P2P pushes IPv6 surge

Stuff

I'd probably enable IPv6 if the ISP supported it. I suspect this is true for many people.

minor correction

"mainstream users have stayed clear of it because of the lack of a clear business need for the technology"

mainstream users have stayed clear of it because of the lack of support from ISPs, government and interlinks.

People would use it if it was available. Business like BT don't want to pay for the training or hardware's firmware update's cost.

IPv6 has lower overheads both in routing and payload, and everyone on the planet can have 4.85*10^28 addresses :D More than enough for the toaster and washing machine.

What? My ISP isn't giving me the latest version of the internet?

I still think getting a good meme going on the social networks that ISPs are holding out on their customers re: latest ' version' of the internet might work :-P. Get people marching in the streets -- we need to get out and exercise more anyway, so two birds, etc,etc.

Seriously, the extended address range of v6 is probably the least useful benefit of it - nice to have and all, but while NAT may have started off as an address-space-shortage workaround, it can be a very very useful part of network management.

My employer currently owns a Class-B range. They have little need for so many addresses visible from the outside world and in fact go to a lot of trouble to hide/block the internal addresses. A couple of class-C ranges (which they already have as well) and a NAT and they can hock that class-B for a pretty penny to an ISP or similar who actually NEEDS that sort of internet-visible address range. There may be no place like 127.0.0.1, but 10.x.x.x is where the institutional-buffalo like to roam.

As for my home - One static public IP NATed to my half-dozen services with a nice filter on what ports get in and where

The other improvements of v6 may be more broadly useful, even if they are less visible.

Hurry Up

I wish the internet would get its act together and propose a date by which IPv6 should be capable of end-to-end routeing between anywhere, without the need for fancy 6to4 gateways. I know there are other issues with application support, but we have a chicken and egg situation here where there's no incentive to upgrade stuff because no one else is doing it either.

For clueless home users, firmware upgrades for common routers to handle IPv4 on the inside and IPv6 on the outside would ease most issues, especially if the upgrade was also smart enough to handle IPv6 on the inside as well so that as people bought new machines that were configured for IPv6 they would just work.

Ah well, I can dream. we'll still be here in ten years, worrying about exhausting the address space.

IPv6 is just too different

Normal users don't care what is going on as long as they can use their computer for what they want, so it is not a case of actively _not_ switching to IPv6 it is a case of carrying on with what works.

Most of our parents could deal with a set of 4 3-digit numbers but not the myriad of IPv6 addresses that will get assigned to their PC by default.

Remember too, kiddies, when IPv6 gets rolled out the default settings* (which pretty much everyone will use) will embed the MAC address in the IPv6 address so any idea normal people have as to privacy or plausible deniability has just gone out the window.

*Depending on how ISPs actually implement it. Logically speaking we would all get a /64 subnet as this is the whole point of IPv6, however it wouldn't surprise me if they tried to just assign a single IPv6 address to your router's external interface and then have you run some weird NAT to get stuff to work.

But also look at it from an ISP perspective, in the UK at least there s no problem with IPv4 address allocation and any forced changes to customer's will not only cost the ISP money but if users have to change their router then many of them will switch ISP, especially if they will be expected to pay extra for it.

ISP support

I'd use IPv6 if my ISP supported it. They don't, so I don't.

Even when ISPs will start supporting IPv6, though, I have the creeping suspicion that I'll still only get a single address, and still have to use NAT. Maybe I'll be able to buy extra addresses, though. Nothing like selling something you have a near-infinite and free supply of...