Archive for IPv6

RB | June 4, 2011
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Google, Facebook and Yahoo to Test IPv6

A global trial of IPv6 is scheduled for June 8th 2011.  Google (GOOG), Facebook, Yahoo (YHOO) and Akamai (AKAM) will reportedly take part in the IPv6 “test flight.”  The Internet Society, a non-profit group which educates people and companies about net issues is coordinating  World IPv6 Day.  Those who sign up for the test will make their pages available via IPv6 for 24 hours to help iron out problems created by the switch to the new addressing scheme.

“By providing an opportunity for the internet industry to collaborate to test IPv6 readiness we expect to lay the groundwork for large-scale IPv6 adoption and help make IPv6 ready for prime time,” said Leslie Daigle, chief internet technology officer at the Internet Society in a statement.

Cerf wants you to use IPv6“The good news is that internet users don’t need to do anything special to prepare for World IPv6 Day,” said Lorenzo Colitti, a network engineer at Google in a blog post. “Our current measurements suggest that the vast majority (99.95%) of users will be unaffected. However, in rare cases, users may experience connectivity problems, often due to misconfigured or misbehaving home network devices.”

According to Google, Vint Cerf, the program manager for the ARPA Internet research project chose a 32-bit address format for an experiment in packet network interconnection in 1977. For more than 30 years, 32-bit addresses have served us well, but now the Internet is running out of space. IPv6 is the only long-term solution, but it has not yet been widely deployed.  In November 2010 Mr.  Cerf, one of the driving forces behind Google’s IPv6 efforts warned that the net faced “turbulent times” if it did not move quickly to adopt IPv6.

 

rb-

It will be interesting to see the number of participants. This all may just blow over the top because not enough of the right people in organizations see the need. I spoke to my Boss about this a while ago and I think one phone call has been made to our upstream ISP to see what they are doing.  We probably wont deal with it until there is a need for a point-to-point IP video conference with China or something and when it wont work,  then it be a crisis that gets addressed.

What do you think?

Is your organization participating in World IPv6 day?

Does World IPv6 day even matter?

Does your organization have a plan for IPv6 migration?

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RB | April 30, 2011
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IPv4 Address Grey Market Emerges

The UK’s Register reports that depletion of the world’s IPv4 address space is spawning a new development in the Internet address space, IPv4 address trading. According to the Register,  German Phython developer Martin von Loewis launched a site called Tradipv4.com in March. The site is offering IPv4 addresses for $3 for v4 addresses located in American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN)  and $4 for those in the Asia Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC) region.

TradeIPv4IPv4 address trading, however, is still a grey market idea now. FireceTelecom reports that to make sure that unmanaged address transfers don’t compromise network operations or security, the Internet Society (ISOC) said that buyers and sellers should make sure any “transfers be affected per appropriate Regional Internet Registry (RIR) processes.” Citing its own estimate of prices reaching $11 per address, ISOC said, “We strongly urge that such transfers be affected per appropriate RIR processes.” Unmanaged address transfers will undermine network operations, and it could raise security issues since anonymous address spaces can be spoofed according to ISOC.

Internet Society logoOn their FAQ page, Tradeip4.com says its auctions can cover both the sale and lease of addresses, subject to RIR policies. Some of these policies, the site notes, have grey areas. For example, APNIC policy aims to discourage address transfer by applying what amounts to a 12 month embargo on the originating party receiving new addresses. However, Tradeip4.com dismisses this as irrelevant, since APNIC’s space is exhausted and no new blocks are being assigned according to FierceTelecom. Despite these concerns, Tradeip4.com, maintains that it can sell and lease IPv4 addresses and maintains that it follows RIR policies.

This is not just a SMB issue Microsoft (MSFT),  recently bought Nortel‘s IPv4 addresses (Which I wrote about here). Craig Labovitz, Chief Scientist for network security vendor Arbor Networks, told FierceTelecom that Nortel’s deal with Microsoft reflects how IPv4 depletion is becoming a more pressing issue, now that IPv4 is a scarce resource.

IPv4 addresses have not been a scarce resource and no one has had to pay more, but what really is starting to change is Microsoft spending money to buy Nortel’s IPv4 address space.  For the first time, there’s now a price associated with V4, and one you have a price you start having providers charge for it and start seeing people having a reason to care.

The Register article notes that the Canadian government, via its Industry Canada department, is also against the trade of IPv4 addresses, and it has weighed in on the sale of Nortel’s addresses to Microsoft. In a letter discussed on CircleID, Industry Canada expressed its support for the long-standing position that addresses are not property and therefore cannot be traded.

rb-

I see several problems with the  IPv4 grey market. Trading in IPv4 is just another sign of resistance to IPv6. Firms with a global view have to realize that reallocation of a handful of  IPv4 will not make a difference in an IPv6 world. Another issue could be the routability of an IPv4 address originally assigned to APIC and traded on the grey-market to RIPE. Right now there is no guarantee that these type of addresses will be recognized. There are also political issues, the Canadian government opposes the IP grey-market. Industry Canada has expressed its support for the long-standing position that addresses are not property and therefore cannot be traded.

The ISOC says IPv4 addresses are worth $11.00, MSFT paid $11.25 and ARIN addresses are currently (04-30-11) trading $7.00 per IP. on tradeipv4.com so MSFT appears to have overpaid for the Nortel address range. The bigger issue is the change in nature of an IP address.

What do you think?

Are grey market IPv4 addresses woth it?

Has your firm started its transition to IPv6?

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RB | April 17, 2011
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Asia out of IPv4 addresses

IPv6The Asia Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC) has run out of all but a handful of IPv4 addresses that it is holding in reserve for start-up network operators. APNIC is the first of the Internet’s five regional Internet registries to deplete its free pool of IPv4 address space according to reports from Networks Asia. (I wrote about China’s IPv4 struggles here.)

ChinaAPNIC’s news is another sign that CIOs and other IT executives need to begin migrating to IPv6.”For anybody who hasn’t figured out that it’s time to do IPv6, this is another wake-up call for them,”  Owen DeLong, an IPv6 evangelist at Hurricane Electric and a member of the board of ARIN told Networks Asia. Any CIO who isn’t planning for IPv6 is “driving toward a brick wall and closing your eyes and hoping that it’s going to disappear before you get there,” Mr. DeLong says ignoring IPv6 “is not the best strategy.”

Paul Wilson, Director General of APNIC tells Networks Asia that , if a business is thinking of doing on the Internet, they need to have a plan to transition to IPv6 in place. “If you want to do business with China in the future for example, you will be to be on IPv6 or you won’t be able to reach your customers,” Mr. Wilson said.

Scott and Spock work on IPv6

The router is here Spock

The Asia-Pacific region has been gobbling up the most IPv4 address space in recent years; APNIC has apparently distributed more than 32 million IPv4 addresses to network operators in this region in the last two months alone. APNIC has depleted its IPv4 address space “dramatically faster than people expected,” Mr. DeLong says. “My guess is that a lot of operators in the Asia-Pacific region realized the time of IPv4 depletion was drawing near and they rushed to get their applications in.” But countries in the region are doing well with their IPv6 transition plans Mr. Wilson said.

But counties with developing markets also had the advantage where they could leapfrog any potential problems and move straight to greenfield IPv6 infrastructure Wilson said. APNIC is holding 16.7 million IPv4 addresses (a /8 in network engineering terms) in reserve to distribute in tiny allotments of around 1,000 addresses each to new and emerging IPv6-based networks so they can continue to communicate with the largely IPv4-based Internet infrastructure.

“RIPE [the European Internet registry] is going to be the next one to run out. I wouldn’t count on them making it until July[2011],” DeLong says. “I think ARIN (which doles out IPv4 and IPv6 address space to companies operating in North America,)  will make it to the end of this year; maybe we’ll run out in October or November[2011].”

According to Mr. Wilson the move to IPv6 should be the last we will experience. “We should be afraid of a situation where we exhaust IPv6. If the move from Ipv4 was difficult, the next will be a disaster,” he said.

rb-

The regional Internet registries will have handed out most IPv4 address space by the end of 2011. Lots of organizations need to get on their transition plan. I have noted the need for IPv6 planning here, here and here.

What do you think?

Is IPv6 a real topic in your organization?

Has your organization even formed a team to discuss IPv6 addresses?

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RB | April 4, 2011
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IPv4 Address Worth $11.25

IPv6Now that the last IPv4 addresses are gone, the Internet numbers are increasing in value. Microsoft is spending $7.5 million for 666,625 IPv4 addresses from Nortel (NRTLQ). As Google (GOOG) and Apple (AAPL) fight over Nortel’s 4G bones (which I noted earlier), DownloadSquad reports that Microsoft (MSFT) jumped all over Nortel’s stash of IPv4 addresses when they became available for purchase through bankruptcy proceedings.

NortelMicrosoft ponied up $7.5 million for the Nortel pool, which works out to $11.25 per IP address. There were 13 other interested buyers, but only Microsoft and three others actually submitted bids according to DownloadSquad. With the last block of IPv4 addresses already issued (which I wrote about when it happened), snatching up over 666,000 IPv4 addresses in one fell swoop is a smart move by Microsoft.

rb-

Steve BallmerCould Ballmer‘s boys be planning a cloud based IPv6 <–> IPv4 transition service?

Are they trying jump-start an IPv4 address space underground economy?

Like the authors say, we’ll just have to wait and see.

What do you think?

What is Redmond up to?

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RB | January 31, 2011
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The IPocalypse is Nigh

ipv6forumThe IPocalypse will cause users with improperly configured computers to experience slowdowns, timeouts or other connectivity issues when the Internet moves to the IPv6 protocol unless they are ready. To see if you are ready to endure the IPocalypse ghacks points us to IPv6-Test.com.  The site has an Open Source script that runs using JavaScript. Just visit the website click and wait until the test has finished. The IPv6 test runs a series of tests including the browser’s IPv4 and IPv6 capabilities, IPv4 and IPv6 connectivity with and without DNS records and a test that checks if the ISP’s DNS server uses IPv6.

Don't PanicAccording to ghacks the most important test for users to run  is the dual stack test. There will be a transition period where websites and services can be reached via IPv4 or IPv6. The user’s computer needs to pick one of the protocols and use it for the connection which means that devices that only support IPv4 at this time can still connect to the websites. Connectivity issues occur if this is broken.

Major services and websites will switch to IPv6 for a 24 hour period on World IPv6 day on June 8. Among them Google, Facebook and Yahoo. That’s where the dual stack DNS record support can be tested in a life environment.

Is this really the IPocalypse or just marketing hype?
Have you tested your connection?

This gadget has been developed by Takashi Arano, Intec NetCore

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