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IPv4 is almost gone (in Europe anyway)

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Re: IPv4 is almost gone (in Europe anyway)

#31

Post by baq »

jerf wrote: post #28
agwa wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are there any consumer ISPs that do offer customers a block of IPv6 addresses for use, rather than (or as well as) a single IPv4 address? Comcast, at least in some parts of the country (e.g. SF's East Bay). You don't even have to ask them. One day I noticed my router was being advertised an IPv6 route. I switched on DHCPv6 and got an IPv6 address, as well as a /64 prefix for the rest of my network. Unfortunately /6…

"Unfortunately /64 is all you can get for now, which isn't really sufficient" Not sufficient for what? (Honest question.)

yeah, a /64 is more than 2^32 times more than all of current internet... i don't think the GP really meant 'sufficient', or i'm missing something.

Re: IPv4 is almost gone (in Europe anyway)

#32

Post by baq »

kiallmacinnes wrote: post #14

For those of you curious about IPv6, and wanting to experiment with it at home or in the office, have a look at SixXS[1] and Hurricane Electric IPv6[2]. They both offer free IPv6 "tunnels" which can be used to provide IPv6 to your home/office. We use SixXS in the office, and the tunnel has been alive without issue for 83 weeks and counting.. (P.S. SixXS is probably the easier choice if you have a dynamic IP, or are n…

worth noting that HE has tunnel endpoints all over the world. i'm using one right now in europe and it works really well.

Re: IPv4 is almost gone (in Europe anyway)

#33

Post by andyking »

pm215 wrote: post #26
andyking wrote: post #3

This seems to have been rumbling on for some time now - at least for the past five years or so. My OS supports IPv6, my home router supports IPv6, but at no point have any of the home ISPs I've used (three in the past five years - BT Internet, Be and Origin Broadband) made any mention of any sort of IPv6 support. I'm not au fait with the workings of such huge operations, so is there any reason for ISP adoption of IPv…

My ISP (Andrews&Arnold, UK) offer IPv6, so I have a /48 and (since I bought a new modem recently) all my machines are now natively IPv6 with no tunnelling involved. (A&A also support tunnelling if your modem/router is IPv4 only.)

Excellent. I currently use a local ISP, because it's the only way I can get a decent speed where I live (there's a local FTTC network called Digital Region).

But I'm likely to be moving out of their coverage area at some point, so I'll add this to my list to consider when I do. Thanks!

Re: IPv4 is almost gone (in Europe anyway)

#34

Post by zaphoyd »

jerf wrote: post #28
agwa wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are there any consumer ISPs that do offer customers a block of IPv6 addresses for use, rather than (or as well as) a single IPv4 address? Comcast, at least in some parts of the country (e.g. SF's East Bay). You don't even have to ask them. One day I noticed my router was being advertised an IPv6 route. I switched on DHCPv6 and got an IPv6 address, as well as a /64 prefix for the rest of my network. Unfortunately /6…

"Unfortunately /64 is all you can get for now, which isn't really sufficient" Not sufficient for what? (Honest question.)

a /64 gives you a single subnet with effectively infinite size. A shorter prefix would allow you to have multiple subnets for isolating things like gaming devices, guest networks, VPNs, etc. For IPv4 the ability to do this was basically a pipe dream, for IPv6 the addresses are there, we just need to coordinate how ISPs hand them out and how consumer routers manage them.

In short, one /64 is sufficient for duplicating an IPv4 like situation. A /60 or /56 gives us more room to innovate in new types of home networks.

Re: IPv4 is almost gone (in Europe anyway)

#35

Post by agwa »

jerf wrote: post #28
agwa wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are there any consumer ISPs that do offer customers a block of IPv6 addresses for use, rather than (or as well as) a single IPv4 address? Comcast, at least in some parts of the country (e.g. SF's East Bay). You don't even have to ask them. One day I noticed my router was being advertised an IPv6 route. I switched on DHCPv6 and got an IPv6 address, as well as a /64 prefix for the rest of my network. Unfortunately /6…

"Unfortunately /64 is all you can get for now, which isn't really sufficient" Not sufficient for what? (Honest question.)

Sufficient to have more than one subnet. In IPv6 you can't easily have a subnet that's smaller than /64, so even though /64 = 2^64 addresses, it's still just a single subnet. In IPv6, we need to start thinking in terms of number of subnets rather than number of IP addresses.

Why is having one subnet insufficient? I use multiple subnets (I have a guest network), and I don't want to have to use NAT with IPv6 when my ISP has effectively infinite address space. Of course, I'm not an average user, but remember that 10 years ago only power users had home routers, and for everyone else 1 IP address was enough. Now everyone has a router. There are already some consumer access points that tout a "guest network" as a selling point, and there may be other consumer uses for multiple subnets in the future.

Re: IPv4 is almost gone (in Europe anyway)

#36

Post by diminoten »

Hey 2004 called, they want their headline back.

When you consider the ability for inter-RIR transfer of networks, not to mention the market being developed (already released?) by ARIN (do other RIRs have markets?), and you've got a great recipe for a run on IP addresses.

Re: IPv4 is almost gone (in Europe anyway)

#37

Post by diminoten »

agwa wrote: post #35
jerf wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Unfortunately /64 is all you can get for now, which isn't really sufficient" Not sufficient for what? (Honest question.)

Sufficient to have more than one subnet. In IPv6 you can't easily have a subnet that's smaller than /64, so even though /64 = 2^64 addresses, it's still just a single subnet. In IPv6, we need to start thinking in terms of number of subnets rather than number of IP addresses. Why is having one subnet insufficient? I use multiple subnets (I have a guest network), and I don't want to have to use NAT with IPv6 when my IS…

a /65 is a subnet, and you get TWO of them with a /64. And so on. So I don't really understand what you're talking about here.

Re: IPv4 is almost gone (in Europe anyway)

#38

Post by agwa »

diminoten wrote: post #37
agwa wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sufficient to have more than one subnet. In IPv6 you can't easily have a subnet that's smaller than /64, so even though /64 = 2^64 addresses, it's still just a single subnet. In IPv6, we need to start thinking in terms of number of subnets rather than number of IP addresses. Why is having one subnet insufficient? I use multiple subnets (I have a guest network), and I don't want to have to use NAT with IPv6 when my IS…

a /65 is a subnet, and you get TWO of them with a /64. And so on. So I don't really understand what you're talking about here.

In theory, you're right. But in practice, IPv6 really wants subnets to be /64. For example, stateless address autoconfiguration requires it.

Re: IPv4 is almost gone (in Europe anyway)

#39

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

"almost"?

I'm still stuck on an IPv4 connection at home, in Britain. My phone still can't get IPv6 on mobile internet. My VPS host still doesn't support IPv6 on my server. And PHP still fails to properly parse some types of IPv6 address.

Things have got better, sure, but don't say it's almost gone. Far from it.

Re: IPv4 is almost gone (in Europe anyway)

#40

Post by IsTom »

andyking wrote: post #3

This seems to have been rumbling on for some time now - at least for the past five years or so. My OS supports IPv6, my home router supports IPv6, but at no point have any of the home ISPs I've used (three in the past five years - BT Internet, Be and Origin Broadband) made any mention of any sort of IPv6 support. I'm not au fait with the workings of such huge operations, so is there any reason for ISP adoption of IPv…

I'm not sure about other places, but I wrote some software for an ISP in Poland. It seems damn hard to coordinate whole country worth of people in normal operation, leave alone make a transition to new technology. Remember that many people won't be happy with transient trouble related to the switch.
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