IPv6 Day...

[DummyLoad]

Doug, are you not participating?

If any of you guys are running Firefox - grab the ShowIP PlugIn.   

--DL

[EL34]

I run IE8 mostly but I have firefox installed

I am guessing that plugin shows you someones IP?

The forum software does that for the admins automatically.
Yours was 66.68.80.111 when you typed the message above

[simonallaway]

There's an extension for Chrome too:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bpffihkombhdbegnjaehbfnilgkkhmam?hl=en-US

[DummyLoad]

I am guessing that plugin shows you someones IP?

yes, the IP of the site the browser is visiting - either one, v4 or v6 address.

today when i visit google.com - it's via a 6 to 4 tunnel i go to: 2001:4860:800a::67 +6 for yahoo.com i go to: 2001:4998:f00c:1fe::3000

for the university i'm advertising 2605:2800::/32  however, we did not publish our content on v6 so you use only v4 to get to our web servers.

welcome to the future of the internet...   

--DL

[DummyLoad]

The Day The Routers Died...

lol! nerd humor.

 

[simonallaway]

We're talking about "the great IPv4 panic".... the fear that due to the explosion of networked devices (phones, embedded devices, laptops etc) we would run out of addresses.

Wasn't it basically solved (or at least put off a decade or two) by IPmasq and/or network address translation?

[EL34]

I guess I don't understand what this IPV4 and 6 is.

Can someone explain in simple english?

[simonallaway]

Theoretically IP version 4 allows less than 4 billion discreet devices on a network (each one has to have a unique number). This isn't enough for all the proposed devices on the planet. It was ok when there were very few networked computers around..but in the 1990s that all started to change.

IP v6 uses a bigger maximum (i.e. a larger address space) so the theoretical maximum is enormous. To quote wikipedia:

"The address space therefore supports 2128 or approximately 3.4×10³⁸
 addresses. By comparison, this amounts to approximately 5×10²⁸
 addresses for each of the 6.8 billion people alive in 2010"

[EL34]

ah, ok

Now I am confused about the original question
Participating in what?

Doug, are you not participating?
If any of you guys are running Firefox - grab the ShowIP PlugIn. 

 

[DummyLoad]

ah, ok

Now I am confused about the original question
Participating in what?

Doug, are you not participating?
If any of you guys are running Firefox - grab the ShowIP PlugIn. 

 

you would have had to coordinate with your hosting provider have been given some IPv6 address space to use, and have added some of those IPv6 addresses to your servers; have DNS server that supports AAAA (128bit) records with your top level domain attached to the IPv6 addresses (IPv4 DNS uses A records -32bit), then added the entry www.el34world.com in a DNS server serving AAAA queries so folks running dual stack (IPv4 and IPv6) would be able to access your content using IPv6. basically all the stuff you do with IPv4 just with longer addresses.

i'm surprised your hosting provider did not ask you to participate - i guess like most, they couldn't be bothered... i support several universities, so you can imagine the scuttlebutt over a new protocol trial - they "just had to have it" and had to "participate" in order to not feel left out b/c podunk.edu is/was participating... <rolleyes> lots more work for self and my colleagues is all it was. 

if you're running any modern OS, (what else would you be surfing with?) IPv6 support is built-in - it may not be enabled, but it's there,

the URL below will explain things about IPv6 day much better than i can...

http://www.worldipv6day.org/

[PRR]

Back in the 1970s someone numbered networks with four 8-bit numbers: IPv4. It was simple and easy to parse: 255 machines per building, 255 buildings per campus, 255 campuses per small operation, with room for 65,000 universities and military operations.

Al Gore let anybody use the internet, even gitar-amp-parts shops. Some re-parsing was needed (last time I wired a building I got just 32 IP numbers) but it worked without major change.

Last month INA(?) granted the last large block of IPv4 numbers. The world has run out of IP numbers. We are using a large part of 4 *billion* IP numbers.

This has been expected. The obvious trick is to add more numbers.

Think back to before telephones had direct long-distance dialing. Phone numbers were 7 digits. To allow direct-dial to other cities, the phone company had to add 3 more digits.

But with both 7 and 10 digit phone numbers, the strowger gets 7 digits and doesn't know if that's the number or if there's more. (The phone company's trick was to demand a "1" before a 10-digit number.)

IPv6 has six 8-bit numbers. Plenty for every person in the world.

But IPv4 has been around for 30+ years. The idea of four 8-bit numbers per address is coded into MANY MANY boxes which never expected to have to process six 8-bit numbers per address.

IPv6 is back-connected to IPv4. If your box only speaks IPv4, IPv6 will carry your packets. And computer gear has short service life, a few years and you buy new. (Especially if your IPv4 has odd bugs that don't play well with IPv6.) Over time everything will talk IPv6.

Geeks like Dummy are all excited. Will it work? Will it break? A half-baked broken protocol is tons of fun: all-night Jolt-drinking debugging sessions.

Yesterday was a "big test day". Several MAJOR (and well-supported) web servers exposed IPv6 numbers for public use, and watched to see what broke. (As hoped: no big deal.)

Most of the rest of us JUST DO NOT CARE.

Minor problems: some websites (including this one) use the simple IPv4 "IP numbers" to black-list some connections. That has been a poor idea for a very long time: IP numbers change, and some change constantly. Under IPv6 the "IP number" is not just longer, it is likely to change a lot. It is made for connectivity, not tracking.

> Wasn't it basically solved (or at least put off a decade or two) by ...network address translation?

NAT has been around for over a decade. So the put-off time is running thin.

It works great for "users" who don't use a connection all the time and do not accept random connections from others. TW Cable can have more customers than IP numbers by juggling IP numbers. On a larger scale an entire student lab can appear on one IP number to the outside world. A downside is that one bad user can spoil the IP number for others.

> coordinate with your hosting provider .... i'm surprised your hosting provider did not ask you to participate

The average webmaster has only the slimmest clue. Doug's host has thousands of clients mostly with slimmer clues than Doug. Getting them onboard with IPv6 would be chaos. In many ways, websites like Doug's are "JUST DO NOT CARE" "users".

> support several universities, so you can imagine the scuttlebutt

University Hostmasters and a few MEGA-servers have been on the bleeding edge of the IP shortage. And a few of them have the concentrated in-depth tech staff to make the changeover AND to patch/backup if all the lights go dark.

Been there, done that, had the T-shirt but it's long-gone now. Back when IPv4 was just "IP" and there were less than 100 IMPs in the whole world. (Actually my deep scars are from a Novell global addressing scheme...... itchy just tinking about it.)

[DummyLoad]

Back in the 1970s someone numbered networks with four 8-bit numbers: IPv4.

yes, the man in my avatar with the tin-can - vint cerf and his colleague robert khan. the dotted decimal format has served us well for several decades. they are the recognized as the "fathers" of the Internet Protocol and the and it's subsets; Transmission Control Protocol, User Datagram Protocol, Internet Control Messages Protocols.  before the days of DNS they all exchanged a thing called a hosts file. it was a name to address map of the all the known hosts so that email (SMTP) running on a UNIX system running IP would work. stanford was the repository for the "current" hosts file and it served the IP world well for about a decade. at some point however, the file grew to large and the downloads too long, and the file was error prone. enter john postel et-al and BIND circa 1983 and DNS was born.

thanks for the novell flashbacks. now i'll have recurring nightmares of crashing NLMs on netware 2.11 and IPX/SPX SAP storms... like my tired old DACS, may your bytes dribble bits for that one... ;)

ARIN/RIPE/etc, will allocate a up to /32 for provider independent (end user) space - most colleges and universities, corporations, state govt', and larger local govt's qualify for /48 allocation. at some point there was discussion of /56 allocations for smaller end-user systems that wanted to multi-home (2 or more ISP connections) but did not warrant a /48 allocation. i don't follow ARIN policy as much as i should, as we have others in my org. that are the ARIN liaisons. my job is hook stuff up, configure the protocols, and move the porn and email through the net as fast as possible - and that includes viruses.

IPv6 has six 8-bit numbers. Plenty for every person in the world.

no sir, IPv6 is 16 bytes or 128 bits of address. v4 is 4 bytes or 32 bits of address. the link global mask boundary for LAN addressing and proper function of auto-configuration is 64 bits. a /64 mask is accepted standard LAN mask with v6. link local addressing. for point2point links it is accepted practice to set the mask at 126 or 127 bits. i prefer 126 bits to allow for sniffers, analyzers, SPAN ports, etc...

xxxx:xxxx:beef:babe::/64 is reserved for my P2P links.
xxxx:xxxx:babe:cafe::/64 is reserved the router loopback interfaces.
xxxx:xxxx:face:cafe::/64 is reserved for multicast nets.

x = any hexadecimal value of 0-f

IP numbers change, and some change constantly. Under IPv6 the "IP number" is not just longer, it is likely to change a lot. It is made for connectivity, not tracking. 

and the fed don't like that - neither do sysadmins who need to track who went where when and how. enter DHCPv6 since autoconfig doesn't hand off DNS servers, only a link global addy and router.

no, not excited about it at all... it's just a fu@#$ng job and i happen to be good at it. i'd rather run a profitable bait shop, donut shop, or music store.

Been there, done that, had the T-shirt

i'd like to burn mine... come on retirement... 

[EL34]

In many ways, websites like Doug's are "JUST DO NOT CARE" "users".

Including me. 

Many people just barely know how to open a browser and get to a web site or forum.

[PRR]

> Including me.

If you did give a hoot (no reason you should), here's a write-up of the glitches found when IPv6 was enabled parallel-to IPv4 for one day.

IPv6 Day went mostly smoothly, with a few surprises

Basically things connected, but there's a lot of little details to make things work as-intended. DNS propagation is an issue for any short-term change. Most websites are virtual-host configured, which may be by hostname or by IP, and may depend on DNS. Many websites call ads or scripts on other servers, some not on the same IPv_ as the main server, so an IPv6-only client won't get everything until those frills are all exposed on IPv6.

The internet didn't collapse, and IPv6 does work, but there will be many loose ends to fix.

Surfing users won't notice any more glitching than usual (my YouTube hasn't displayed the right-side ad in months; some glitch, don't care). Website admins will fix-up their links to work with IPv6 or rely on 6-to-4 translation, so that as users become more IPv6 they will get their pages.

It may be interesting for hosting outfits.

As for YOU, Doug: you already paid for an IPv4 IP address. It will maybe make sense for you to own a fixed IPv6 address. It would be linked to your secure-shopping certificate and other authentications. Unlike the dying days of IPv4, the mature price of an IPv6 address will probably be near-zero. Just paperwork.

What is really threatened is your IP-based blacklisting. Up till now, if the user at 74.78.32.208 (me) was making trouble, you could block 74.78.32.208. While it is possible for users to change IPs, in limited IPv4 space it has not been trivial. With near infinite IPv6 space, any serious trouble-maker will routinely change IP numbers on every action.
 

 

[EL34]

Thanks for the info guys

I don't black list the IP's
The Httpbl forum mod checks a data base that has the data.

IP's come and go off the database
If they are clean after so many days, they are removed from the database.

So, it's possible for IP's to be ok one day and not the next or visa vera

I am sure honey pot will just start collecting IP6 IP's if they become dirty