Grant Holliday

I’ve always prided myself on being a networking geek and knowing how the Internet works. I understand how protocols, ports, routers, NAT, IP addresses, DNS, etc work. I feel like it’s given me the edge on some of my peers and it’s certainly helped me troubleshoot and understand issues quickly.

I learnt most of this stuff almost 10 years ago and to be honest, not a lot has changed. There’s a few new protocols and a few new ports - but it’s all been the same - until recently.

IPv6 is here and I don’t understand it. I’m going to be spending some cycles understanding it, implementing it and working out what I can get from it and share my learnings here.

The current version of the Internet: IPv4

Currently every computer on the Internet has a unique ‘Internet Protocol (IP) address’. The vast majority of these are ‘Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4)‘ addresses. They are expressed in dot-decimal notation e.g. 192.168.0.1.

The biggest problem with IPv4 addresses is that they’re running out. In total, IPv4 only allows for 32-bits to specify an address. That’s a little over 4 billion unique addresses. The predictions are that these addresses will run out in early 2010.

The next version of the Internet: IPv6

The problem has been solved with the development of IPv6. IPv6 allows 128-bits to specify addresses. That’s 3.4×10^38 unique addresses. That’s a VERY large number.

The biggest problem with IPv6 is adoption/deployment. The specification is out there, the vendors have implemented it, but there’s no reason for ISPs to get on board and give their subscribers IPv6 addresses.

The Great IPv6 Experiment

http://www.ipv6experiment.com/

The great chicken or the egg dilemma. IPv6 has had operating system and router support for years. But, content providers don’t want to deploy it because there aren’t enough potential viewers to make it worth the effort. There are concerns about compatibility and breaking IPv4 accessibility just by turning IPv6 on. ISPs don’t want to provide IPv6 to end users until there is a killer app on IPv6 that will create demand for end users to actually want IPv6. There hasn’t been any reason for end users to want IPv6 - nobody’s dumb enough to put desirable content on IPv6 that isn’t accessible on IPv4. Until now.

We’re taking 10 gigabytes of the most popular “adult entertainment” videos from one of the largest subscription websites on the internet, and giving away access to anyone who can connect to it via IPv6. No advertising, no subscriptions, no registration. If you access the site via IPv4, you get a primer on IPv6, instructions on how to set up IPv6 through your ISP, a list of ISPs that support IPv6 natively, and a discussion forum to share tips and troubleshooting. If you access the site via IPv6 you get instant access to “the goods”.

IPv6 Security

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/IPv6.ars

The good news is that because the IPv6 address space is so large, randomly scanning for systems that are vulnerable is completely infeasible. The story goes that at the height of the self-propagating malware explosion a few years ago, an unpatched Windows system would be infected faster than it could download the necessary security updates. With IPv6, that is simply impossible: even with a billion infected hosts each scanning a billion IPv6 addresses per second, it takes more than a hundred million years to scan just the IPv6 address space that’s given out to ISPs right now, which is about 0.01 percent of what’s available. However, targeted scanning, although not easy, is still possible, so security measures like those used with IPv4 are still necessary.

Do I have IPv6 connectivity?

Not many people do, but when you do, you’ll get to see the dancing kame at www.kame.net.

China / U.S. Government

China are building the Next Generation Internet. It’s IPv6 only. If you want to do business with this massive growing market, you need to talk IPv6 too.

The U.S. Government has mandated a move to a IPv6 platform for all civilian suppliers and defence vendors by 2008.

Australian IPv6 Summit

I can see huge potential for people who understand and champion IPv6 so I’m going to get involved and see what I can do. The national summit will be held in Canberra on 19-21 November.

Stay tuned for more.