Vint Cerf Calls For IPv6 Incentives In UK 164
sweetpea23 writes "Vint Cerf, the 'godfather' of the web and Internet evangelist for Google, has highlighted the need for cash incentives to encourage ISPs and businesses in the UK to move to version six of the IP addressing scheme (IPv6). In response to the UK government's stance that its role in the transition will primarily be advisory, Cerf suggested a system of tax credits for upgrading equipment to v6 capability — similar to the 'cash for clunkers' scheme in the US. 'You'd have to do the math to see what impact it would have, but creating some business incentive might be helpful,' he said. His words echo those of Axel Pawlik, managing director of the RIPE NCC, who warned last month that that the IT industry is adding unnecessary risk and complexity to Internet architectures by ignoring the availability of IPv6 addresses. the Internet authority IANA is expected to assign its last batch of IPv4 addresses in June 2011."
Re:Call me retro (Score:3, Informative)
Er no, IPv4 headers have space for exactly 4 bytes of destination address information. You might be able to kludge the protocol to allow for a larger address space, but as a kludge it would be inefficient, and encountering extended packets would break the majority of existing IPv4 stacks. The solution was arrived at by some very smart people, and that's IPv6. We won't run out of addresses on IPv6 for a very long time indeed.
Re:carrot and stick (Score:1, Informative)
There are no ISPs in the UK that support IPv6, apart from some very specialist and expensive ones.
And even then, they all use the BT backhaul - which doesn't officially support v6. :/
Re:Oversimplifiying... (Score:3, Informative)
when DHCP was revived for v4
Err, I meant v6.
Re:carrot and stick (Score:1, Informative)
Less carrot more stick from the government. Companies get too many benefits as it is.
There's going to be plenty of stick (and other pain) once IANA runs out of IPv4 addresses, and gives the last blocks to the RIRs. If your organization (especially those of medium and large sizes) doesn't have at least a basic test bed for IPv6 connectivity you're going to be in a world of hurt. At the very least a few of your NetOps folks should be playing with IPv6 in their "spare time" to understand how it works.
Just this week I purchased an Apple AirPort Extreme which has IPv6 functionality built-in, and getting 6to4 working was dead simple (basically one check box). With a decent firmware (e.g., DD-WRT), a tunnel broker (HE, Sixxs), and a little manual tweaking it's possible to get IPv6 going on decent amount of hardware out there.
At a minimum you should be getting basic IPv6 connectivity (native or tunnelled) up and running to at least your edge routers in the next six months. Next get your DNS working with IPv6 (AAAA and reverse resolve), and then having a a DNS server with a AAAA record. Then perhaps set up a basic web presence on IPv6 (ipv6.example.com to start).
Once you get the above working, ideally by the end of 2011, you'll be in decent shape to start dual-stacking your servers by mid-2012, and your desktops by the end of 2012.
Re:Misspelled name - not broken, don't fix it (Score:3, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vint_Cerf [wikipedia.org]
Re:carrot and stick (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I got a sixxs tunnel account today (Score:3, Informative)
What is there different to see or do? Not much.
Of course not; the goal is not to build a new network, but to make sure that the Internet can continue to grow. So what you get over IPv6 is just the current Internet, but with a good chance that it'll be still around in ten years.
Re:ISP-supplied modems/routers IPV6 compatible? (Score:3, Informative)
Then they'll just use IPv4. We're not talking about single-stack IPv6 for now, and not for many years from now as well.
There were several criminally broken models of home routers that blackholed AAAA DNS requests causing long timeouts, but they are basically the only technical obstacle to giving customers native dual stack, at least where the last mile is concerned. And those can get their firmware upgraded.
Re:ISP-supplied modems/routers IPV6 compatible? (Score:3, Informative)
AFAIK, Google doesn't provide AAAA records for most of their services to just anyone: http://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/ [google.com]