Talk:IPv6

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[edit] U.S. Federal Government Deadline for IPv6

One of the big catalysts for IPv6 migration in the U.S. is the federal government's June 2008 deadline for agency backbone networks. There is one mention of this in the article, and I added some additional info. But more details on this are probably needed. It could be a major shot in the arm for IPv6 migration.

[edit] Syntax /xx unclear

The meaning of the slash followed by numbers was not exactly clear to me when i read the article. I mean the following entries towards the bottom of the article, such as:

::/128,  ::1/128, fe80::/10, etc.

I think it means something like total length in bits together with the implied zeroes, but I have not seen this notation before and it would be nice if the article gave a hint what it meant. Other than that, the article was very helpful, thanks!

Update: This has now been clarified in the article, thank you very much to whoever changed this!

[edit] money spinner?

Well I doubt there is every going to be a demand for so many high speed addresses. Names would be easier to use now. Wonder why POTS scales :-)


It is not that there will be demand for that many addresses, it is that there will be demand than addresses in IPv4. You have to remember that IP addresses are given to ISPs, Companies, Universities, etc. in large blocks often 65,536, so there is a good deal of waste. SMakabwe (talk) 20:47, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] First statement

Gentlemen,

when some internet users seek articles herein, they want (and need) to learn the easiest way.

We shall not consider even the hardest article to be read only by those with enough knowledge.

Besides confusing layers with protocols untill I corrected it, the first statement serves both ipv4 and ipv6 concepts but it gives the idea it is only about ipv6:

Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is a network layer IP standard used by electronic devices to exchange data across a packet-switched internetwork.

Perhaps we should think about it.

[edit] ICANN Announcement

How about adding something to the page from ICANN's announcement at http://www.icann.org/announcements/announcement-14jul06.htm?

[edit] Criticism?

I was a little surprised not to see more drawbacks of IPv6 given in the article. Several advantages are given, and the article twice calls IPv6 a "conservative extension of IPv4", which seems at least debatable. If the only thing discouraging the use of IPv6 is the availability of NAT, as the article seems to imply, why is adoption so low? Wmahan. 07:11, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

  • Replacing software (including firmware);
  • modifying applications;
  • larger header size.

All three are mentioned in the article. --Jec 00:05, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Quoting the availability of NAT as something that discourages IPv6 adoption is like... say, stating that we really don't need late stage cancer remedies when we have euthanasia. NAT is something that was never supposed to happen. It's an accident and a pita. Wilderns (talk) 15:41, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
I have seen the page~ A criticism of IPv6 that is quite good in context, and I feel that the article "IPv6" should have a section about the criticisms of IPv6. However, I know that adding the section will be very hard (since much research have to be done for writing) and controversial (due to some "expert" would like to revert). Therefore, I would like to ask any "expert" for adding the section. QQ (talk) 18:53, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
Criticisms are important to make sure the article is balanced, and I think too many of the problems with IPv6 are washed over. However, as mentioned above, many of the criticisms are already addressed and the particular article you have linked to seems to be, well, not very well informed. The extra couple dozen bytes in IP header for the larger addresses is not very important, considering the massive increase in bandwidth in the last 20 years. Contrary to the article's claims, the addresses were made that large in order to *reduce* router overhead and a lot of people involved in building routers were involved with the development of IPv6. The article talks about how you will have an "IP address that never changes" due to the MAC address, but that is incorrect. The MAC address is only the bottom 64 bits, and as mentioned already in this article, RFC 3041 addresses the privacy issues. The top 64 bits are set up to make routing to the destination network easy. The article complains about how the routing info in IPv6 makes things easier to locate where you live, but this is exactly the same as with IPv4, only IPv4 requires a more calculations slowing routing down. Basically everything I saw in that article struck me as criticisms based on misunderstanding/ignorance rather than real problems with IPv6. Wrs1864 (talk) 19:50, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
Then, do you think making a section about the criticisms of IPv6 is NOT NECESSARY? But I still think the section should be made, and making such section will be very, very difficult... QQ (talk)
As I said earlier, criticisms are important to make sure the article is balanced, and I think too many of the problems with IPv6 are washed over. I do think it is far more effective and useful to have the entire article written with a neutral point of view, with problems pointed out in the correct sections rather than have a 'rah-rah! go IPv6!" article with a "criticisms" section. A criticisms section may still be useful, but I just don't think it would be the first approach I would take. I also think that it is important to bring up *valid* problems. In the article you mentioned above, one of their complaints was basically "routing will be slower because the fragmentation information in IPv6 is put into an optional header". This is bogus because IPv6 is designed to have routers to not have to deal with fragmentation, rather it is done by the end points via Path MTU discovery. So routers will not only not have to check the optional header, but they will (in theory) be faster because they don't have to deal with fragments at all. A possibly more valid complaint is "does Path MTU discovery work well in practice?" If I recall correctly, the PMTU ICMP packet is spoofable, so it is possible to create a denial-of-service attack using them. The PMTU article lists two RFCs about how to deal with problems with it, which isn't a good sign in my opinion. Another more valid complaint is that the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 is not very easy, DJB has a nice rant page about it, although being a rant, isn't exactly fair or balanced. Basically, I think it is important to cut out the "rah-rah! go IPv6!" stuff, and back up complaints with well-reasoned, reliable sources (WP:RS). Wrs1864 (talk) 13:14, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Addition of books

Hello, as the proud author of the following book, I would like to ask an addition of the following:

Jun-ichiro itojun Hagino, "IPv6 network programmning"

for more info, see http://www.itojun.org/book.j.html. tnx!

itojun

[edit] Transition Technologies and Implementations

Would it be worth listing some of the implementations of transition technologies on the page? For example Miredo ( http://www.remlab.net/miredo/ ) is an open source implementation of Microsoft's Teredo specification.

There's already too many links on this page (please prune!). And there's already a link to Teredo, where you'll find a link to Miredo.

[edit] IPv6 only hosts linked from this page

http://www.ipv6.bieringer.de got removed from the page, it is linked as the IPv6 Calculator page. This page shows one some information about ones IPv6 address. As it is an IPv6-only host (only a AAAA record, no A record) it cannot be reached over IPv4. It indeed thus won't work when you don't have IPv4 connectivity. But it *does* work when you have IPv6 connectivity. One can verify this when having only IPv4 connectivity by going to: http://www.ipv6.bieringer.de.ipv4.sixxs.org this is the URL which passes through the IPv6 Gateway and allows one to view IPv6 only sites with IPv4 only connectivity or IPv4 only sites when having IPv6 only ;) Discriminating IPv6 because you can't reach the site from IPv4 is a bit ehmm weird ;)

Thus: don't remove sites which link to IPv6 only resources unless you have a really deeply argumented reason.


!!!*DON'T* add ipnow.org, it doesn't even have an IPv6 address!!!

$ host -t aaaa www.ipnow.org www.ipnow.org CNAME ipnow.org $ host -t aaaa ipnow.org ipnow.org AAAA record currently not present

Thus it will *NEVER* be able to tell what the IPv6 address of the client is!

People adding it should be marked as vandalism IMHO.

[edit] Split

The article is getting rather long and disorganized. So I would propose splitting it into, IPv6 Development and Implementation, and IPv6 Deployment. If its not split it needs at least some major clean up. --SelfStudyBuddyTALK-- 16:43, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

  • Oppose as proposed. There should be 1 IPV6 article, with subpages if necessary as you mentioned per WP:SUMMARY. There should be a single page located at IPv6 that explains what it is with {{main}} tags for the subarticles, not a dab page that will be confusing to users. Oren0 (talk) 16:59, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
    • Hadn't thought of WP:SUMMARY it probably works better in this situation anyway. I will just remove the split template. --SelfStudyBuddyTALK-- 23:49, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
  • I agree that this article is getting long and should have sections broken out. Wrs1864 (talk) 00:00, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
    • Thinking about this, I've long pondered breaking out the "IPv6 deployment" stuff into another article because it takes up a lot of room both in this article, and in IPv4 address exhaustion. The subject really doesn't belong in the latter article at all and appears to be more of "I don't want to believe the IPv4 addresses are running out because I don't want to switch to IPv6" rants. Yes, the problems with IPv6 need to be mentioned there, but pointing to an appropriate article would be better. Wrs1864 (talk) 15:21, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
      • I have gone ahead and moved the IPv6 related stuff out of IPv4 address exhaustion since it is really about IPv6. While it is kind of a clutter of things, it also adds some balance to this article which is far too much "rah! rah! go IPv6" to be neutral. Wrs1864 (talk)
    • I think splitting this article will be a disaster. IPv6 should come under one big embodiment and not be split up. This will help in research as people will see everything in one single space. If you anyone doesn't need it, then he/ she skips to what he or she needs. Secondly someone will have to know everything on what he/she is researching to find articles like this one (IPv6 Transition). I stumbled on this article which actually is the reason for the research but did not know and what to look for. I will be one of the many who will have a splitting problem.--Tony Klah —Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.201.34.165 (talk) 08:44, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose There should only be one article for this. SMakabwe (talk) 20:50, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I believe that I am the main author of this article.--Jec (talk) 18:07, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
Can you please explain why you oppose in a way that doesn't violate WP:OWN? Wrs1864 (talk) 19:01, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
Huh? In no way did I claim ownership, I just mentioned that I am not a random onlooker. The article is carefully structured: what is it, do people use it, what are those funny things with colons I keep seeing, how does it work, how do we get there. The proposed split broke this structure.--Jec (talk) 23:57, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
While you didn't claim ownership, you also didn't give any reason either. I don't see any reason why the simple questions can continue to be answered as per WP:SUMMARY. It also appears that not everyone agrees that the the article is carefully structured. Wrs1864 (talk) 11:58, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose at this time. A lot of the article consists of blocks of the form "Heading .. one or two sentences", which are causing the article to appear longer than it needs to be. We should attempt to condense these and examine the results before any split happens. Andareed (talk) 22:15, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
  • Copyediting is what this article needs. Template added.--Kozuch (talk) 10:06, 10 June 2008 (UTC)