As we continue our ride toward the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses, Regional Internet Registries public discussion groups such as the ARIN PPML (1) mailing list remain filled with endless discussions on how large swaths of allocated IPv4 addresses are unused, should be reclaimed or recycled one way or another, maybe be put on the free market and sold to the highest bidder or parsed out in more egalitarian controlled ways.

Although everyone now accepts the notion of IPv4 address exhaustion, it seems to be for some an invisible glass wall and for others a gold brick wall worth the death of the internet to get a piece of it. For others still, the wall will never be reached, just as Achilles will never overtake the tortoise or the arrow never reach its target. Our modern day Zeno’s (2) seem to believe that by adding layer upon layer of NAT’s, the address exhaustion wall will not be reached in their lifetime or at least until their retirement. To prove them wrong could still take some time. After all it took about two thousand years to see Cantor (3) prove old Zeno wrong.

In the meantime, the upcoming IETF in Minneapolis (4) will see a half dozen transition mechanisms in search of legitimacy, their respective champions passionate to see their approach prevail with the minimum of alterations. Add another two years or so before RFC status and implementation in vendor software…. A chance of a wall somewhere on our path in the meantime?

Luckily, while some figure out the essence of that wall and clever ways to soften and cushion a seemingly inevitable impact, some are busy trying to move it inch by inch out of the way. The routing table has reached a thousand IPv6 prefixes (5), the number of devices bearing the IPv6 Forum Gold Label (6) is zeroing on 300. The ARIN/CAIDA survey (7) of more than 1000 respondents show nearly half of them plan IPv6 transition and 10% of them cite difficulty to get sufficient IPv4 address space as a motivation.

Zeno might still get his revenge.

Yves Poppe
November 2008

1. http://lists.arin.net/mailman/listinfo/arin-ppml

2. http://www.mathacademy.com/pr/prime/articles/zeno_tort/index.asp

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Cantor

4. http://www.ietf.org/meetings/73/

5. IPv6 routing table report by CJ Aronson

6. http://www.ipv6ready.org/frames.html

7. IPv6 penetration study by KC Claffy

Microsoft showed Windows 7 for the first time this week and one of the interesting features relating to IPv6 was Direct Access. Direct Access is presented as a replacement to classical VPN solutions and will allow users to directly access resources on their enterprise network without having to connect a VPN. This is done using IPv6 and IPSec and will be part of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Microsoft has published some more information about the solution in the server 2008 R2 reviewers guide which shows IPv6 used to access both IPv4 and IPv6 services on the enterprise network. This is a network graph from the guide.

Windows Server 2008 R2 DirectAccess for Windows 7

Presentations at successive IPv6 related forums, summits and other conferences tend to become rather repetitive and some even in need of an urgent slide dust-off. Luckily some fresh perspectives emerge occasionally such as at the Taiwan IPv6 Summit (1) early September. Being in the market for a new home router, I could not but pay attention to a presentation (2) by D-Link extolling their IPv6 support for home routers! Back here in Canada, the local D-Link site (3) provided me some info on IPv6 but only for DGS series (3), nothing yet for the wireless home routers I am looking for. I checked also Linksys but found nothing at all on their IPv6 support. Granted, my high-speed internet provider, Videotron, our local cable co, does not support IPv6 yet but they claim it is coming but not sure exactly when. Still I’d prefer to buy an IPv6 ready box, even if I have to continue some tunnelling for a while. Could our dear home router suppliers start to use the IPv6 ready logo as a competitive differentiator in the market place? After all, the people selling flat screen TV’s in the same stores will recommend HD1080p models at a premium to be future proof. Why not do the same praising the day IPv6 and its virtues will permeate the internet and its applications.

It so happens that Montreal hosts an IETF IPv4-IPv6 coexistence meeting (5) this coming week to iron out IPv6 transition issues and mechanisms and that my internet service supplier will also be represented. While “Real” IPv6 connectivity in my neighbourhood might still be some time off, I feel it is getting closer. In the meantime I think I’ll wait for that IPv6 ready logo before buying a new home router. To his credit, the sales rep at Future Shop had vaguely heard about IPv6 and intelligently suggested that I could probably upload a new firmware version later on; true but still, I prefer that “IPv6 ready” gold label; would make me more comfortable, just like that HD1080 label on the television set.

Yves Poppe
October 2008

1. http://www.ipv6.org.tw/summit2008/En/Index.htm
2. http://www.ipv6.org.tw/summit2008/En/Preliminary%20Program3.htm
3. http://www.dlink.ca/
4. http://www.dlink.ca/business/IPv6/
5. http://trac.tools.ietf.org/area/int/trac/wiki/v4v6interim

Hello, as you can see we have added a blog to go6.net.  Various authors will cover the different aspects of deploying IPv6 including perspectives from: business, IT, standards, markets/countries, governments and technology.  We think this will be a helpful addition to the existing information on go6 geared to help people deploy IPv6.
We are also boosting our infrastructure.  For those of you who don’t know, withing go6 we have the popular Freenet6 (FN6) service.  After doing their homework on go6 people can get their hands dirty by using v6 in their own networks.  FN6 provides free IPv6 connectivity via the FN6 tunnel broker service powered by a single Hexago Gateway6 that has been graciously hosted by Tata Communications on their v6 backbone here in Montreal.  In the last six months the FN6 server has been completely overwhelmed by a steady increase in users to the point where people in Asia, Europe and Latin America can barely get a working v6 connection.  To remedy this we are in the process of deploying the Freenet6 Federation (FN6F) which will be a group of FN6 servers hosted on various networks around the world.  In the coming months we will add servers in the U.S., Netherlands, Germany and Hong Kong.  This first expansion should provide the necessary servers and capacity to support any user wanting to experiment with IPv6.
We will also be expanding the FN6 services beyond IPv6 connectivity so stay tuned for more information…