Are your networks ready for the cutover to IPv6?

I don't think cutover is the right word. It will be a gradual transition over many years, with end users seeing virtually no change. Let's not forget tons of appliances and servers simply not ready or ever tested or even compatible with ipv6. Encapsulation, emulation, side by side use. If html5 is going to take 10-12 years to transition, ipv6 will take 20 or more.
Mrk

 

Interesting ... I ran the tests they linked to, and found that (as suspected) I'm not v6 ready. I called my ISP, and the tech-support guy says that despite the panic-hype, they don't see a real need for the average home user to convert yet for probably another 5 years. Most web sites will almost certainly retain v4, or more likely, accept both protocols for quite a while yet, and the most likely effect visible to the end-user won't be the inaccessibility of some sites, but rather a reduced availability of dynamic IP's. His bottom line: "If it ain't broke, don't 'fix' it".

 

Let's hope that things won't take that long...

 

On the contrary, you do want them to take that long.
Better slow than problematic.
Mrk

 

My ISP does not even support new users with IPv6, much less have a plan for cutover of the existing physical plant, whether with Toredo tunneling or Even my Tomato firmware is not there yet. Ho hum, another doomsday warning.

 

Too late, there will be problems and the whole transition just can't be smooth anymore.

 

Can't Technology improve things so that we will not need decades?

 

The problem is not technology. The problem is that you must make sure nothing breaks. Think some bank or a financial institution or a medical facility running some solaris machine from 1994 or who knows what os. No one dares touch it or move or fix it, because no one knows what will happen.

Companies will prefer to let legacy stuff die than fix it. Home users are irrelevant here. Think big, cumbersome institutions that require 24/7 uptime and zero errors. They won't be easily moved to change, for all kinds of reasons. The change will happen when old stuff dies.

Mrk

 

I don't really see the point of this analogy. Once the last IPv4 address is used, there will be simply no way for new users to connect. Very few IPv4 addresses remain unused - they can't hold the internet user-base huge annual growth.

That's why ISPs will start doing (if not already doing) "ugly" things in their networks, to prevent the ruin of their businesses. But they know that even distributed NAT is a temporary solution.

The transition to IPv6 is inevitable. Sadly, many of them simply delayed the IPv6 deployment to cut costs and maximize profits. But now they will be forced to hurry up.

 

One million users out initially seems big at first look, but in reality it corresponds to a very small percentage of the Yahoo internet users, less than 1% of them.

Sorry discontinued Windows users that browse Yahoo, the IPv6 compatibility is much more important.

 

If you search the forum here, you should see a fork of Tomato that supports IPv6.
Advanced Search term = tomato; user name = Searching_ _ _

[Chorus]It's the end of the web and you know it, but I feel fine![/Chorus]

Virtual hosting will become the main focus when IPv4 runs out.

 

http://mybroadband.co.za/news/internet/18157-IPv4-addresses-now-finished-and-klaar.html

A few hours ago, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) allocated the last 2 free batches of IPv4 addresses to APNIC, regional Internet registry of the Asia Pacific.

 

All /8 segments need to be abolished and restructured.
Force all companies to use internal networks.
Mrk

 

Re the "funeral" article by Lawson:

Interesting, because I'd asked a rep from my (local regional) provider about this, and his guess was the same, about 5 years. Presumably that means they've got a big enough block of IPs, relative to number of current subscribers, that they don't foresee any significant problem with dynamic IPs for a while yet. And most people I've talked to have agreed that restrictions in the availability of dynamic IPs will almost certainly be the first noticeable effect of the IPv4 situation.

 

Switches too:

http://www.windowsitpro.com/article/john-savills-windows-faqs/q-how-do-i-enable-jumbo-frames-.aspx

 

I did the test using 2 different browsers on the same system and got a startling result. When I opened FF 3.6.13, I got 10/10 for my system (of course my ISP is not ready ... but that is not at all startling). I closed FF and opened Chrome 9 and I did not get an IPV6 address and the test indicated that the browser was blocking the test. Has anybody else tested more than one browser on a single system ? Also has anybody else had the browser block the test?

System: W7/32.