Only 5x IPv4 ... WRONG! :)

Wed Oct 20 07:16:20 UTC 2010

On Oct 19, 2010, at 11:37 PM, George Bonser wrote:

> 
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> 
>> 	IPv6 - while it has just over a decade of work, still has a long
>> way
>> 	to go to fulfill its promise. For the oldtimers, remember that
> it
>> took
>> 	IP a couple of decades to "gel" at version 4.  Sure, we can (and
>> in
>> 	some cases - MUST) cram the "Internet" model on IPv6, but that
> is
>> a
>> 	genuine waste of opportunity.
>> 
>> 
>> 	So ... can we let an IPv6-based "polyphonic-net" embrace, and
>> subsume
>> 	the old, last century Internet?  Or is that asking too much of
>> the
>> 	sales/marketing droids?
> 
> Most of the problems I have seen with v6 really aren't v6 problems.
> Programs and their various libraries, for example, that parse an address
> with a colon as a hostname is one example.  Now I could even work around
> that by populating the local default dns domain with records that
> resolve to AAAA records ... if I could put a colon in a hostname (e.g.
> someone enters fe80::1e:dead:beef:cafe, the program looks up
> fe80::1e:dead:beef:cafe.my.local-domain rather than trying to connect to
> fe80:1e:dead:beef:cafe and dns returns with the AAAA record, that
> problem fixed, but I can't, so it isn't.) And even that would only work
> for a few commonly accessed hosts.
> 
Most likely a program that parses a : as a host name indicator wouldn't
be able to handle the return of an AAAA record anyway. There
are code changes required for IPv6 support and it is unlikely that
any software which has been thus updated would have the
problem you describe.
> 
> Now the problems with things like load balancing is real.  Our vendor
> supports front end v6 VIPs balanced to backend v4 servers, but it
> requires a code update that must be tested before deployment and an
> outage scheduled once it has been tested.  It isn't something that can
> just be thrown out there on a whim.
> 
Sure, it lies somewhere between whim and major undertaking.
Where on that path depends on the quality of your vendors' support
for IPv6 and how early you start planning.

> The biggest cultural change is coming out of RFC1918 dungeons into the
> light of internet routable space and how people deal with that.  It will
> be a very interesting time for networks, their vendors, and the
> engineers/techs/administrators. 
> 
The light is good. Yes, it requires some adaptation if you've been
living in the darkness of 1918 space for some time, but, once you
adapt (and the adaptation is not that painful), it's actually a very
useful thing.

Owen