

The interspecies internet? An idea in progress [video] - rootj
http://www.ted.com/talks/the_interspecies_internet_an_idea_in_progress.html

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dgallagher
I've always found it difficult to communicate IPv6 addresses over the
telephone, or type them in manually, when compared to IPv4. IPv6 does have
abbreviation built in, but "2001:db8::ff00:42:8329"
("2001:0db8:0000:0000:0000:ff00:0042:8329") is still much more difficult to
use than, say, 69.135.54.4.

Has anyone created an easier way to communicate IPv6 addresses, or is this
something we'll have to learn to live with?

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hebz0rl
That's what DNS is for.

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StephenFalken
AMS-IX IPv6 Traffic Statistics: [https://www.ams-
ix.net/technical/statistics/sflow-stats/ipv6...](https://www.ams-
ix.net/technical/statistics/sflow-stats/ipv6-traffic)

~~~
AndrewDucker
And Google's:
[http://www.google.com/ipv6/statistics.html](http://www.google.com/ipv6/statistics.html)

We seem to be doubling yearly, which means we'll hit 50% in about 2018.

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ksec
I wish some of the biggest country should mandate all router and ISP to have
IPv6 by 201x.

Otherwise we are just not getting anywhere.

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glhaynes
Are we really not getting anywhere? (Serious question, not something I know
much about.) Is there anywhere that significant progress is being made in IPv6
usage? If so, is it isolated to particular kinds/parts of networks?

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zaphoyd
Yes, progress is being made. Software, network backbone, and data center
support is all pretty good now. Last mile access and content are the main
areas now where you can't expect support by default.

Many of the largest content providers (Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, YouTube,
Netflix, iTunes, CloudFlare, Limelight, Akamai, 40% of the US government) have
deployed IPv6 in production. Many of the largest ISPs have as well (In the US:
Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Google Fiber).

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dmoney
This more about non-human intelligence than about IPv6. I was hoping Cerf
would go into why IPv6 is better for the "internet of things" or "interspecies
Internet" than IPv4. Also, maybe an explanation in layman's terms why IPv4
won't scale further, even with the workarounds that are currently in use.

~~~
devonnulled
Hey there. I work at ARIN. An explanation of why IPv4 won't scale any further:
(Please note that any opinions expressed here are my own and not of my
employer)

Of course, we have a currently limited amount of IP addresses that can be
given out. When IANA/RIRs were formed, IANA gave allocations of /8's (the
largest groups of IPv4 addresses) out to all of the RIRs, who then assigned
them to organizations within their respective areas. (For example, APNIC -
Asia Pacific, AFRINIC - Africa, ARIN - North America) The problem now is that
we are simply running out of addresses with the current number of internet
connected devices.

Now, we resolve this within our own homes by using routers that support NAT
(Network Address Translation) which is fine for our own local sites. However,
a large amount of ISPs want to enable something called CGN (Carrier-grade NAT)
which will take what happens on your own local router and blanket it over
their entire network. This is where a large group of customers (including you)
would have one single (or a handful) of IPv4 addresses that represent you on
the public internet, but each site/home/office would have its own internal IP
address to that ISP's network. Most cell phone providers actually already do
this (although I'm not sure if we can call it CGN) where your phone has a
Class C IP address assigned to it when you connect to the network, but all
traffic goes through a single IP address.

Now there are problems to this:

1\. It is hard to track who is doing what. If a customer of an ISP performs
some sort of illegal action (bomb threats, hacking, etc use your imagination
here. ;) ) It is hard to track down who is exactly doing what without your ISP
simply logging all requests that you make. Instead in the current form, your
ISP can be simply asked "Hey, who had this IPv4 address at this time?" instead
of "Hey, what sites was this person looking at?"

2\. Let's say that you were a member of some sort of forum or new site (take
HN or reddit for example) and someone sharing your IPv4 address did something
that caused that IP address to be banned. Now, you cannot access the site.
This allows your access to the internet to be dependent upon whoever else is
using that same address. Of course, this can (and has happened) already by
sites blocking entire subnets (a lot of IRC networks do this for overseas
networks that usually harbor abuse.)

3\. It simply becomes confusing security-wise. Take into consideration that
you had a VPS or server with a provider like Digital Ocean or Linode. You set
up a firewall on that server to allow only your IP address in. Now, you've
allowed everyone else sharing that same IP address to access your server if
they knew the credentials.

With IPv6, we have more addresses than there are grains of sand on Earth (as
the saying goes.) We also said that we'd never run out of IP addresses with
IPv4, but the growth of the Internet was seriously underestimated!

Some ISPs will run dual-stack (I believe Comcast does now) where all users now
have IPv4 and IPv6 addresses!

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chatmasta
How do you think the move to IPv6 will affect the VPN market?

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moreentropy
Tell that to my ISP. :(

