Google, Facebook and Yahoo to test new net addresses

bealtine

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12183098

A global trial of the net's new addressing system is being planned for 8 June.

The test is being held to raise awareness about the imminent change from version 4 of the addressing scheme to version 6.

Net giants Google, Facebook, Akamai and Yahoo have committed to taking part in the "test flight" of IPv6.

Net firms are being encouraged to switch to IPv6 as addresses in the old scheme will run out by November 2011.

"The good news is that internet users don't need to do anything special to prepare for World IPv6 Day," said Lorenzo Colitti, a network engineer at Google in a blog post.

"Our current measurements suggest that the vast majority (99.95%) of users will be unaffected. However, in rare cases, users may experience connectivity problems, often due to misconfigured or misbehaving home network devices."

The World IPv6 Day is being co-ordinated by the Internet Society, a non-profit group which educates people and companies about net issues. It has provided a webpage through which people can test their Ipv6 readiness.

On 8 June, those who sign up will make their pages available via IPv6 for 24 hours to help show up and iron out problems created by the switch to the new addressing scheme.

"By providing an opportunity for the internet industry to collaborate to test IPv6 readiness we expect to lay the groundwork for large-scale IPv6 adoption and help make IPv6 ready for prime time," said Leslie Daigle, chief internet technology officer at the Internet Society in a statement.

Google already offers an IPv6 version of its search site as does Facebook.

The addressing scheme used by most sites now is defined in version 4 of the Internet Protocol. This has an address space of about four billion entries.

While this figure was considered to be enough in the late 1970s when IPv4 was being developed it has proved to be wanting as the net has grown in popularity and more and more people and devices use it.

At current estimates the pool of IPv4 addresses will run entirely dry in early November 2011.

Many net authorities and organisations have been calling for net firms to switch to IPv6 which has an effectively unlimited address space, but progress has been slow.

In November 2010 Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the internet, warned that the net faced "turbulent times" if it did not move quickly to adopt IPv6

Galen

Every few weeks there is usually news item on the web about how the world is running out of IPv4 addresses so the big boys have to shift eventually.

watty

Except we won't run out of IP4. They always quote "unallocated" IP4 adresses. Which is very low. Actually unused IP4, or IP4 that are on separate secured LAN and could easily use private subnets just with a DHCP edit is a huge number.

There are about 4,000,000,000 usable IP4 addresses. Each home, or small business only needs 1 no matter how many devices they have.
Each Location of a Medium to Large business, College, Government or Military only needs 2 to 10 IPs. These often are using 1 Million to 16 Million or more IP4 addresses per location.

Are we going to in reality have 4 Billion publicly visible IPs on Internet inside next 20 years?

Most Mobile Devices are on Transparent Proxies because the Mobile ISPs will never be able to support true broadband type applications. They only want people to use Web, email and occasional streaming on intermittent basis. Each device doesn't get and doesn't need a Public IP for that.

It's about people that want to sell IP6 kit.

The other problems are

• That you have to keep using IP4 till no site uses IP4.
• The average public or small business is unable to setup security for IP6. An IP4 router doing NAT/Firewall inherently blocks over 99% of windows PC network vulnerabilities.
• While Windows XP and later and current versions of Linux support IP6 and OS X sort of supports it, most Modems and Home/Small business Routers would need replaced. Many other things don't support IP6

Many net authorities and organisations have been calling for net firms to switch to IPv6 which has an effectively unlimited address space, but progress has been slow.

Because it's a mess!
IP6 was badly designed. Has no sensible security or backward compatible to IP4 built in at original design and Original DHCP equivalent so badly conceived they already have now three versions of it.

I think they need to think again. Meanwhile, no-one actually OWNS or can buy IPs. They are allocated. Most of the original allocations are insane. Only ISPs and Hosting Companies should have more than 8 per site.

bealtine

watty wrote: »

It's about people that want to sell IP6 kit.

Of course it is...if you want to understand any "story" there's one principle that is needed and that is "follow the money" and the truth will be then be self evident.

bealtine

World 'running out of Internet addresses'

http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0121/internet-business.html