WARNING: Your computer's address is about to change

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WARNING: Your computer's address is about to change

For most of its two-billion users, the internet is effectively infinite. It has more sites than we could ever visit, more products and services than we could ever want, and more people than we could ever meet in a lifetime. It seems odd then that this boundless cyberspace could run out of something as mundane as addresses, but that's just what's about to happen.
 
this is going to make LANs and such awkward: just join my server at 3ffe:1900:4545:3:200:f8ff:fe21:67cf :wtf:
 
Thank god for cut & paste! And it might not be so bad, after all they say a change (of address) is as good as a holiday.
 
IPv6 hosting

From the article:

But there are many more hold-outs unwilling to spend money and time on the move until it is absolutely necessary.

And MTN Business is one of those hold-outs who are refusing to go IPv6.

We host clusters of servers in a few locations, one of them being Posix, another at MTN. When we asked for an IPv6 block, Posix simply said "sure, here ya go". They allocated us a /64 block, we assigned it to our dual-stacked server and we were off. We can reach Google's ipv6 addresses and people with IPv6 connections could reach our web-site on an IPv6 address.

But MTN's response was simply: "Unfortunately we don't issue IPv6 blocks at this stage and we have no immediate plans for this."

The above lackluster response is what will be the downfall of companies like MTN who fail to innovate and drive new technologies. Meanwhile, browsing the AfriNIC assigned netblocks, Cell C has already gotten their IPv6 blocks assigned and routed and seems to be ready to drive the next generation of IP addressing challenges.

So who else, besides Posix and Apolix offer IPv6 connectivity in their hosting environments?

--deckert
 
Allways one funny ucker.

I thought the last adresses were already assigned earlier this week.

Either way, to most users this would be pretty much a non-issue.

Have they ever considered making one octet represent the country? We've got less than 200 AFAIK, so that leaves a bunch for 'other' networks, and gives plenty of room to wiggle inside the country itself.
 
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Pyro said:
Have they ever considered making one octet represent the country? We've got less than 200 AFAIK, so that leaves a bunch for 'other' networks, and gives plenty of room to wiggle inside the country itself.
Click to expand...
Have you ever considered that a country like South Africa with a relatively tiny Internet population is already using more than a single /8 (octet as you call it) and more developed countries are using multiple /8's.
 
ambo said:
Have you ever considered that a country like South Africa with a relatively tiny Internet population is already using more than a single /8 (octet as you call it) and more developed countries are using multiple /8's.
Click to expand...

So?

IPv4 was 4 octects/bytes WTFever you want to call it. IPv6 gives you 16. Using just one of those for the country is hardly a killer.

For interest's sake - fc00::/7 becomes your new 10/8, 172.16/12, and 192.168/16 ranges, so you're likely to see a lot of fc00 on LANs ;)
 
Pyro said:
For interest's sake - fc00::/7 becomes your new 10/8, 172.16/12, and 192.168/16 ranges, so you're likely to see a lot of fc00 on LANs ;)
Click to expand...
Most likely not. Those RFC1918 prefixes from IPv4 only work on the Internet due to the fact that your router NATs them to give you outside access. No such NAT exists in IPv6 and people would only use fc00::/7 or ULAs when they have no plans to connect their network to the Internet.
 
Way I see it is that most ISP's will keep using IPv4 - but simply redirect any IPv4 IP's to a web page with instructions on how to change over to IPv6, while the IPv6 users can surf merrily along.

MTN best get a move on - or else they'll fall so far behind that they'll have a mass exodus of users at the same time.

Any savvy ISP best make preparations for the switchover - and it'll not be easy.
 
ambo said:
Most likely not. Those RFC1918 prefixes from IPv4 only work on the Internet due to the fact that your router NATs them to give you outside access. No such NAT exists in IPv6 and people would only use fc00::/7 or ULAs when they have no plans to connect their network to the Internet.
Click to expand...

I had a shufty at Wikipedia, but got a headache after trying to wade through reams of stuff.

So is there still a private network segment for internal use as is the case with IPv4?

For two cases - when you want to connect your corporate LAN via a firewall to the outside WWW, and the second, when you plan never to connect to the WWW at all.
 
The_Librarian said:
I had a shufty at Wikipedia, but got a headache after trying to wade through reams of stuff.

So is there still a private network segment for internal use as is the case with IPv4?

For two cases - when you want to connect your corporate LAN via a firewall to the outside WWW, and the second, when you plan never to connect to the WWW at all.
Click to expand...

As ambo said, you can't NAT on IPv6 right now. It's possible to build it in (almost anything is possible), but things will break horribly, as it's not designed for it. So if your corporate LAN is connected to the WWW, via a firewall, you use your public IP space. If you connect dial-up or VPN users, you can also use your own IP space. The only time you will use a private address range is if you will never route anything in your network to the open internet, i.e. you're completely cut off.

Currently all devices expect you to allocate a /64 per subnet. or broadcast domain. A /64 is also used for point-to-point links. Your ISP should allocate you a /56 (256 /64's) or a /48 (65535 /64's). The recommendation is a /48 for all end-user sites. If you are in a position where you can allocate more than a /48 you should be able to justify a larger allocation to your ISP, or even get your own from AfriNIC.
 
have smartphones and such got the ability to use IPv4? I have only seen options for IPv4
 
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