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The Internet Upgrades

IPv6-only Hosting Won't Make Sense For Years 173

Posted by CmdrTaco from the or-will-it dept.
rawagajah writes "World IPv6 Day this Wednesday will shake out any bugs for websites running on IPv4 and IPv6 in parallel. However, cloud server provider ElasticHosts points out that IPv6-only websites are still a long way off — they only make sense after access is overwhelmingly IPv6 capable. In the meantime, the market in IPv4 space will presumably only grow, benefiting the IPv4 hogs..."
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IPv6-only Hosting Won't Make Sense For Years More

IPv6-only Hosting Won't Make Sense For Years

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  • This is why I generally support the big guys, Google et. all, when they go out and state they will no longer support older browsers. Not only is it good for security and designers, but it's good for server admins. With apache2 and IIS supporting SNI on all browsers, except XP SP2, it's time to move on. I really don't feel like playing the domain games of yesteryear with IP addresses.

    2.5 cents

    • This is why I generally support the big guys, Google et. all, when they go out and state they will no longer support older browsers.

      The problem as I understand it in the case of IE is that MS considers the SSL implementation to be part of the OS not part of the browser and as such they won't implement SNI in IE on XP.

      People are far more reluctant to upgrade their entire OS than to merely upgrade their browser.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by TheLink ( 130905 )
        That's not a problem. One more reason for people to use Firefox or Google Chrome :).

        • Both have the same problem, as the issue is in Windows XP's SSL implementation, which all browsers use rather than doing it internally.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by TheLink ( 130905 )
            Chrome uses Window's crypto but AFAIK Firefox uses its own SSL stuff - Firefox's CA list is separate from the one in Windows.

            • It appears that you are correct. My mistake.

              A handy test for SNI compatibility can be found here (https://sni.velox.ch/)

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by TheLink ( 130905 )

                Well I made a mistake too, I forgot Chrome uses Windows crypto stuff (I should have remembered that - dealt with that weeks ago - installing private certs and stuff).

                Anyway in theory SSL is good. In practice it's better than nothing, but:
                1) Most people just click through the warnings.
                2) Governments (and naughty hackers) can get browser trusted CAs to sign their CA certs, and most browsers by default will not warn you. China's CNNIC's cert is signed by Entrust (there may be more).
                3) Governments can get Micr

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re:SNI and other alternatives (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Ultra64 ( 318705 ) on Monday June 06, 2011 @10:30AM (#36350004)

        "it would give us most likely a good 5 to 6 years to do a nice orderly IPV6 rollout instead of the mess we are in now."

        We've had a decade to do a nice orderly IPv6 rollout. The problem is no one will spend the time/money to do it until it is absolutely unavoidable.

        • "it would give us most likely a good 5 to 6 years to do a nice orderly IPV6 rollout instead of the mess we are in now."

          We've had a decade to do a nice orderly IPv6 rollout. The problem is no one will spend the time/money to do it until it is absolutely unavoidable.

          This.It wouldn't make a difference, as it would just mean everyone would continue doing nothing, and legitimate users would just pay more.

          My ISP gives me a /27 for free on my home network and I enjoy not having to use NAT and I am using the addresses (well more than 16 of them). Now why should I have to pay an extra $30 for my net connection because the rest of the Internet providers haven't performed due diligence with this issue (and since my ISP has also been IPv6 ready since 2002 they are obviously do

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anrego ( 830717 ) *

        If the unused addresses were to be put back into the pool it would give us most likely a good 5 to 6 years to do a nice orderly IPV6 rollout instead of the mess we are in now.

        More time isn't what is needed. They've already had lots of time (nearly a decade).

        So I say my proposal would buy us the time we need to fix the above problems and make the IPV6 transition a nice slow methodical orderly change over rather than the "Oh shit what are we gonna do?" mess that we have now.

        That's the only way it's gonna happen. Like many other problems (pollution or fossil fuel) that cost a lot of money to fix just to get back to nominal, it's not gonna be dealt with until stuff starts actually breaking.

      • less than 30% of IPV4.. If the unused addresses were to be put back.. give us most likely a good 5 to 6 years to do a nice orderly IPV6 rollout
        you mean another 5 years on top of the nearly 13 years that ipv6 has been around?
      • Your $1 tax is ridiculous, because only large organization have big pools, and THEY don't care paying. If you have a /16 of IPv4, that's about 800 000 USD per year, which is nothing for a company doing billions. Now, take a small provider with a /21, the 2048 USD per month cost might kill it, while almost probably he is using it fully.

        What's really bad is that everyone is using at least 256 IPs per announcement, because otherwise, many ISP just ignore the route announce, to save on the precious memory of
        • We use BT as our ISP, and we already pay £1 per IP per month to them. I asked if I could have IPv6 addresses, and they said "What is that?"
          • If you didn't know, ISPs are paying a fee every year to be a member of RIPE/APNIC/ARIN. It's not because you use more IPs that you will pay more. So, BT is just monetizing on something it should not.

      • Maybe I don't understand the problem, but in my mind it has nothing to do with available address space and everything to do with equipment cost. My ISP is a cable co-op, so what you pay is directly proportional to what you get. For my $50 I'd rather have increased bandwidth than a brand new room full of Cisco switches that isn't going to make things 'better' for me at this moment.

        Our annual letter basically said that the plan was to upgrade to IPv6 when we need to upgrade the "big iron" in the next few ye

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bengie ( 1121981 )

        "less than 30% of IPV4 was being utilized"

        We're approaching 3 billion users and there's only 4.3bil addresses total, not including inefficiencies from smaller subnets or reserved ranges. I would say there's very few un-used addresses.

        "If the unused addresses were to be put back into the pool it would give us most likely" Few months. This has been discusses many times, even by the president of ARIN.

        "The hogs want to sit on them and then sell them for a fat profit" You can't sell them, you can only return t

    • Just like old browsers, IPv4 only clients will continue to haunt us for years to come. It depends a lot on your audience, Game! [wittyrpg.com] for example sees something like 10-20% IE users (all versions combined), the rest using Firefox, Chrome or Opera. But if you look at the cross-section of browser usage in big companies, you'll see something closer to 80% IE usage (and primarily IE6/IE7 at that).

      I predict that once XP goes off extended support, people will finally start migrating away from it and IE6 will die with i

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Lennie ( 16154 )

        IE(-based browsers) and Safari on XP (the only browsers that use the windows library) isn't the only SNI problem, Android 2.x is also a problem.

        I guess by the time XP is gone the Android phones will be gone too. But it was really stupid to see these people not include SNI support.

  • IPv6 only might still be good for remote servers, for backup etc. where clients don't necessarily want everyone in the world to have access anyway.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by TheRaven64 ( 641858 )
      It's also fine for anything that is not directly connecting to clients. There's nothing wrong with having your database server only accessible via IPv6, if your web front end is dual stack. If clients always connect via a reverse proxy, then your web server can be IPv6 only as well. If you're doing load balancing via a transparent reverse proxy, then this means that you only need one public IPv4 address for the proxy, but can have a large cluster of v6-only servers.

      • OTOH, it doesn't really matter if your non-internet-facing servers are v6 or V4, since they'll only serve local adresses ?

        • Who said non-internet-facing? I said that they were not facing the clients, not that they weren't facing the Internet. Even if they're in the same data center, if they're in managed hosting then you probably want them to be Internet facing.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bsane ( 148894 )

      Thats why this article is misleading...

      Of course v6 only won't make sense for years. It won't make sense until 99% of the internet is dual stack or v6 only- how long that takes is an economics problem. Whats important is that servers/hosting is dual stacked during the transition. When you're looking for hosting services native dual stack will soon be a requirement. Its not right now, but it will be very soon. This really isn't very complicated- dual stack your public servers as quickly as possibly (really n

      • First of all, dual stack IS ALREADY a requirement for some customers, and not doing it is already hurting some hosts. While you are right, dual stack isn't very complicated, it isn't easy to find providers that wont have silly answers like "yeah, we're working on it, it's going to be available soon". Out of 12 data centers we are in, only ONE has it ready, and asking them about router announce and auto configuration was too much for their support. In all other places, we had to find IPv6 brokers and do the

  • On the other hand ... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 06, 2011 @08:57AM (#36349086)

    Dual stack hosting does make sense right now, what is slashdot [ipv6-test.com] waiting for ?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Arlet ( 29997 )

      Apart from adding maintenance costs, how much sense does it make ? IPv6-only clients are a small market.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Yvanhoe ( 564877 )
        Put a fast server on the IPV6 address. Give an incentive to switch.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gmack ( 197796 )

        Small but growing, leaving it off until the market grows too large to ignore is going to guarantee you won't be ready when the time comes.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Arlet ( 29997 )

          Then wait until market is large enough, minus the time it takes to do add the IPv6 support. Switching to IPv6 will only get easier after you wait until everybody else has figured out all the problems, and all the hardware is supporting it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bsane ( 148894 )

        Small, but growing. There will soon be economic pressure for v4 addresses, and it won't take too many people moving to v6 make it worthwhile to maintain dual stack servers.

        First hand experience on this one- if you're already using best practices for web hosting, adding v6 addresses is stupid easy, and requires no re-work to your backend. Why _wouldn't_ you add v6, even to capture (or keep from losing) 1% of your traffic?

        Right now the reason is: horribly misconfigured dual stack clients will fail when access

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Arlet ( 29997 )

          Because a lot of people don't care about 1%. When Firefox had a market share of 5%, there were still plenty of sites that didn't support it.

          Also, people moving to IPv6 doesn't mean they can't reach IPv4 sites anymore. As long as they can reach them through some NAT service, the IPv4 web hosts will be fine.

    • Yeah, they should get up to date like the W3C [ipv6-test.com] have.. oh, wait.

      • Because the W3C is the one who standardized IPv6... oh, wait they have fuck all to do with the Internet Protocol standards. On the other hand, the real people behind the IPv6 standard, the IETF [ipv6-test.com], does have a website that is IPv6 ready.

        • Wow, the people who developed the standard use it, that's life changing knowledge!

          Instead, let's look at some of the W3C's "Mission" [w3.org] statements:

          Web for All - The social value of the Web is that it enables human communication, commerce, and opportunities to share knowledge. One of W3C's primary goals is to make these benefits available to all people, whatever their hardware, software, network infrastructure, native language, culture, geographical location, or physical or mental ability

          Web on Everything - The number of different kinds of devices that can access the Web has grown immensely. Mobile phones, smart phones, personal digital assistants, interactive television systems, voice response systems, kiosks and even certain domestic appliances can all access the Web

          This is just one of the groups that I'd have expected to have IPv6 addresses by now. Facebook and Amazon don't either..

          • Facebook does, actually, at http://www.v6.facebook.com./ [v6.facebook.com]

            > ping www.v6.facebook.com

            Pinging www.v6.facebook.com [2620:0:1cfe:face:b00c::3] with 32 bytes of data:
            Reply from 2620:0:1cfe:face:b00c::3: time=170ms
            Reply from 2620:0:1cfe:face:b00c::3: time=169ms
            Reply from 2620:0:1cfe:face:b00c::3: time=170ms
            Reply from 2620:0:1cfe:face:b00c::3: time=170ms

            Ping statistics for 2620:0:1cfe:face:b00c::3:
            Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
            Approximate round trip times in mil

          • Wow, the people who developed the standard use it, that's life changing knowledge!

            Which was the point. Why do you point out the W3C? And why do they need an IPv6 record to accomplish their goals? I'm pretty sure you can have web for all and web on everything at this point without an IPv6 record.

            This is just one of the groups that I'd have expected to have IPv6 addresses by now.

            Good for you?

            Facebook and Amazon don't either..

            Facebook does. But why either one need them when less than 1% of their users will be using the IPv6 version, is the better question.

  • It makes sense for several years already, as a lot of "firewalls" (eg, that nice Great Chinese Firewall) and various other such country-wide blockades to the Internet, do not have a single bit of understanding of IPv6, and as long as they remain that way, IPv6 will work like a charm......

    Next to the other thing for home users: everything becomes accessible, instead of having to get IPv4 addresses from your home ISP (which generally they won't do, but indeed there are cases where they do), or getting a priva

  • For a website owner working together with a hosting provider that still has plenty of IPv4 addresses, why would you even want to move to IPv6-only? Especially when so many in the world aren't even running dual-stack? The only good reason that I've heard so far to set up an IPv6-only website is for testing purposes (You can't see this site unless you have IPv6!).

    On the other hand, soon there will be plenty of people and organizations in the world, starting in Asia, that will be IPv6-only. Not because it's

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by TheLink ( 130905 )

      soon there will be plenty of people and organizations in the world, starting in Asia, that will be IPv6-only

      They might go massive IPv4 NATs first. Especially since:
      1) it makes control of the population easier.
      2) it makes P2P harder
      3) it makes it harder for users to set up their own servers

      What tech people see as problems, would be considered benefits by some governments and organizations.

  • 1% is a whole lot (Score:3)

    by xiando ( 770382 ) on Monday June 06, 2011 @10:20AM (#36349862) Homepage Journal
    All my websites have been IPv6 ready for many years now and I have never noticed any problems with having them available over both IPv4 and IPv6, but that does not mean there are none. I have read than less than one percent of the users will have IPv6 configured without actually having IPv6 connectivity and I probably loose that traffic. This is what the IPv6 testing day is all about: to see just how much traffic you loose because of badly configured clients. Less than one percent traffic loss may be acceptable to me, but it's not acceptable when you're a huge profitable website. It's pretty obvious that nobody in their right minds will make their high-traffic website available over IPv6 only before 99.5% or so of all users have a IPv6 connection.

  • At some point, connection quality on IPv4 will be worse than connection quality on IPv6 for a significant amount of people. Their CGNAT may be overloaded. They may run applications which don't work correctly behind CGNAT.

    When this point is reached, dual stacked hosting will be an advantage over IPv4-only hosting. Search engines may start to weigh in IPv6-reachablilty of sites. When this happens, you'll want to be with a hoster which supports IPv6 already.

  • Web hosts will still not support ipv6 because there aren't enough customers for it to be worth it. ISPs will not support ipv6 because there aren't enough web hosts to be worth it. Everyone sits around waiting for somebody else to move first, in a classic deadlock pattern.

    • The deadlock will be solved by the market for IPv4 addresses that everyone seems to think is so horrible. The unused IPv4 addresses will get sold off first. As prices go up, even currently used IPv4 addresses start looking like a juicy money-making opportunity. Hosts that can migrate without much pain will get paid to do so. ISPs and vendors who want their business have an incentive to make the process even less painful. Gradually, the cost of IPv4 will go up, the cost of IPv6 will go down, and people will

      • Or gradualy the routing tables will get out of the reach of the routers at some places, and IPv4 will completely stop working.

        There are many problems with auctioning IP addresses.

    • You might want to reconsider the host part. Many times, we had customers that wanted IPv6. After loosing 2 or 3 bids, we implemented it!

  • One thing we really DON'T need on the net is an IP version of the real-estate bubble. The best way to make the transition happen is to set a hard cut-off day. On X day at midnight, all IPv4 allocations are rescinded.

    Of course, what sort of traffic you run on your own LAN is your own business, but if you want to traverse the public internet, you'll need to use v6.

  • Seriously, assume that a new device comes out and the company is a bit like Google in wanting to make real changes. They could turn around and require that access to the site be via IPv6 only. They might have to use a tunnel, but the idea is that the website itself would be IPv6 to push that as being the only solution. And that would mean that for any other system to access it, they must use IPv6.
  • Have the feds require that all of their dept do IPv6 by end of year. Then require that they drop IPv4 by year end 2012. That will solve these issues QUICKLY. The reason is that many businesses will start shopping for ISPs that support IPv6. And they will tell their current ISP that they are leaving unless they have it PDQ. By end of 2013, IPv4 will be gone.

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