, you really should think about this for a minute... as eight hexadecimal (0-9a-f) characters are sufficient to encode any 64-bit number.