IPv6 Adoption Will Grow With Smart Grid Adoption, Hopes Cisco 169
darthcamaro writes "A lot of people in the US have not seen a use case for the use of IPv6 yet, since we've got plenty of IPv4 addresses. But what happens when the entire electrical grid gets smart? The so-called Smart Grid will need a networking transport mechanism that will connect potentially hundreds of millions of people and devices. Networking giant Cisco sees IP (internet protocol) as the right transport and IPv6 as the logical choice for addressing. 'Pv6 is an interesting discussion and one that occupies a lot of bandwidth at Cisco,' Marie Hattar, Cisco's vice president of network systems and security solutions marketing said. 'Some people say that for smaller deployments, we could get away with IPv4, but the smart grid has a number of parts. The point is that if you're looking to build this [smart grid] out, why not build it out on the scalable protocol from the get-go?'"
I know my utility meters can be read remotely. (Score:3, Interesting)
But I'm not sure what protocol they use to check my electricity and water meters remotely.
I doubt its IPv6, but it would be a logical thing to do simply because of network addressing.
I mean even with private IPv6 addresses, it would still provide an easier way to identify the devices.
Re:I know my utility meters can be read remotely. (Score:4, Insightful)
They might be using IPv6 soon enough, check out 6lopan [wikipedia.org], an IETF group working towards getting IPv6 working on low-power networking devices like Xbee modems, etc. IEEE 802.15 transceivers are low-power, will mesh easily, and are very common in power meters.
Having global addressability saves a lot of hassle, and should not be confused with global reachability. Seems to make a lot of sense to me.
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Smart meters are only part of the smart grid, although where they're being deployed it's considered essential to it. And the jury is still out as to how they're going to do the remote reading in many places - that will involve networking, and considering the millions of end points it may end up being a purpose-built protocol running across purpose-built hardware. IPV6 is all well and good and well thought out, but security is a big concern of the electricity companies and they're not entirely wedded to In
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My meters use the phone line using either a 28k or 56k modem (not sure which). My DVR also uses the phone line. That makes sense since the phoneline is the most-widely available service.
As for smartgrid, I'll be extremely annoyed if I come home to my hot house, turn-on the A/C and my thermostat tells me I have to wait an hour. Grrr.
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that won't fly.
Your hot water might be a bit less hot or your pool not as clean though
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Cisco is pretty much a latecomer to this arena from what I can see, hoping to leverage their router sales to utilities rather than let them be able to pick and choose the network infrastructure.
Re:I know my utility meters can be read remotely. (Score:5, Insightful)
Also think about it. Do you realllllllllllllllllllly want your power grid to be tied to the real internet?
Well, maybe not, but there are still big advantages with using IPv6 even if it isn't on the public network. For example, you can use addresses that are guaranteed to be globally unique - this means no readdressing problems when you suddenly decide 2 completely independent networks need to talk to each other.
This is what has stunned me about the telephone industry - they are spending billions on replacing their antiquated SS7 networks with IMS networks. The IMS protocols were _designed_ to be run over IPv6 (but of course, IPv4 and IPv6 are so similar that they have actually been made to work on both), but most of the telcos are rolling out IPv4 networks. Nothing like spending vast amounts of money to replace one obsolete network with another.
IPv6 is an established and proven technology, there really aren't many good reasons not to use it in a new network.
IPV6 is a waste of time in the 'utility' market.
I'm not sure how it can be described as a "waste of time" since that would imply it would take longer to implement than an IPv4 network. If you're starting from scratch and not having to interoperate with the existing internet, an IPv6 network takes no more time to implement and is a bit of a no-brainer (getting a much more future-proofed network at almost the same cost). Unfortunately it seems that a lot of people in charge of such projects do indeed have no brains.
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"What if one of those independent networks is running IPv4? Fail."
Use 6to4 or any other interoperability technology.
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Yeah like that's gonna work. If you're merging networks the last thing you want is to have hacks like 6to4 in the middle. That's as silly as saying that if two ipv4 networks clash just use NAT.
In such a case the ipv6 network would be switched to ipv4.
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Or maybe IPv4 to IPv6?
If you have a fucked up network configuration you can either workaround it or fix it.
Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
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The routers are fine, it's only layer-3 switches that have to be replaced.
Although on that count, could Vyatta and friends *please* get up to speed with IPv6 support? The underlying engine's supported it for years...
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throw out routers? haven't ciscos been ipv6-capable for at least a decade now?
ipv6 is really old stuff. all routers that are 'worth anything' should be v6 capable already. those that aren't probably don't NEED to be, anyway.
not everything needs a world-wide public address. NAT 'security' is actually a Good Thing(tm).
Re:Translation (Score:5, Interesting)
throw out routers? haven't ciscos been ipv6-capable for at least a decade now?
Pretty much (although you might have to buy a firmware upgrade... but then if you aren't running a recent firmware you're probably infested with security holes anyway).
those that aren't probably don't NEED to be, anyway.
That's rather untrue though. If you're going to deploy IPv6-only systems then *all* the routers on the network need to do IPv6. Yes, this even includes the home DSL routers, most of which currently on the market *still* have absolutely no IPv6 support, even though we only have about 2 years until IANA runs out of IPv4 addresses. Anything else is going to involve kludging things to work through IPv4 to IPv6 gateways, or tunnelling IPv6 over IPv4 to bypass the non-compliant devices.
The whole IPv4 address exhaustion problem is a really good example of people sticking their heads in the sane and hoping the problem goes away - most ISPs seem to not be interested in preparing their networks for IPv6 at all (PlusNet told me that they had no plans to roll out *any* IPv6 support over the next few years and EntaNet seem to have halted their IPv6 trials). Some time towards the end of 2011 there will be a "sky falling" moment similar to what we saw at Y2K when ISPs realise they are basically screwed and are going to have to do an expensive rush-job of deploying IPv6 over their networks in just a few short months.
not everything needs a world-wide public address. NAT 'security' is actually a Good Thing(tm).
Argh! Please will people stop spreading this crap. There is practically *no* security provided by a NAT. You get security from stateful packet inspection. NAT requires stateful packet inspection to work, but there is no significant security advantage (and many really serious operational disadvantages) provided by running NAT instead of just a stateful firewall. Also, most home NAT routers provide no stateful firewalling, only the limited stateful tracking required to make NAT work, and can therefore easily be bypassed by anyone on the upstream segment (which may be a few hundred random members of the public in the case of some cable setups).
Security is better served by doing proper stateful firewalling, and this is probably best achieved by removing NAT from the equation so that people don't have a false sense of security. Removing NAT also solves a lot of operational problems, as there are an increasing number of protocols that can't be made to work well through NAT (and whilst many people regard this as a flawed protocol design, there are sound reasons for designing these protocols in this way).
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Security is better served by doing proper stateful firewalling, and this is probably best achieved by removing NAT from the equation so that people don't have a false sense of security.
Now that's just being silly. Most people aren't going to be influenced by such a lesson, because they fundamentally don't care about such issues. NAT is still a good thing, although I do agree with much else you say.
I disagree with your contention that most routers don't offer stateful firewalls; check the age of your information, most of them do now.
For my choice, I run a nice little NetGear wireless router at home. It's IPV4, uses NAT and includes a stateful firewall. (The router is quite good, but I'
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Now that's just being silly. Most people aren't going to be influenced by such a lesson, because they fundamentally don't care about such issues.
They start to care after they lose all their data and pay for their computer to be cleaned of malware for the tenth time.
Car analogy alert: people don't care that putting diesel into their petrol car is bad. Oh wait, yes they do when they have to pay lots for it to be fixed.
Also, router manufacturers do have to build _some_ security into their products. They will always do the bare minimum they can get away with, but once you take away NAT, the bare minimum happens to be a hell of a lot better than what w
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That's rather untrue though. If you're going to deploy IPv6-only systems then *all* the routers on the network need to do IPv6. Yes, this even includes the home DSL routers, most of which currently on the market *still* have absolutely no IPv6 support
Yeah, when ISPs actually do go IPv6 it will be a beautiful day for DD-WRT and OpenWRT. There will be whole businesses around reflashing those routers and reselling them, while most manufacturers will not release an update including IPv6.
There is practically *no* security provided by a NAT.
Unless your ISP is compromised, the combination of using non-routed addresses and dropping source routed frames (as everyone and their mom does by default) means that a NAT does provide some significant security. Attacks generally rely on packets reaching their destination.
Security is better served by doing proper stateful firewalling,
T
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There is practically *no* security provided by a NAT.
Unless your ISP is compromised
Your ISP doesn't have to be compromised. Many cable systems are set up so that the cable segment is basically a bus and the cable modems are bridges. Anyone on that segment can adjust their routing appropriately.
Also, even if you're not on such a network I don't think it's a particularly good idea to trust that another party's network is secure.
the combination of using non-routed addresses and dropping source routed frames (as everyone and their mom does by default) means that a NAT does provide some significant security. Attacks generally rely on packets reaching their destination.
No... No it doesn't. The ability to track the state of all the connections and drop packets that don't belong to any that were established by a local machine gets
Let Corps pay for IPv6 (Score:2)
What's going to happen is that the internet is going to be broken up by country, so that each country will have its own set of IP addresses for IPv4. So, the people that want genuinely global internet coverage will get IPv6, but those of us who just want to be in one country can use the smaller, simpler and more efficient IPv4
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What's going to happen is that the internet is going to be broken up by country, so that each country will have its own set of IP addresses for IPv4. So, the people that want genuinely global internet coverage will get IPv6, but those of us who just want to be in one country can use the smaller, simpler and more efficient IPv4
I think if that were to happen you'd very suddenly realise that a lot of the services you use aren't hosted in your own country and you'd be off to get yourself an IPv6 connection.... Frankly, I can't see that ever happening though.
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There is practically *no* security provided by a NAT.
untrue.
try to ping my home address. its 10.a.b.c (you know what I mean).
go ahead.
now ssh to me.
now try to port scan me.
want to finally admit that there IS *some* security to nat? its not as secure as a smart firewall but its WAY better than being 'directly on the net'. way way better (for most of us).
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Go ahead and post your public IP address, then.
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Unfortunately there will be many public implementations of IPv4-IPv6 natting going on in 2010. This is an interim solution to eliminate the need for any IPv4 support on the client side. There are less than 9 /8's left to be handed out and those are being held tightly. Corporations are being told no more or they're being forced to send company officers to DC to argue their cases directly.
2010 will see several nationwide rollouts of IPv6 native services on end user devices in the mobile market where there
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Some time towards the end of 2011 there will be a "sky falling" moment similar to what we saw at Y2K when ISPs realise they are basically screwed and are going to have to do an expensive rush-job of deploying IPv6 over their networks in just a few short months.
Not 2011.
The problem with the 'exhaustion counters' is they're designed to push an agenda rather than present accurate results. They don't represent the real depletion rate at all.
Looking at an old blog post about a year ago the counter was at 736 da
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I'm not sure which exhaustion counter you've been looking at. I've been keeping an eye on a number of exhaustion predictions for the past few years and they have been reasonably consistent (i.e. +/- 6 months). The allocation policies have been changed over the years and this has extended the amount of time we have, but not by much. Obviously exhaustion predictions can't take into account policy changes until they are at least visible on the horizon, so I do expect it'll be extended a bit more, but I'm ho
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your talking about Cisco's lovely IOS - routers are cheap and as long as they have the interfaces and backplanes you need will do what you want. (unless you do some ungodly evil filtering/processing of every packet)
It's the SmartNet and IOS that is the real cost - and no not all of the IOS releases from 5 years and older have ipv6 support
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I would not be so sure. Most hardware manufactured recently was built with IPv6 in mind, so is probably a firmwareware upgradeable. There are hardware features, like express forwarding are hardware specific and would need to have enough space allocated for specific address lengths.
Wishful thinking (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wishful thinking (Score:4, Informative)
Except, of course, that isn't really true. I've had to try and run a VPN endpoint on a NAT'd host because our ISP wasn't giving us what they'd advertised. That wasn't fun and if more people are going to want to run VPNs in the future, we're going to need more IP addresses.
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IPv6 != addressable from anywhere in the world. If i have a lan that is not connect to the internet it still communicates using IPv4. There are many nice tricks in IPv6's hat that make it much better than IPv4+nat+... for any new network. Ignoring the additional space that would allow a much better layout, you have multicast which is nice for the smart grid
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Re:Wishful thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
NAT/IP Masquerade has worked well for scaling IPv4 in every conceivable application to date
Much the same way that up to Aug 28, 2005, the New Orleans leeves were successful in holding back every conceivable rise in water level.
NAT works as long as you have simple networking needs--nothing much more than web and email. As soon as you need to use VPN, or VoIP, or try to get two or more people to play the same game behind the same firewall, it becomes readily apparent what a pain NAT is. In some cases, the application is doing all sorts of trickery to try to keep the user from noticing the issue. In others, the user is left on their own to deal with it. That doesn't even count a bunch of potential applications where the developers realized that they wouldn't be able to get around NAT, and thus never built it at all or simply toiled in obscurity.
Or to put it differently, do you really want every appliance in your house directly addressable from anywhere in the world?
NAT != Firewall. The only thing NAT provides you with over a packet filter is hiding your network topology. There is some use in that, but it comes at the expense of everything mentioned above. On balance, NAT comes out wanting. If you still really want to hide your topology, you can still use NAT on IPv6, but this should be the exception, not the rule.
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Personally, I'd say that it does a little more. As long as your router drops incoming requests on the floor instead of forwarding them, it protects your LAN from port scanners. That, of course, doesn't make it a firewall, but it is a step in the right direction. There's nothing NAT can do to protect you if you click on the wrong link because whatever comes back is a response, not a request, but st
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Router's don't drop requests, at least not by default. Firewalls do. Best Buy has never sold a single router, no matter what it says on the box.
Anyway, you can have your firewall drop all incoming traffic by default, opening up specific ports to specific machines as needed. It's still easier than NAT, since you don't also have to fool around with forwarding those ports.
Some applications have hardcoded ports, which makes it almost impossible to have more than one of these running at once behind the same NAT.
Re:Wishful thinking (Score:4, Interesting)
I have a home LAN, with a router. In order to get bittorrent working correctly, I had to set up this machine with a static IP on the LAN, and tell my router to forward all rquests on the appropriate ports to that IP. I have my own domain, and I've used dynamic DNS to let me use SSH to connect to my home machine when I'm away from home. Again, I had to tell the router where to send incoming requests on Port 22. Now, you may prefer to call that a "residential gateway" as Wikipedia does, but most people would look at you funny if you called it anything other than a router.
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NAT does not drop anything.
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Agreed. I never said that it did. NAT and packet filtering are two separate functions that a home router can do. Combined, they make the beginnings of a firewall, but you still need more to be properly protected.
But we may still need nat with ipv6 as ISP may sti (Score:2)
But we may still need nat with ipv6 as ISP may still only give you 1 ip and make you pay more per ip.
I can see comcast doing that like they do with tv pay $6-$20 per box for rent + outlet fee.
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Addressable is not the same as accessible.
Still, I don't see IPv6 adoption happening until you can actually have it provided by most ISPs for residential access, have it go through a cheap ADSL/cable routers, and deliver the web pages people want to access.
From what I've heard, less than 1% of the web is IPv6 accessible, less than 5% of residential internet connections allow IPv6, and very few home routers support it.
It's basically like NetBEUI or IPX - used on LANs, but not on the Internet.
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Every home router I've seen does IP in software, so they ought to be updatable with a firmware upgrade. All it will take is for one major ISP to roll out IPv6 to customers and start advertising "next generation Internet" support for the others to put it on their while-we're-replacing-old-equipment list. Sure, it'll take a while, but it'll happen sometime.
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less than 5% of residential internet connections allow IPv6
Untrue. Very few residential internet connections will do *native* IPv6, but 6to4 works reasonably well. What this basically means is that you can still roll out IPv6 on your internal network and you can still reach IPv6 services on the internet, it's just that the traffic is tunnelled across your ISP inside IPv4 packets until it gets to your nearest 6to4 anycast gateway.
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Don't lets limit the rest of the world because you're too stupid to realise that NAT and IPv4 causes huge problems on a day to day basis for a lot of people.
Re:Wishful thinking (Score:4, Interesting)
NAT/IP Masquerade has worked well for scaling IPv4 in every conceivable application to date...
Except it hasn't, NAT is a kludge that happens to work with simplistic client/server protocols in common use (such as HTTP). It doesn't even work well with some old standard protocols, such as FTP, without protocol-specific packet mangling.
NAT breaks pretty much all peer-to-peer protocols, which are rapidly becoming more common. Want to do VoIP, or start a direct file transfer between 2 IM clients? If you have NATs in the way then that gets unreliable. STUN makes things work a lot of the time, but even the STUN RFC admits that it is not, and cannot be, reliable. Systems like Skype try to hide these problems by abusing unfirewalled clients to route traffic between NATted clients (often without the unfirewalled user's knowledge), but the problems still exist and such "solutions" start to fall to pieces as the proportion of unfirewalled hosts dwindles.
what makes them think it won't work for the "smart grid"?
I'm guessing that the electricity supplier is going to want to be able to talk directly to your electricity meter, etc. Having a NAT in the way makes this less reliable since they won't be able to talk to it unless the meter has already initiated the connection through the NAT.
Or to put it differently, do you really want every appliance in your house directly addressable from anywhere in the world?
Do not confuse global addressability with global reachability. Assigning every device a globally unique address is valuable, even if it is on an isolated network. It makes it easier to connect 2 isolated networks together when you realise that you actually need them to not be so isolated from each other.
That said, I can think of a number of appliances that I wouldn't mind being globally reachable: My MythTV system is already globally reachable - if someone mentions a TV programme that sounds interesting, I can use the web browser on my phone to tell it to record that programme. I wouldn't mind my oven to be internet addressable, so I could remotely ask it to turn on and cook my dinner in time for me getting home. Being able to turn my heating on when I'm at the airport after coming back from holiday would be useful. Taking things a bit further, if I could ask my fridge what I'm running out of when I'm in the supermarket, I could save some hassle.
After all, what could possibly go wrong?
There are obviously security concerns to be addressed. But at the same time, designing a network so it *can't* be extended in the future seems somewhat short sighted.
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do you really want every appliance in your house directly addressable from anywhere in the world? After all, what could possibly go wrong?
Part of the appeal, according to the electricity execs we've surveyed recently (study to be released soon) is the idea that people might like to know better where their money is going on a per-household-circuit level. A better dashboard, if you will. (warning: car analogy follows) It's like the dashboard of your car - you have a speedometer, tachometer, various warning lights - yet your house has nothing of the sort to show you your energy use, and you're using a similar amount of energy (car energy use a
Windows 7 and Server 2008 (Score:2)
Microsoft is pushing IPv6. Many people will be switching to IPv6 and not even realize it.
Direct Access (Score:2)
Direct Access works, and it works very well after a somewhat tedious configuration. Tunneling IPv6 through IPv4 will extend the life of many an SMB router, too.
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Doesn't matter [wikipedia.org]. Not even for Apple fans [psu.edu]
NEGATIVE! Seperate it from public! (Score:2, Insightful)
No, the smart grid should be a completely seperate network, only backed by the Internet/public network as a fallback to primary grid network failure. And even then severe security measures should be met for such a bridge. My point still stands, the grid should be implemented on a seperate network (not completely publicly accessible), and in that case using IPv4 on both will be just fine.
Re:NEGATIVE! Seperate it from public! (Score:4, Funny)
Get a Clue! (Score:5, Interesting)
The internet and especially all the Linux nodes on the internet are designed from the ground up to have a static IP addresses and IP names and be their own DNS and own Mail smarthost and web server and ....
Between the control freaks, the clueless, and the bean counters in Microsoft and the ISP's we have an internet with...
IPv6 will _never_ be allowed into the current mix.
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Protip: We were networking long before IP. If you were talking about MAC addresses, you'd have a point.
Yes, ISPs suck.
No, believe it or not, IPv6's ridiculously slow uptake is MS's fault.
Yes, IPv6 will be here one day.
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Re:Get a Clue! (Score:5, Informative)
Only your first point has anything to do with IPv6. Switching to a new protocol isn't going to make your machine any less "emasculated", and P2P is being suppressed over bandwidth costs (though I'm not even sure how much that's true - I use bittorrent all the time). People who aren't running some kind of web service aren't going to see any benefit from IPv6.
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an artificial scarcity of ip numbers
Artificial? Not really - the scarcity of IPv4 addresses is real. Yes, a lot of it is caused by the rather address-wasteful way that IP subnetting works, but that is hardly an "artificial" scarcity, it is just an artefact of how the protocol works.
and ip names
Presumably by "IP names" you mean domain names? There is no scarcity here the DNS system can cope with a practically unlimited number of domain names.
that the ISP's can rort a fortune out of their users for a service that costs them less to provide than the cost of billing their customers for it.
I'm not seeing any ISPs around here ripping off their users to provide IPv4 addresses. In fact, every ISP I've
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The internet and especially all the Linux nodes on the internet are designed from the ground up to have a static IP addresses and IP names and be their own DNS and own Mail smarthost and web server and ....
Thirty years of experience ought to have taught the geek that almost no one wants to manage systems and services on that level.
the vast majority of machines being dumb emasculated drones begging for content from the big media industries.
Wilmington, Delaware had a music-by-wire service in 1909:
The rate
I don't know about you all...but as for me... (Score:2, Funny)
I'm waiting for IP version Kevin Bacon.
It's the only way to ensure your packet is going to positively absolutely get from point A to point B in a timely, efficient, and stylish manner.
Keep your stupid IP ver 6. Pffft. It's about as elegant as Lemur poop. IPvKB, on the other hand...now THAT'S a protocol.
The last thing we need is for the power grid (Score:4, Funny)
"ooh baby, I can see your net positive charge, come put it in my net negative charge..ooh, you like like bonding....yeah baby...ooh, you want to get kinky and go 3 atom covalent?"
Re:The last thing we need is for the power grid (Score:4, Funny)
Wouldn't you be putting your net negative charge in the net positive charge?
Hey don't push your politics on me, man!
Can't Wait (Score:4, Funny)
I can't wait to DDoS your fridge, then call you up (over VoIP) and ask you if your fridge is running.
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Why don't you just subscribe to his fridges twitter feed?
Obligatory Joke (Score:2)
the Linux desktop will drive ipv6 (Score:5, Funny)
IPv6 adoption, I predict, will increase markedly in The Year of the Linux Desktop.
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So that means that the Year of Linux on the Desktop will be between 2011 and 2013?
Sources:
http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4/index.html [potaroo.net]
http://www.ipv6.sltnet.lk/know4-exhaust.html [sltnet.lk]
If it's so interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
"IPv6 is an interesting discussion and one that occupies a lot of bandwidth at Cisco."
So why can't I get to www.cisco.com via IPv6?
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Especially ironic since just this afternoon I was looking at a Cisco Press book that gave a lookup for www.cisco.com as an example of IPv6 DNS.
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Getting Akamai on board would solve a huge chunk of that inaccessible-Web problem. Seems like it'd even be easier to handle content distribution for IPv6 than for IPv4.
The smart grid doesn't need public IPs (Score:4, Informative)
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Not sure where you're getting your info from. Both my local utility power, MID, and the big California utility PG&E (who provides my natural gas) use IPv6 for all their smart meters.
You've got to address those meters somehow so you can read/poll them.
Having recently setup IPv6 ... (Score:2)
On the flip side though, getting it setup across a tunnel broker is extremely tedious, and difficult. That being said, being able to route into the machines on my network directly is an absolute blast. Makes me
Patricksomerdmnum (Score:2, Funny)
You know the most hilarious part of all this? We're currently running a protocol that the designers had NO intent of scaling. So then some of the SAME designers have turned around and come up with a scalable address scheme and protocol and NO ONE wants to use it - except for the Chinese. You know they have over a billion people over there? All of em - even the dirt farmers - seem to have a freakin computer that wants to hack my bank account!
IP as transport? (Score:2)
Networking giant Cisco sees IP (internet protocol) as the right transport and IPv6 as the logical choice for addressing.
IP is used for addressing, doesn't matter whether its v4 or v6. It, however, is *not* the right transport because it isn't a transport method in the first place.
And as a response to someone who said that MS is pushing IPv6....Apple is as well by including it in OS X for a long time now. That doesn't mean you have to use it though. I did hear recently that Comcast will be providing IPv6 addres
Easier to get IPv6 than IPv4 in many places (Score:2)
Well if you are with a cable or mobile ISP it might even be easier to get propper IPv6 than IPv4. Just set up a tunnel to a tunnel broker like Sixxs for example. It will even work through NAT and you'll get 2^80 IPv6 adresses.
I mean even today there are ISPs which only give you NAT. ISPs which filter your IPv4 traffic or inject additional packets to keep you from using IPv4. Many ISPs also only give you one dynamic IP-address and charge more if you want more of them.
I mean IPv4 is so hard to use by now that
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How the hell did you get from 'ipv4 is hard to use' to everyone using gmail? That's quite a logical leap. And ipv6 won't change that one bit.
I can log into my computer at home. Any of them, in fact, as I have 16 IPs.. but then I have a half decent ISP. If it matters that much to you get one of those don't complain that for $5 a month your ISP uses dynamic IPs and doesn't like you running servers. The situation will be *exactly* the same with ipv6, by the way, if cheap ISPs ever move to it (and if they
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Well actually moving now makes a lot of sense as you will be one of the first to be on IPv6. Nobody cares what you do on IPv6 so you can easily just run FTP-Servers and be sure that nobody except the people you tell that will ever find you. You can do Bittorrent without any problems, in fact Sixxs.net is having it's own IPv6-only tracker. IPv6 still is free.
And not many people are as lucky as you actually having an ISP giving you 16 IPs. In Germany for example you'll have to get a commercial account and tho
Cisco = unaffordable (Score:2)
If Cisco manufactures those "smart grid" (corp bullshit word) devices, nobody will be able to afford them, thus eliminating any requirement for IPv6.
I like how Cisco whines about IPv6, but let's face it; They charge a bunch of money for you to actually be able to use IPv6 in most of their products. Even the modern 3750-E series switches requires a multi-thousand dollar license to support IPv6, and the list of caveats is huge! Half the crap that you do with IPv4 won't even work with their IP Services imag
Blah blah, cough bullshit! (Score:2)
Using protocols like XMPP, SIP, etc... the devices will connect to servers for session initiation. Given low bandwidth situations where there are settings like "Turn oven on at 5:12pm", messages will be passed without the need for firewall traversal directly from the server which already have open connections to the devices.
For higher bandwidth situations, like a camera in the fridge that lets you
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I'm with you on house (unless you're a geek you don't need more than one IP) but community? That would be messy. It'll happen - carrier grade NAT will happen long before ipv6 (and is happening already, on mobile networks).. but it'll still be messy.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_grid [wikipedia.org]
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It's a system that can automate itself, enabling you to fire al lot your existing engineers.
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What's a smart grid?
It's when you give each electron it's own IP on the power grid. It's the new big thing !
Re:oh the headache ... (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:oh the headache ... (Score:4, Insightful)
In perspective, IPv6 is 5Ã--10^28 addresses for every man womand and child alive. 70kg human has around 7*10^27 atoms in their body. Or about 7 IP addresses per atom.
Each 1.020144 * 10^-14 sq meter of Earth could have an IP address.
It's 252 addresses for every known sun in the observable sky.
Not making any 640k statements, but damn that's a lot of addresses.
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What are the odds that some popular software/code turns out to be not so good at picking completely random numbers.
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Well.. it would except we're giving it out in huge blocks.
ipv6 has 128 bits, but for RA to work your home router has to have a /64 even if you only have one machine.. so that's half of them gone.. ISPs are supposed to allocate you a /48 (mine does) again, if you only have one machine that's wasteful.
The top couple of bits are used for address type, so you're down to 46 bits of actual information. Still a lot, but nowhere near the 'atoms in the universe' idea.
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I'd check your division there, Sparky. 2^127 / 2^ 128 = half. 2^128 / 2^64 = 2^64.
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Can I start with the lain jokes yet?
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IPv7 was specified in 1993:
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1475 [ietf.org]
Re:oh the headache ... (Score:4, Insightful)
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IPv6 only allows about 3.4 * 10^38 addresses.
Not nearly enough!
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9: and you think they will sell it to you cheap??
8: header compression is soooo last year
7: then why are you not running Word95 across your organisation?
6: anybody with brains has put "IPV6 compatible" on the spec list for the last 10 years
5: somebody should invent a way of shorthand writing those adresses... oh, wait...
4: 95% of what I use my car for, I could do in a Ford T model
3: yep, Unfortunately I am not a Telco, are you?
2: or, th