When you talk to networkers about IPv6, there’s often an awkward silence: The successor to the IPv4 address standard dates back to 1998 — and despite all the efforts of the networking community, it has yet to catch on across the board. Has not replaced IPv4. Although creating sensible dual-stack setups with support for IPv4 and IPv6 is generally good form in a network environment, many providers take a naive approach to the issue: large sites like GitHub still do not support IPv6. In this context, there is often talk of a chicken-and-egg problem, as ISPs do not offer IPv6 because apparently there is not enough demand from customers – after all, many sites on the network are accessed via IPv6. Cannot be reached from. On the other hand, sites with IPv4 setup state that introducing IPv6 is pointless unless potential visitors cannot use the standard due to their own IPv6 configuration. In any case, IPv6 is still far from the stated goal of eliminating the potential shortage of IPv4 addresses by increasing the address space. A fast trade in IPv4 addresses has long been established.
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Against this background, an interview with the chief scientist of APNIC, the agency responsible for IP in the Asia-Pacific region, caused a stir: in it Geoff Huston said that the goal of completely replacing IPv4 with IPv6 was obsolete in his eyes.
name instead of address
According to Huston, the reasons for this are varied. Initially, a major problem was that the need for IPv6 could not be meaningfully communicated to many Internet users because it did not provide any additional functionality other than a larger address space. In a way, there is no incentive to switch to IPv6. Additionally, the planned introduction of IPv6 unfortunately also boosted the use of mobile devices such as the iPhone, which presented providers with entirely new challenges in terms of traffic. The theory goes that companies that might otherwise have been busy adopting IPv6 were busy optimizing their environments to meet the growing demand from mobile devices. Various types of NAT were used, which to this day work with sufficient quality for most users.
IPv6 has now reached distribution of more than 40 percent of Internet users, which Huston attributes primarily to the fact that only relatively small IPv4 address blocks are reserved for the APAC region as a whole. IPv6 is especially important there. For Huston, another circumstance shows that the IPv6 train has now left ground: In order to deliver an ever-increasing amount of content to users, the industry has established the principle of content delivery networks (CDNs). However, for these, the names are primarily important and the IP addresses used less so. A large part of access control in networks is already done primarily through DNS and load balancers. As a result, the importance of IP takes a back seat; Instead there should be central magic in the respective applications.
Accordingly, Huston advocates a more pragmatic approach to migration to IPv6: the goal is no longer necessarily to completely replace IPv4 with IPv6. Instead, one could claim that the IPv6 transition will be successfully completed if it is possible for ISPs to provide meaningful service to their customers without IPv4. It’s all about the details: Huston’s goal will eventually require all ISPs and all service providers to support IPv6. According to this logic, whether IPv4, IPv6 or even completely different technologies are used in the background of applications will ultimately make no difference.
In his conclusion, Huston even goes a step further: he questions the definition of the Internet as a “collection of networks” with a common address space and believes that in the future the Internet will be defined as a combination of services with similar uses. Will be seen in. Access methods. In general, the relevance of networks will continue to decline as before and the importance of services will in turn increase. Interested readers can find the full article On the APNIC Blog,
finger in the wound
Whether Huston’s predictions will come true or not is certainly anyone’s guess. In any case, from his interview he puts his finger on the IPv6 wound mentioned at the beginning. Given the very slow pace of IPv6 adoption throughout the Internet community, it is at least understandable that people in some places no longer believe in the final and complete replacement of IPv4 by IPv6. However, one should not give too much importance to Huston’s statements – anyone who wants to use the interview as an excuse to stop their own project to introduce IPv6 would be wrong: after all, Huston does not question the fundamental need to introduce IPv6 in a working manner. across the entire network. And the Internet is still a long way from having competitive ISPs without IPv4.
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