Is IPv6 really the future of IPv4?

Sounds Good

I was discussing where the IT world was headed with my co-worker and brought up how Networking will only get bigger with the implementation of IPv6 in the coming years. He made the claim that IPv6 is hard to implement/was poorly made and that it is going to be replaced with a different protocol. Granted, he doesn't know much about networking, but he said he's read articles about this.

Is there any truth to these claims?

networker050184

I'm sure a new protcol, or just another version of IP will be out eventually, but IPv6 is coming. Better be ready for it!

Sounds Good

networker050184 wrote: »

I'm sure a new protcol, or just another version of IP will be out eventually, but IPv6 is coming. Better be ready for it!

Do you feel there is a chance that IPv6 will be completely scrapped in place of a more efficient/easier to implement protocol?

NetworkVeteran

Sounds Good wrote: »

Do you feel there is a chance that IPv6 will be completely scrapped in place of a more efficient/easier to implement protocol?

IPv6 isn't particularly difficult to implement, and most big players have invested at least some resources getting comfortable and prepared for it. If you're asking if IPv6 is going to be dead-on-arrival and replaced right away, the answer is no.

Thinking long-term, of course it's going to be replaced, eventually.

networker050184

Sounds Good wrote: »

Do you feel there is a chance that IPv6 will be completely scrapped in place of a more efficient/easier to implement protocol?

Nope. Not sure what your friend is referring to as difficult to implement. Probably paraphrasing some old outdated article.

f0rgiv3n

IPv6 is already here! No going back now...

olaHalo

i have not seen or worked or heard of any company using IPv6 in my area.

DevilWAH

I am implementing IPv6 and once you get in to it, its no harder than implementing IPv4. Learning subnet masking and address schemes in IPv4 had to be learnt, IPv6 is just the same. Its not identical to IPv4, but in many ways its not all that different either.

Set up a test lab of a few routers and clients and you will get you head around the fundamentals in a week, and be happly sub-netting and routing, and once you get it, you find its much more flexible and straight forward to manage, indeed you can even do away with DHCP very easily. the restriction in IPv4 where things like gateways have to be static have been removed. you have o take the mind set that the devices and network will take care of them selves not and embrace DNS and host names and leave the network to work out the rest.

I don't really see alternatives to IP aking of, IPv4 and 6 are now so ingrained, that to move to some thing else would be a huge cost to the core ISP who service the internet.

However there has been talk of alternatives to UDP and TCP. TCP in particular was designed with a lot of error checking and control to allow it to support poor quality connections. This means that a small amount of errors on the network can cause data transfer to crawl as TCP backs of as it insures all packets arrive in the correct order. Soem new solutions push the transmission control to the application and use UDP as the transport protocol. This can give hughe incress in proformance, Aspera - High-speed file transfer software for example have done this.

Aspera shows a Los Angeles-to-New York cross-country link with 90 ms of RTT and a packet loss ratio of 1 percent operating at a maximum throughput of 1.4 Mbps, regardless of the actual bandwidth capacity of the link. If a user wanted to send a 1 GB file over this link, it would take 1 hour and 42 minutes.

The cross-country link mentioned above consisting of a 155 Mbps OC-3 circuit with a 90 ms RTT and a 1 percent packet loss rate saw its utilization rate go up to 154 Mbps using the Aspera technology, reducing the time needed for transferring a 1 GB file to 55 seconds.
(this was in 2008 but software still very much alive today in the research community)

that's a 100X ingress in transfer rate. (I have tested this software personal and it does make a staggering difference)

So IPv6 here to stay. TCP... This is where i see some major changes coming along.

Jasiono

olaHalo wrote: »

i have not seen or worked or heard of any company using IPv6 in my area.

Work where I do

Trifidw

I suggest that your friend learns how to implement IPv6. IMO, if starting from scratch, it is easier to implement. It is only strange when you are used to IPv4. The cost to business implementing something other than IPv6 will be huge now.

f0rgiv3n

IPv6: RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!

About7Narwhal

olaHalo wrote: »

i have not seen or worked or heard of any company using IPv6 in my area.

Japan. While the service is not the best, they have had a significant adoption. IPv6 will become bigger in the next few years as technology gets cheaper and IPv4 address availability dwindles.

goldenlight

MY Asus Router supports IPV6, my isp does not at this time.

gorebrush

IPv6 is coming, like it or not.

I personally have not learned enough IPv6 yet, and at the moment I work in an environment where IPv4 rules, there is no v6 that I know of at all.

However, I do wonder about getting boned up on it and becoming some kind of migration architect type person. I think there may be some very very big money in the area of transitioning firms to IPv6, tbh...

jdancer

Really looking forward to IPv6. No more broadcast traffic. Just unicast and multicast. Yea!

NetworkVeteran

jdancer wrote: »

Really looking forward to IPv6. No more broadcast traffic. Just unicast and multicast. Yea!

On the other hand, it introduces Anycast addressing, and there is that All-nodes-'multicast'-address FF02:0:0:0:0:0:0:1.

(Whether that address is more equivalent to 255.255.255.255 or 224.0.0.1 is a matter of semantics.)

Sounds Good

gorebrush wrote: »

However, I do wonder about getting boned up on it and becoming some kind of migration architect type person. I think there may be some very very big money in the area of transitioning firms to IPv6, tbh...

I believe there to be big money here as well. Anyone been in this situation (IPv6 Migration) that can shed some light? What is needed? What are certifications/experiences one should have to be able to manage a project such as this?

wes allen

A timely article from Ars:

INET Denver considers Internet life without IPv4 addresses | Ars Technica

Zartanasaurus

The day of reckoning is continually overstated because we are good at coming up with workarounds. What if ISPs decide that CG-NAT is the way to go instead of IPv6?

UK ISP PlusNet Testing Carrier-Grade NAT Instead of IPv6 - Slashdot

As far as making "big money" on IPv6 transitions, I dunno. For something like virtualization, you can pitch cost savings over buying rack mount servers. What's the "this is how you help your bottom line" sales pitch for IPv6?

jibbajabba

I honestly doubt there will be roles available for the sake of IPv6 transitioning. I think it's more like demanded / expected from current network staff to adapt their skills and implement where and if necessary.

kurosaki00

Well it is certainly better than IPv4
But remember that these type of protocols suites take A LOT of time to be fully implemented
and by Fully I mean they become the standard outside but doesnt mean its 100% running around
IPv4 began to be developed in the 70's, who knows if before

Until there is a NEED for IPv6 there wont be giant steps in its implementation
As we see security issues/cyber terrorism/bandwith problems/new protocols surge, eventually the masses will realize we need to migrate.
But until then, the popular IT phrase
"If it works, dont fix it".

it_consultant

This will be transparent to most of us who are non-telco types. Even if we are forced into IPV6 by our carrier I can easily (by way of one ADX) NAT IPV6 into IPV4. I wish they would just get on with it, instead of just talking endlessly about it.

MentholMoose

Sounds Good wrote: »

I was discussing where the IT world was headed with my co-worker and brought up how Networking will only get bigger with the implementation of IPv6 in the coming years. He made the claim that IPv6 is hard to implement/was poorly made and that it is going to be replaced with a different protocol. Granted, he doesn't know much about networking, but he said he's read articles about this.

Is there any truth to these claims?

Most complaints I've seen about IPv6 are about the transition to it and not the protocol itself. But this is expected since people don't like change and many will be vocal about it. People complained (or so I've read) when the Internet transitioned to TCP/IP in 1983, when the number of Internet-connected hosts was in the 100s. Ditching IPv6 in favor of something else likely wouldn't help with this at all, since there would still be a transition. Furthermore, IPv6 has already been implemented by many backbone providers so it wouldn't make sense to ditch it at this point.

Other complaints I've seen are still not about the protocol but rather about implementations of it. Over the next several years I'm sure there will be many bugs and vulnerabilities found in IPv6 stacks, routers, firewalls, and so on. Here's a recent example:

Kaspersky Firewall IPv6 Vulnerability