

Apple iPad Pushing Us Closer to Internet Armageddon - lmacvittie
http://devcentral.f5.com/weblogs/macvittie/archive/2010/05/04/apple-ipad-pushing-us-closer-to-internet-armageddon.aspx

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tedunangst
I thought we were going to run out of IPv4 space last year. Or was that 2008?
2007?

In other news, f5 has some sweet new IPv6 enabled routers to replace all that
obsolete IPv4 stuff you're still running.

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Groxx
IPv4 to IPv6 and vise versa is doable. It's called a NAT. Any DNS request can
be translated, thus any internet access by hostname won't see a difference.
Any non-hostname access can be handled statically by the OS or your router. If
you're accessing by IP address you're kinda shooting your future-self in the
foot anyway, it's just not good if you can't modify it for the future. Even if
the entire Internet were to switch to IPv6, there are ways to make the switch
transparent to end-users.

Granted, it's not foolproof, but you can't have an isomorphic projection
between the two: one has a larger area of data it can address. There _cannot_
be an IPv6 which is 100% backwards compatible with IPv4, because translation
_must_ occur at some level. Why not put the burden on the late-adopters who
are dragging things down anyway?

Switch, or be left to kludge something together when everyone else has. It's
essentially the mantra of digital tech. How many people support Windows 98
still? That's only been a little over 10 years.

This armageddon sounds like Y2K to me. Better start stocking up on the Spam
and beans.

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viraptor
The "iPad problem" is actually quite easy to solve. No 3G provider I know
promises a public ip (even though most of them provide it now afaik). If they
start running low on addresses, you'll find your mobile device natted instead.
That will also mean VoIP problems... a lot of them.

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wwortiz
I wish I could use ipv6 but my ISP doesn't really have the same feelings.

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swombat
Dump the IPv6 standard and release a new standard which is actually backwards-
compatible with IPv4, and perhaps we have a chance to avert this.

IPv6 has been failing to gain adoption for over 10 years now. I recall there
was a detailed article on HN a while ago explaining why IPv6 is never gonna
work, because it's not backwards-compatible with IPv4 (i.e. IPv6 devices can't
access IPv4 devices, and vice versa).

