SCI/TECH: IPv6, There Will Be Enough IPs for All

ICANN has announced it's intended IPv6 is about to launch and will provide TRILLIONS of new IP addresses! There's enough for every man women and child on the planet!



Might not be "big news" to some but this has been a nagging problem for quite some time. I hope it will drive down the cost of a C-block of IPs.

Related News Links:
www.vnunet.com
www.technewsworld.com
www.eweek.com
news.teamxbox.com

[edit on 23-7-2004 by Banshee]

Its actualy a non-concern for people in the know. IPv4 provids a few billion IP's and is more then sufficient to suply the internet with IP's for years to come.

IPv6 for me is more a good thing in the field where other improvements and attachements to it are made. Its nice to have more IP addy's offcource, but not really needed.

IPv6 will also make it cheaper to have ownership over an IP or IP range. Something that is currently quite expensive, for fake 'scarsness' reasons.

Originally posted by thematrix
Its actualy a non-concern for people in the know. IPv4 provids a few billion IP's and is more then sufficient to suply the internet with IP's for years to come.

Yes.

IPv6 for me is more a good thing in the field where other improvements and attachements to it are made. Its nice to have more IP addy's offcource, but not really needed.

IPv6 provides more addresses than IPv4. All the other attributes that IPv6 provides are already available in IPv4 in one form or another.

IPv6 will also make it cheaper to have ownership over an IP or IP range.

No. IPv6 uses the same routing technology used in IPv4 (namely, CIDR). CIDR requires address allocation match the network topology. If you change your location in the network topology (e.g., you change your service provider), you have to change your address. IPv6 as currently implemented does nothing to change this.

Something that is currently quite expensive, for fake 'scarsness' reasons.

No. Address space is expensive because ISPs can get away with charging ridiculous amounts for it. The cost to ISPs in the ARIN service region ranges between $0.15 to $5.86 per year (depending on how much address space the ISP requests from ARIN). My previous ISP charged $6.95 per IP address per month.

As it stands now, IPv6 solves the wrong problem. IPv4 address space limitations are an issue, but the real problem is the routing system. IPv6 does not solve this problem, in fact, it makes it worse (if we can't route 32 bits of address space, how are we going to route 128 bits?).

Originally posted by J0HNSmith
ICANN has announced it's intended IPv6 is about to launch and will provide TRILLIONS of new IP addresses! There's enough for every man women and child on the planet!

Ah that double edged sword of technology:
This post kinda now goes off an a bit of a tangent ...

I'm honestly looking forward to having one number for *everything*, and just leave it to the device I've got in my hand determine what data goes out over it, be that wireless internet/e-mail, voIP, my cel phone, PDA ... whatever.

But, if one was to cast a cynical eye over this, one might be given to wondering if every man, woman and child will be 'given' such a number, ostensibly to support that tech roll-out (but with a handy sideline, say, as perhaps some form of universal 'social security' number perhaps) ...

Assuming that latter point could be the case (logistics' aside for a minute), wouldn't that make sense to then have that on unique id available for verification of ID, (think about the implanted RFid chip opportunity). The backend stuff is already there, to enable data routing to whichever device is calling for it (just like your cel phone does now - the 'network' isn't bothered about which handset you are using, that's just the vehicle for the SIM to talk to the network [IMEI locking aside - this is "in principle]).

... thing is - wouldn't you then have the potential to know where every man woman and child is at any given time ? (I know that cel phones can be used like this now, but this has wider application maybe ?).

Who would own this data - think of the potential commercial opportunity that could come in time (vs. the requirement for legislation)- or the use by 'questionable' governments ...

... but in the end - does this technology really bring that with it - I guess totalitarian regimes have always controlled people, by simply using people ...

Originally posted by J0HNSmith
ICANN has announced it's intended IPv6 is about to launch and will provide TRILLIONS of new IP addresses! There's enough for every man women and child on the planet!

IPv6 will add 340 Billion Billion Billion Billion new addresses.

Ok.. this is probably really sad but as long as I've worked with servers I've never once looked into IPv6. What exactly would such an address look like? How is it different from IPv4?

Great!
Now they can give IPs for every fridge... but why not give IP for every human?
(after all we are already just numbers for big corporations and governments)

LOL @ E_T. Instead of a SS # You'd have an IP. So if you were late to work you could just blame it on lag

Originally posted by Indy
Ok.. this is probably really sad but as long as I've worked with servers I've never once looked into IPv6. What exactly would such an address look like? How is it different from IPv4?

I've been using ipv6 for probably over a year now and its easy to get your own /48 or /64 subnet. i personally have a 64.
an ipv6 ip looks like this 2001:abcd:123:453:3845:5830:48bc:fa37
it has 8 blocks with numbers anywhere from 0 through F
if an ip has 0's in between, like 2001:abcd:0000:0000:0000:1234:4567:abcd
it would be written as 2001:abcd::1234:4567:abcd

ipv6 is good because now cell phones have their own ip's and you could attach an ipv6 ip now to every voip / cellular device out there. (well not now?, but in the near future probably)

How would I use one with a web browser? Or can I even? If so could you give me an example of a site I could check out? Also would I use Arin.net to get a block or does someone else handle IPv6?

Would you mind sending me a U2U with a little info?

For information about the current testing/implementations of IPv6, I highly reccommend 6bone.net.

6bone.net...

The 6bone is an IPv6 testbed to assist in the evolution and deployment of IPv6, the next generation Internet network layer IP protocol often referred to as IPng (see the "Case for IPv6"). These pages provide overview and operational information about the 6bone, and tell you how to join the 6bone. The 6bone operates under the IPv6 Testing Address Allocation of Experimental RFC 2471, allocated by the IPv6 effort of the IETF.

Once IPv6 becomes the standard, surfing the web will hardly be any different. The hostname entries in dns will point to IPv6 addresses instead of IPv4 addresses, but you'll still get to abovetopsecret.com by typing abovetopsecret.com in your browser.