eye pee six
So, ICANN switched the root servers over to IPv6 a few days ago. This is a big deal, because although IPv6 has been “officially” deployed since 1999, adoption has been extremely slow. The most commonly used existing addressing scheme (IPv4) is estimated to run out in 2-3 years. Then again, analysts have been screaming about peak oil for a while too, so perhaps it’s all hyperbole.
Part of the reason for the slow adoption rate is because everyone (myself included) has the “if it ain’t broke yet, why bother fixing it” mentality. That’s pretty much why GoPHP5 was started, that’s also why a large number of websites still use Apache 1.3 over Apache 2.0 or 2.2. Anyway, I decided that I would figure this mysterious IPv6 thing out and did a bit of digging.
The problem is, even without knowing that I do - I tend to be quite reliant on the existing addressing scheme. How so? Let me count the ways.
One application area that has seen a fair few advances (for IPv4 addresses) is geolocation technology. For example, it’s currently easy to identify the geographic location of an IP address (see zonefiles - I use this as a quick and easy geolocation service). More comprehensive services are also available ie:, ip2location, hostip.info and the daddy, Maxmind’s GeoIP. With the vastly larger address space of IPv6, the geolocation mapping will need to be reconstructed; and even then the sheer size of addresses may allow a descent into anarchy. The IANA (which governs over IP address allocation) will probably be far less inclined to rigourously police the assignment of IPv6 addresses.
Another spiffy application area that will take a hit (at least in the short term) is the DNSBL system (DNS blacklists) - which publish a set of unsavoury IP addresses. I rely on quite a few of those services (project honeypot, botsvsbrowsers and sorbs) to help head off spammers at the pass. With more addresses than you can shake a stick at, denying by IPs is going to get a little bit harder too.
So, I want IPv6 to turn up soon, yet I don’t. The problem is, there isn’t an easy way yet to test out how IPv6 will work. Most of the internet doesn’t actually seem to know how to route things to and from the spiffy new IPv6 adddresses. That’s where places like Sixxs and Hexago come in. They allow IPv6 addresses to be tunnelled via the existing IPv4 infrastructure.
So, I’m off to get myself a IPv6 tunnel set up.
On 15-Feb-08 at 9:32 am,
Curious Yellow wrote:
Totally irrelevant to IPV6 but since my e-mails to you keep coming back rejected I’ve had to resort to this. How is the meetup going?
On 16-Feb-08 at 4:52 pm,
drac wrote:
dude, seriously? This is bizarre. I’ve mailed you (like right this minute). Let me know if you don’t receive it.
Re: meetup - I need to rouse myself and ask people which dates they can make.
They’ll all give me conflicting dates (Dilbert: I am free for 15 minutes on the 11th of December. Nothing before that. Sorry) and I’ll say “turn up on this day”
Is there even a remote possibility that you can make it? We’d love to have you along.
On 16-Feb-08 at 10:08 pm,
Curious Yellow wrote:
It is pretty bizarre. I’ve just mailed you, so let’s see how it goes. Bad result today for the Londoners too.
On 18-Feb-08 at 10:08 am,
drac wrote:
I had the dubious pleasure of watching that game. Well, most of it. I was walking past the pub when it erupted into roars (and as is usual), people ran outside screaming for a moment before running back in to their spot in front of the plasma screen.
Knowing the support in this area for the two clubs, I feared the worst. I was duly rewarded with the replay of the third goal when I switched on the television.
sigh.