Comcast To Bring IPv6 To Residential US In 2010 281
darthcamaro writes "We all know that IPv4 address space is almost gone — but we also know that no major US carrier has yet migrated its consumer base, either. Comcast is now upping the ante a bit and has now said that they are seriously gearing up for IPv6 residential broadband deployment soon. 'Comcast plans to enter into broadband IPv6 technical trials later this year and into 2010,' Barry Tishgart, VP of Internet Services for Comcast said. 'Planning for general deployment is underway.'"
Proud to be a Comcast customer? (Score:5, Funny)
I never thought I'd say this, but I'm glad that I'm a Comcast customer!
(Please excuse me while I go wash out my mouth with soap)
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I hate to say it, but I agree. As bad as all the trash talking on Comcast is, I've never had a problem. Setup was easy. The 15-20 minute call to swap out my modem for a $15 one I found at a thrift store was straight forward and easy.
Don't you consider having to make that phone call in the first place a problem?
How about their "support tools" are IE based that won't work in any browser on any platform?
And my current issue with Comcast right now is being in California and Comast routing the IP network cross country to New Jersey at 1/4 the bandwidth I had when they were routing through San Francisco.
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The 15-20 minute call to swap out my modem for a $15 one I found at a thrift store was straight forward and easy.
Don't you consider having to make that phone call in the first place a problem?
What's the alternative? I don't think they can just tell whose house a particular modem on their network is located in. I'd imagine they have to tie the MAC back to your account somehow, and the phone call is how they do that.
Re:Proud to be a Comcast customer? (Score:4, Informative)
That's because the line going to your house from the Telco is unique; it only goes to one place. It's the same reason you can add a jack for POTS and plug in any old phone and expect it to work.
Re:Proud to be a Comcast customer? (Score:4, Informative)
Yes there is a fundamental difference. In DSL you have an individual line to the the phone company owned equipment (the DSLAM). Thus any data on that line is either data from you or data intended for you. On cable, your neighborhood shares a line. That is to say, that on the cable line that comes into your house is not only your data, but the data of the people next door (if they use the same cable internet service.) To prevent you from seeing the neigbors data, and to determine who sent anything in the other direction, the data is encoded (I would not dare call it encrpyted) with a modem specific identifier.
Re:Proud to be a Comcast customer? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Proud to be a Comcast customer? (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. I am always shocked that people install any software provided by the ISP. They don't need some broken net-nanny software, a half-assed firewall that does not work as well as the Windows firewall it disables, having branding adding to internet explorer and outlook express, yet another worthless IE toolbar, or even worse, some form of stand-alone (screen edge docking) toolbar. The only feature that might be reasonable, is changing the IE homepage, and they can install software to do that.
Then again, I also find it incredibly annoying that home routers come with big warning stickers that you should install the software on the cd, since that software is in no way nessisary thanks to the web interface. Indeed, I honestly have no idea what is even on said CDs, but whatever it is, I don't miss it.
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Re:Proud to be a Comcast customer? (Score:4, Informative)
Because there's no such thing as IPv4 multicast... Oh, wait. That's exactly what cable companies have already been doing with switched digital. Multicast isn't the main reason a cable company would go with IPv6. The biggest problem Comcast (and other cable companies) has is that your cable modem gets two, and sometimes three IP addresses, let alone all those set-top boxes doing that switched digital. One to manage it, one to give you your "public" IP, and perhaps a third for your phone. 24 bits (10.0.0.0/8) only gives you 16 million addresses, and that's assuming you're utilizing them rather effectively. They're probably using the 172.16.0.0/12 for their internal network, but even so, that only gets you an extra million addresses. Look at the number of customers Comcast has, and you begin to see the problem they have just with addressing all those cable modems and set-top boxes.
Don't expect to be getting your own IPv6 address any time soon. Most likely, they're going to roll it out for managing all those devices first, and you'll still be assigned an IPv4 address for your Internet connectivity.
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?Which internal network.
They have tons of them.
1 for ad-sales
1 for cablemodems
1 for cable boxes
1 for corperate office, well actually 390 of those.
Ad sales offices have their own
Cable operations has their own
Corperate has their own
On demand has their own
It has their own.
Jeebus, if I dug out my old documentation I'd bet I have nearly 20 pages of networks used at comcast as of 4 years ago.
What they want IPv6 for is for when they force cable boxes on all of you. The new digital boxes collect granular da
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I believe this already exists for cable systems w/o IP Multicast - It's called switched digital video.
That said, if they implemented multicast out to and through the backbone, it could save a LOT of upstream bandwidth from user P2P apps.
Imagine if all subscribers to a torrent could receive multicast from the seeder, as opposed to now where the seeder gives peers content and they forward it on. Most P2P is effectively "ghetto multicast", with lack of backbone participation severely reducing efficiency.
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You've got that right!
May NAT die a horrible and torturous death.
Asprin (Score:2, Insightful)
Do they make enough painkillers to deal with the headaches this'll cause?
Otherwise: Good Luck, guys! You'll need it.
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Do they make enough painkillers to deal with the headaches this'll cause?
Maybe somebody told them that IPV6 makes it easier to inject fake RST packets into TCP connections ;)
Re:Asprin (Score:5, Interesting)
Do they make enough painkillers to deal with the headaches this'll cause?
What headaches are those? Have you dealt with IPv6 at all? It's very easy to work with, and co-exists perfectly well with IPv4. I set up IPv6 in my house with a tunnel and it was amazing how smooth it was. I set up the IPv6 tunnel and addresses on my router (that was a little tricky -- but no more than any other router configuration), started up radvd, which periodically broadcasts an announcement about what the local IPv6 router is, and instantly every machine on the network -- Linux, Mac and Windows -- had an IPv6 address in addition to their private IPv4 address (10.x.x.x). Of course, the typical home user couldn't do any of that stuff, but they don't have to if the v6 service comes directly from their ISP.
What's more, I was surprised to note that as soon as all my computers had v6 adresses, they started using them! IPv6 DNS is in place, and all decent applications do an IPv6 name lookup in parallel with the IPv4, and if they get an IPv6 answer, they connect via v6. I know Firefox does because I have a Firefox add-on that shows the IP of the web server in the status bar, and sometimes I come across sites for which it shows a v6 address.
About the only part of the infrastructure that really isn't ready, as far as I can tell, is everyone's home routers. Those ubiquitous Linksys boxes mostly don't support v6 unless you put third-party firmware on them (which I did, but most people obviously wouldn't do). But I'm sure the next generation or two of home routers will come with IPv6 support enabled and it will Just Work. Oh, and they'll also be configured by default to reject externally-originated connections, so that Joe Sixpack will still have the same level of firewalling he has with NAT -- but with lower overhead and fewer limitations. Until those routers are widely available, v6 and v4 can coexist quite nicely.
I predict that this will be relatively painless for Comcast's techs, and completely transparent to their customers.
It's Comcastic (Score:3, Interesting)
I did not RTFA but it seems to me that they have already started with this in 2009.
Re:It's Comcastic (Score:5, Interesting)
By default, Vista and Win7 will automatically allocate a 6to4 address for each non-private IPv4 address configured on the computer.
(since you mentioned ipconfig and not ifconfig, I assume you are using Windows)
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thank you free.Fr
Re:It's Comcastic (Score:4, Informative)
That's a link-local address. It doesn't do anything for you in the wider world.
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inet6 addr: fe80::***:****:****:****/64 Scope:Link
No need to redact that. It's a link-local, non-routable address, not usable by any machine not directly connected to your LAN. You don't have IPv6 service.
Re:It's Comcastic (Score:4, Informative)
Are you directly on Comcast or are you behind a router?
I have a WRT54G running Tomato and Comcast gives it a IPv4, and Tomato assigns IPv6 to my internal network.
IPv6 on Tomato firmware? (Score:3, Interesting)
I have a WRT54G running Tomato and Comcast gives it a IPv4, and Tomato assigns IPv6 to my internal network.
How did you get IPv6 working on Tomato? I was under the impression that it wasn't supported.
Does anyone have instructions?
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Try going to Sixxs.net (IPv6 ready) and see if you connect with a Global IPv6 address or not. Local-Link IPv6 is just your standard IPv6 that comes with Windows XP/Vista, it is not good for anything that I know of.
Good news.. (Score:2, Insightful)
That's great news for the people within the trial area. They will have much more free time to, you know, go out and meet women. Since now a ton of web-sites break when they attempt to visit them.
If it was just a matter of software updates, but alas there are mountains of sites that are literally hard-coded to store IPv4 addresses and you get a nice PHP error when you attempt to visit them.
IPv6 is the new Y2K.
[citation needed] (Score:4, Funny)
[citation needed]
Re:Good news.. (Score:5, Informative)
If it was just a matter of software updates, but alas there are mountains of sites that are literally hard-coded to store IPv4 addresses and you get a nice PHP error when you attempt to visit them.
I guess I live a sheltered life, because I've been using IPv4 and IPv6 in parallel for about 7 years and I've never had a site break like that.
As a user, what do I care? (Score:4, Funny)
As long as DNS works fine, and I can access all my favorite porn sites, I don't care what is going on under the covers.
For all I know, it could be hamsters squeaking in HyperCard. As a user, it really doesn't matter.
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You should care what is going on under the covers at porn sites. The point is really to not have covers in the way in the first place, unless that is what you are really into.
You've got the protcol (Score:5, Funny)
Now buy the T-shirt. ::1 (0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1)
There's no place like
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Oh, for heaven's sake.
Just say, "There's no place like localhost."
You have an /etc/hosts file for a *reason*, you know.
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You. Turn in your geek card. Now.
what about caps? (Score:5, Funny)
I still don't like IPv6 (Score:2, Insightful)
IPv6 is like the phone company saying, hey, we have a (aaa) eee-nnnn system doesn't have enough room, so let's replace it with a system that has 20 digits.
It just sucks to use for consumers, making everyone else's life more complicated just to simplify it for the service providers.
I would prefer an addressing system that simplifies life for me.
Re:I still don't like IPv6 (Score:5, Interesting)
IPv6 is like the phone company saying, hey, we have a (aaa) eee-nnnn system doesn't have enough room, so let's replace it with a system that has 20 digits.
It just sucks to use for consumers, making everyone else's life more complicated just to simplify it for the service providers.
I would prefer an addressing system that simplifies life for me.
What it's supposed to mean is that every computer can have a public address. So if you sign up with one of the dynamic DNS providers (which will probably be integrated with your OS fairly soon) you should be able to share pictures and things from your own computer without having to upload them to somewhere, or be able to log in remotely to look at some file (private) you forgot to bring with you, or any number of other things (fewer firewall errors on p2p networks? true p2p voip, without needing to sign up with a service that lets you punch holes in NAT?). This would also work without the dynamic DNS provider, but the URL would look uglier.
Most likely, this would also lead to relaxing the typical rule ISPs tend to have against running servers on home connections. They can't really forbid something that gets built into the OS like these sorts of features probably will.
Re:I still don't like IPv6 (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course they can, and they will.
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Of course they can, and they will.
Sure, they can... just like they could and did RST your bittorrent connections, or throttle/cap traffic to services that compete with their services.
Until people get pissed because they now know what's being taken away, and maybe get congress or the FCC or FTC involved.
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So instead of going to flickr I have to know and maintain all of my friends' computer addresses? In what, an address book that I store on my computer? What if I'm at a friend's house and want to show them another friend's picture, but they don't know the address?
I agree there are good reasons to go to v6, but directly accessing every device via a public address is not the answer, unless it's made really REALLY transparent and easy to use. Who's going to manage that? The OS?
Re:I still don't like IPv6 (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it'll be an excuse for an ISP to give you a /64, but firewall out all but the number of addresses you get unless you pay for more.
And servers will still be banned - there's not enough bandwidth upstream from most connections to handle everyone serving something (last mile problem).
Everyone thinks IPv6 is the magic savior - it'll enforce net neutrality, it'll prevent your PC from getting infected, it'll solve the public IP issue, it'll solve NAT issues, it'll have QoS for real, blah blah blah.
Sure IPv6 has it all. But I doubt any ISP will do business any differently with IPv6 than otherwise. In fact, they'll just salivate that any caps will be reached a bit quicker because of the increased IPv6 header size. Mobile operators are probably salivating as well - 5 cents per kilobyte (not kiB), which includes the OTA headers, plus increased IPv6 header size, means the real payload per packet goes down, and more data usage results (== more $$$ - the incremental network cost for IPv6 is low to the network to support IPv6, but not you the user have to pay more for the same traffic since the amount of data you need to transfer increased).
I see IPv6 as allowing an ISP to ding people for more. "You set 20% of your packets last month to have QoS high priority, while your plan only allows 10%". While worms will have to do more work to infect hosts, they'll just be a lot smarter about checking hosts. And the home user, even if they got 1:1 IP mappings, will probably stick a nice firewall in front of their modem that blocks incoming packets. Cablemodems (not sure about ADSL) can also be blocked from recognizing more than N MAC addresses per boot, too, so you'll have to alias your NIC to have more IPs (how many home users can do THAT? And it makes routing so much more fun!).
Nothing will change, really, other than not being able to run out of IP addresses. Business as usual.
Hell, NAT has had one benefit - it's made firewalls a lot easier to configure because you don't have to open 20 ports to play a game like you used to just over a decade ago. Torrent clients seem to work fine using one port rather than one port per torrent like they used to. Online gaming seems to work just fine with 2 or 3 ports opened (or none - it was ironically easier to configure my PS3, Xbox360 and Wii to play online than my PC - and I have UPnP disabled!), and many protocols that required incoming connectivity got phased out or adapted (e.g. FTP). And the prevalence of ssh makes life a lot easier for remote access and poor-man's VPN stuff.
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No, it's like saying there's 6 billion people in the world and 000-000-0000 through 999-999-9999 isn't enough to fit every telephone, fax, and modem in the world, so let's make it longer. At the same time, instead of dialing this crazy long phone number we'll never run out of digits for, you just pick up the dial and say "Joe Moriarity down the street, second floor bedroom" or "Comcast billing" - both of which have no lasting relation to the actual digits.
Not nearly so bad as you make out. A string of digit
Re:I still don't like IPv6 (Score:5, Funny)
I would prefer an addressing system that simplifies life for me
Agreed. What I'd really like to see is some kind of naming protocol so I don't have to remember all these long strings of numbers separated by dots. It would be awesome if internet addresses were identified by an alphanumeric name, then when I use that name there is a server somewhere that figures out what IP address that name is really pointing to.
I bet if everyone here at 216.34.181.45 put their minds to it we could even come up with something here.
Re:I still don't like IPv6 (Score:4, Funny)
Feel free to whoosh! me.
Re:I still don't like IPv6 (Score:4, Funny)
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IPv6 is like the phone company saying, hey, we have a (aaa) eee-nnnn system doesn't have enough room, so let's replace it with a system that has 20 digits.
How often do you enter IP addresses directly?
It just sucks to use for consumers, making everyone else's life more complicated just to simplify it for the service providers.
How so? I'd be surprised if most consumers ever noticed.
But there's so much space for stuff like... (Score:2)
...IP addresses that spell things out with the available characters and number.
When I was messing around with the tunnel brokers a few years ago to develop some stuff that was supposed to be IPv6 ready, I saw plenty of addresses that had dead:feed and of course, the ever popular dead:beef in the logs.
Besides, how often do you put IPs in anyway?
If you absolutely must use an IP, of course you still need to remember the subnet, but after that it's a blank slate for your mnemonic license-plate style amusement.
REPENT!! (Score:5, Funny)
Bbrrrriiiing. Bbrrrriiiing.
You: Hello?
Dependant Relative: My internet isn't working!
You: Is the modem turned on?
Dependant Relative: Yes it IS!! It even says I'm connected with eye-pee-vee-six now. But now none of my programs work!! The man from Comcast said it was an upgrade from than eye-pee-vee-four. I thought six was better than four!? Is it because I'm using Windows 7? Do I need to get Windows 6? And my internet is explorer 8? Can I still get emails? And the computer is really slow! Can you come over? ... etc. etc.
You: Curse you Comcast. Curse you!!!
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Wow. I read that as redundant relative both times.
Re:REPENT!! (Score:5, Interesting)
My brother in law used to call me up, frequently, to ask me for tech support help. He's a doctor, so I solved it by calling him up every single day to ask him some inane question about medicine.
"Hey, so I'm at the store and I want to buy band-aids. Which ones are best?" ... hello? Helloooo?"
"Hey, it's me again - so when I called up 5 minutes ago to ask about band-aids, I didn't realize they had purple ones. Are those going to work differently than the beige ones?"
"Oh, hi, me again... I was walking by the frozen food section and it was kind of cold there but it's a really hot day outside - can I catch sick from the temperature differential?"
"Yeah, it's... well, this is a bit strange. But I was at work today and one of my co-workers kind of has a limp. Can you tell me what that's from? I don't wanna ask him - let me put him on with you, maybe you can fix him..."
"So I was on a date last night and we went to a used bookstore and I started sneezing. Is that the swine flu? Well, yeah, it was dusty in there, but Oprah was talking about the Swine Flu, and I had bacon the other day so maybe I'm going to
For people who don't have a particular profession, calling them up at odd hours to ask them for tiny favors also works. My next-door neighbor used to ask me for tech support all the time, so I started asking him to pick things up at the store for me, give me rides, loan me odd random items ("Can I borrow one of your bookends?" "Do you have a shoehorn I can use for a couple of days? Mine's in the shop.")
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If I had the ability, I would rate this "+5 You Owe Me A Dry Keyboard"
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"Do you have a shoehorn I can use for a couple of days? Mine's in the shop.")
Excellent line!
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Heres the thing.... I'm a mac user, use linux and osx at work, and haven't touched windows in years- and even when I did it was just a company pc for email and such.
I converted a few relatives to Macs, before I realized... these people don't understand computers of any kind. They'll always hassle 24/7 no matter what. They may have fewer questions if they have a Mac, but if they stick to windows I can honestly tell them I have no idea and they should try calling Dell or MS for answers. If I'm the one that co
Are we serious this time? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Fortunately, we have been conserving them and switching to NAT so the problem has lessened. The industry isn't crying wolf. Also, if you live in the US, then you have less of a problem than in a developing nation who didn't get a great big block allocated to them.
But if you want your cell phone, computer, XBOX, and refrigerator to have a unique IP address, then this is necessary. Of course, you probably DON'T want that, but well... that's another discussion. :-)
Re:Are we serious this time? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Are we serious this time? (Score:5, Informative)
It's an Illuminati conspiracy tied into fusion research (and holographic storage). Just watch the obituaries. You'll eventually see the pattern. By then it will be too late - another 10 years.
(I'm sure I read it somewhere around here).
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I've been hearing that IPv4 addresses are "almost gone" for maybe 10 years now.
That's why we will be unprepared when it finally happens.
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What? (Score:4, Informative)
Verizon has IP6.
services? (Score:3, Insightful)
Potentially these customers will have a small block of ipv6 addresses. Will they be allowed to run their own web or email services?
Small block? (Score:2)
Unless Comcast is totally bucking well-established standards (which for them is possible, but I really don't see it) then every customer will be allocated a /64. In other words, every customer will have the square of the IPv4 address space to play with.
Seems like they'd have to relax rules on listening ports.
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DHCP is not necessary for IPv6. Most likely, they'll assign a /64 to your router, and from there, your individual machines will self-assign permanent addresses based on their MACs.
But it's possible that the /64 could vary, I suppose. Hopefully we'll find out soon.
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No. They'll get one address. And they still will not be able to run services.
What's the big deal with IPv6 (Score:4, Insightful)
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ISPs are still going to charge the same amount for public IPs and people are still going to user routers with NAT to save money on having to pay extra for additional IPs.
That would be quite pointless, given the number of IPs available. Why shouldn't the ISP just hand out a /64? There are plenty of them to go around. The ISPs gave up on the idea of trying to make extra money from multiple devices connected a while ago - and since they know people will just use NAT if they only give out one IP, why bother?
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ISPs are still going to charge the same amount for public IPs and people are still going to user routers with NAT to save money on having to pay extra for additional IPs.
That would be quite pointless, given the number of IPs available. Why shouldn't the ISP just hand out a /64? There are plenty of them to go around. The ISPs gave up on the idea of trying to make extra money from multiple devices connected a while ago - and since they know people will just use NAT if they only give out one IP, why bother?
Because there are people who NEED that additional public IT. Those people will pay to get it, since NAT doesn't work for whatever it is they are doing. Additionally, there are a lot of people whose LAN would be screwed up by having all of their machines have a public IP address and who don't know enough to fix it.
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Additionally, there are a lot of people whose LAN would be screwed up by having all of their machines have a public IP address and who don't know enough to fix it.
No, there aren't. A DSL or cable modem with a default-deny firewall (which will be all of them) will give a superset of the protections NAT offers now. There's a difference between public and publicly routable, you know.
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That would be quite pointless, given the number of IPs available. Why shouldn't the ISP just hand out a /64? There are plenty of them to go around.
Because ISPs exist to make money, not to provide a civil service to people. ISPs (especially the bigger ones) are going to do whatever they can to maximize profits. Just because there's essentially an unlimited number of IPv6 addresses available doesn't mean that the value of a public IP will disappear.
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That would be quite pointless, given the number of IPs available. Why shouldn't the ISP just hand out a /64? There are plenty of them to go around.
Because ISPs exist to make money, not to provide a civil service to people. ISPs (especially the bigger ones) are going to do whatever they can to maximize profits. Just because there's essentially an unlimited number of IPv6 addresses available doesn't mean that the value of a public IP will disappear.
Doing something like that might get (and would most likely deserve) an investigation by the FTC and/or federal Department of Justice. If every major ISP charged extra money for a resource that has no practical limit, you'd have a fairly easy collusion and price-fixing case. If you can have such a case against memory manufacturers, who deal with creating physical items that are obviously much more limited than IPv6 addresses and actually require money and resources to create, even a Slashdot I-am-not-a-lawye
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And I don't see why ISPs would want needless complexity of keeping track of every device in a household.
Additional IPs (Score:5, Informative)
There will be no paying extra for additional IPs. Everybody will get a /64. Look at this:
Addresses available in IPv4: 4,294,967,296
Addresses available PER CUSTOMER for IPv6: 18,446,744,073,709,551,616
This enables stateless autoconfiguration (usually based on MAC addresses) that simplifies everybody's lives.
Re:What's the big deal with IPv6 (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's say you're using Skype or bittorrent. And you want to do it on more than one computer, and you want to do it relatively efficiently. You need IPV6. Creating P2P apps is a pain with all of the NAT in the world.
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Why does everyone here get so excited when anything about IPv6 is mentioned?
Two words: No NAT.
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A lot of devices still do not support IPv6. Phones, cellphones,
A lot of people have to type in IP addresses (sysadmins, etc.) when configuring devices, DNS, web servers, and so forth, and those huge address strings are a pain in the ass. I don't want to deal with them. I like the dotted quads.
Also, one occasionally needs to access machines by IP address when DNS flakes out. What do you do when a DNS server goes down? Ideally you have a secondary DNS however not all organizations are willing to spend the mo
OMG! OMG!.IPv6 is coming for ME! (Score:4, Insightful)
It's funny how all of you are complaining so much about this. IPv6 is a required evil for the internet to keep going and it will simplify things greatly and should speed up things in general too. That is if and when they get rid of the IPv4 hardware...
I've never seen a bunch of self described computer geeks whining so much about something that will simplify routing and get rid of NAT which is a truely horrid hack.
Come on guys, you know you are going to have to deal with problems no mater what happens in computer land?! Might as well deal with a problem that will make the internet routing make sense again and it's not like it will need to be done again in your life time.
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NAT and PAT may be "hackish" but I for one am really glad that they have gotten such widespread use. For the vast majority of non-techie Internet users, a simple D-Link, Linksys, etc... firewall/router with its fairly transparent PATing is a nice bit of security that they have even if they don't understand it.
Also, the ISPs used to be really weird about home networks, but over time, they've changed their attitudes. If they fully implemented IPv6 to the point where every device could have its own publicly ro
Re:OMG! OMG!.IPv6 is coming for ME! (Score:5, Insightful)
But guess what, if you understand NAT, you will NEVER have to upgrade past IPv4, because you will NEVER run out of IP Addresses. NAT is just the flexible approach to the problem that alot of people don't like because they don't understand.
Meanwhile, back in reality...
In abstract, NAT treats addr+port as a 48-bit address, so you're effectively trading ports for address. That means you only get one port 80 per public IP, so forget having more than one webserver (unless you can somehow get your visitors to go to http://www.example.com:8080/ [example.com] ). Every P2P app, every Skype, every game server, every random application you want to post has to have a unique port number across your entire network.
Can you really not see why that sucks in comparison to IPv6 which lets every machine on your LAN listen on the whole 2^16 port range as your firewall allows?
People who don't understand NAT at all like IPv6. People who only barely understand it, like yourself, think IPv4+NAT is spiffy. People who actually understand NAT and what it implies think that it needs to be taken out back and shot.
Time Warner is already doing this in Brooklyn/NYC (Score:2)
C:\Users\Mike>tracert -6 ipv6.google.com
Tracing route to ipv6.l.google.com [2001:4860:b004::68] over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 2002:185a:90f:1234::1
2 * *
Re:Time Warner is already doing this in Brooklyn/N (Score:4, Informative)
And according to trace, your ISP doesn't have their own 6to4 router deployed, so the traffic gets sent to whoever announces the shortest route to 192.88.99.1 route via BGP.
(192.88.99.1 is a special IP which means 'any 6to4 router')
Re:Time Warner is already doing this in Brooklyn/N (Score:2)
1 [My IPv6] 1.421 ms 1.087 ms 2.245 ms
2 [My Tunnel] 35.730 ms 38.181 ms 34.940 ms
3 gige-g2-4.core1.fra1.he.net 33.940 ms 34.452 ms 33.944 ms
4 de-cix20.net.google.com 45.923 ms 43.556 ms 39.865 ms
5 * * *
6 fx-in-x68.google.com 56.283 ms 50.369 ms 36.717 ms
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Time Warner is already doing this in Brooklyn/N (Score:4, Interesting)
Lets clear this up.
All you know from this traceroute is that the routers between 2002:185a:90f:1234::1 and ams-core-1.tengige0-0-0-0.swip.net are acting in a transparent manner. It could be because they are not decrementing the TTL on each hop.
This could be because they are transparent routers, it could be an IPv6 tunnel over IPv4 or something else, you really don't know and are making silly assumptions.
What bothers me however is that either your Windows Vista/7 PC (as noted by the C:\Users in the command prompt and your use of windows tracert instead of traceroute) is directly connected to the Internet, while it is possible that you are doing that, it would be utterly stupid and I'm going to make an assumption of my own, that you are not directly connected to the Internet. Why do I make this assumption? Well partially because its a rather quick way to get exploited, theres always SOMETHING you can exploit in an MS OS and that it means you only have one PC, being that this is slashdot I can guess that those are not the case, so you aren't directly connected to the Internet and the first hop you're talking to is a DLink or Linksys router or something.
Now this makes sense, as it simply means your router is connected to swip.net using an IPv6 over IPv4 tunnel. Since this is a free service and several consumer grade devices support it, this is more likely the case. I'm not real sure how you end up with IPv6 enabled on your router and not have any clue about it, but perhaps it was done by a roommate or something like that.
Eitherway, me thinks it might be better for you to learn wtf is going on with your own internet connection than talk about how Time Warner handlers theirs.
Finally, since you're obviously new to IPv6 and networking. SWIP sells connections, they are a backbone provider which is why you see a direct connect from them to Google. They also provide IPv6 tunnel endpoints so you can tunnel it over IPv4, which appears to be exactly whats going on in your case. This tunnels are free to anyone who signed up. With that in mind and the fact that tunnels have to generally be setup on both ends in advance its likely that if Time Warner IS involved in this, they are simply working a deal with SWIP, not robbing service from them. I would have to say that SWIP.net is fully aware of the tunnel route and has authorized it, that is after all one of their core businesses.
I suggested you learn a little more about the current state of IPv6, the existing providers with IPv6 support, and most importantly, what your little Linksys or DLink router is doing that you are completely unaware of. At least go turn off your tunnel to swip.net before claiming that TWC supports IPv6 in your area.
This is what it'll take for IPv6 to happen. (Score:2)
Stupid (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Hey, it's worked for Microsoft for over 30 years now!
Where is Mark Lottor? IPV4 has plenty left to it! (Score:4, Interesting)
The large telecoms and cable outfits have tons of unused IP space that could be CIDR blocked out, think of the class A 24.X.X.X for instance that used to be @Home and Rodgers, large portions are empty! AT&T moved @Home to 12.X.X.X and then subsequently provides managed space to cable outfits like Mediacomm etc.
Now Mediacomm has just finally got around to getting its own space, is AT&T offering to CIDR out their precious class A?
No of course not, like some of the others, they get allocations from ARIN and sit on them instead of consolidating. They have scads of CIDR blocks used by all sorts of companies out there. Heck ARIN should just re-map some of those AT&T direct to the customers, let them keep the 12.X.X.X A Space.
Back in the day, Mark Lottor did mapping of all live ping able IP's before firewalls were so common and NAT extremely rare. If he were to make a comparison with whomever does like mapping today to those legacy maps and IP allocations, it would be a fascinating graphic to show the transformations and if by carrier, show how greedily the Worldcom/UUNets Sprints and Baby Bells have asked for space, color to their identity and now look to see many time those scattered CIDR blocks are empty. Sprint, old UUNet and Baby Bell CIDR's if unused, should get back into the pool.
Where is Mark Lottor and these newer guys with the latest IPV4 utilization's mapped out for the comparison analysis.
Enough said.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The large telecoms and cable outfits have tons of unused IP space that could be CIDR blocked out
No, they don't. The last I heard, reclaiming all /8 netblocks would return something like 8% of available space back to the pool. When usage is growing exponentially (or would be if it wasn't constrained to a tiny fishbowl), 8% isn't worth the aggravation.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Uhm, reclaiming ALL /8 netblocks would return 100% of the network.
You people really need to get over this classful idea of routing and assignment, its hasn't been that way for years, we use subnet masks now, you heard of them?
But back to the errors in your statement, each /8 assignment accounts for approximately 3.125% of the total network address space (not usable space, TOTAL space). So about 2 and a half of these assignments now account for your 'random, pulled out of your ass 8%'.
Well, since I know tha
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Uhm, reclaiming ALL /8 netblocks would return 100% of the network. You people really need to get over this classful idea of routing and assignment, its hasn't been that way for years, we use subnet masks now, you heard of them?
That's what we call "irony". You see, there aren't that many /8 netblocks, and you don't hear people clamoring for the subnetting of anything smaller. I mean, what are you going to do with a /20? Break it up and route two /21s?
But back to the errors in your statement, each /8 assignment accounts for approximately 3.125% of the total network address space (not usable space, TOTAL space).
There are 256 /8 netblocks, each accounting for about .4% of the TOTAL space. If you somehow missed that, then you're not really qualified to argue either side of the debate.
tinfoil hat ++ (Score:3, Interesting)
Just because you can't ping something doesn't mean it isn't in use. ARIN and the other RIRs require extensive documentation before they give out more space, and all of the companies you've mentioned have received it. I recommend reading up on how a SWIP works, followed by getting an understanding of rWhois. At that point you might have a better understanding of some of the issues. Heck, NANOG has had some excellent discussions on the subject of IPv4 address reclamation, and the outcome of those discussi
That is great..... (Score:2)
IPv6 = no NAT? Not if Comcast has its way. (Score:2)
When Comcast switches to IPv6, do you really think they'll give you more than one IP address? You better believe they'll charge you more for each additional one. Maybe they'll give you two or three for free, but I doubt it.
So unless you want to pay per computer you have connected, you'll still need to NAT them through a router. Nothing will change.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:4, Informative)
Err, I might be wrong. . . but while it's possible (may even be the default - if that's true, that's unfortunate) for your IPv6 address to use the Mac address as the last 48(?) or whatever bits of the IP address, I don't believe you *must* do that. I believe you can just use ::1, ::2, ::3, ::4, etc as the 'host' portion of the IPv6 address, can't you?
It's my understanding that IPv6 really doesn't care what the last 48 or 64 bits (I don't remember the exact number of bits for the host portion - just that it's a very large number of em) of the address is, so long as it's unique? I think the use of Mac addresses was just an 'easy' way to get a unique bitmask for that part of the IP address, isn't it?