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Four Root DNS Servers Go IPv6 On February 4th 228

Posted by Zonk from the our-interwebs-are-all-growed-up dept.
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "On February 4th, IANA will add AAAA records for the IPv6 addresses of the four root servers. With this transition, it will finally be possible for two internet hosts to communicate without using IPv4 at all. Certain obsolete software may face compatibility problems due to the change, but those issues are addressed in an ICANN report (pdf)."
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Four Root DNS Servers Go IPv6 On February 4th More

Four Root DNS Servers Go IPv6 On February 4th

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  • Routers! (Score:5, Informative)

    by arth1 ( 260657 ) on Thursday January 03, 2008 @04:44PM (#21900234) Homepage Journal
    The main problem isn't obsolete software, but hardware. Changing routers to some that support IPv6 isn't done over night. And even if you do, and get IPv6 assigned, it doesn't help unless your provider also supports IPv6 -- else you might as well be tunelling the old way anyhow.

    Regards,
    --
    *Art

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Just Some Guy ( 3352 )

      else you might as well be tunelling the old way anyhow.

      What's so awful about that? OK, so it's not native, but none of your apps or services can tell the difference. The advantage is that when you do get native connectivity, you've already done your testing and you're ready for the world.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by palegray.net ( 1195047 )
      I ask this because I honestly don't know. How many routers on the net are embedded devices capable of receiving firmware updates to cope with the additional functionality? Or, how many full-fledged "router in a box" style server systems are capable of receiving software updates, or already support IPV6?

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Part of the problem is that, even though most routers can get software updates in the field, older models only have hardware accelerated IPv4 support. If you upgrade these routers to IPv6, they have to do everything with their puny CPU, which means the same router can handle fewer IPv6 packets than IPv4 packets.
        • For ip6 to be used, dos ip6 has to be used all the way, or could say dsl users sit on ip6 adresses and access servers on ip4s?

  • Finally (Score:2, Insightful)

    by elsJake ( 1129889 )
    Hopefully ISPs will start to offer IPv6 as standard pretty quick, I'm getting tired of dynamic IP allocation.

    • Re:Finally (Score:5, Informative)

      by CastrTroy ( 595695 ) on Thursday January 03, 2008 @04:52PM (#21900338)
      They don't do dynamic IP addresses because they don't have enough addresses. They do it for stopping you from running a server on your home computer. Sure you can still run a server, but it's harder to run one when your IP address keeps changing.

      • Re:Finally (Score:5, Insightful)

        by tgd ( 2822 ) on Thursday January 03, 2008 @04:56PM (#21900406)
        No... if that was the case, your IP would change.

        IP changes, in my experience from both Comcast and Verizon FIOS, are so rare that they effectively don't happen. I've never had a change with FIOS from the day the service was fired up, and although I can't recall ever having my previous Comcast one change except when I physically moved, its possible it did once or twice.

        If they want to block servers, they'd block inbound ports.

        Dynamic IP addresses are used because its the only possible way to do it without having techs setting up every joe six pack or grandmothers computer.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Kjella ( 173770 )

          Dynamic IP addresses are used because its the only possible way to do it without having techs setting up every joe six pack or grandmothers computer.
          Hell, I find they make life simpler for us geeks too. I went into my router set up, clicked a button to say this lease is permanent and unless I change my network card (aka MAC address) it'll still get the same IP even if I wipe the system clean. Much, much simpler than setting it up manually.

          • Re:Finally (Score:4, Insightful)

            by raju1kabir ( 251972 ) on Thursday January 03, 2008 @06:22PM (#21901806) Homepage
            I think many of us geeks know that you can also use methods like DHCP to configure static IPs. What you are benefiting from here is DHCP, not your dynamic IP.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by suggsjc ( 726146 )
              I think the parent should be modded up (at least a little). For a moderate sized network having ip addresses handled by dhcp (meaning almost zero client configuration) combined with a local dns server (for internal lookups) means that you can essentially control how everyone in the network gets access to ip based resources all from a single configuration (ok, well two configurations).
        • I have forced Time Warner to change my IP address by playing around with the settings on my router.

          though if I use the same mac address I usually get the same IP. exceptions to this are duration between changes.

          As for IPV6 my systems and internal routers can use it whenever I want. As it is now my routers broadcast both, switching won't be hard.
        • Obligatory "me too." I've had Verizon DSL for over 5 years now, and I think my IP has changed once in all that time. While it's technically a DHCP-assigned address, in practice DHCP nearly always assigns the exact same address when the lease is up, and you end up with a (non-guaranteed) static IP. I can't speak for other ISPs, but Verizon is good that way.

          (I just wish they'd run FIOS in my hometown already!)

        • No... if that was the case, your IP would change.

          IP changes, in my experience from both Comcast and Verizon FIOS, are so rare that they effectively don't happen. I've never had a change with FIOS from the day the service was fired up, and although I can't recall ever having my previous Comcast one change except when I physically moved, its possible it did once or twice.

          My IP changes every time I reconnect. If I tell my router to drop its connection then reconnect straight away I never get the same IP. As to why my ISP do this I have no idea if it is to stop me running a home server or not, but I do know they throttle bit torrent traffic. Personally I don't mind them throttling torrent traffic if it means I can play online games with no lag.

          Back on topic I would like to say that for about as long as I can remember we have been very close to the limit of IPv4 addresses. Wi

        • Dynamic IP addresses are used because its the only possible way to do it without having techs setting up every joe six pack or grandmothers computer.
          DHCP can be used to assign static addresses and it would be transparent to the end user.

          • Dynamic IP addresses are used because its the only possible way to do it without having techs setting up every joe six pack or grandmothers computer.

            DHCP can be used to assign static addresses and it would be transparent to the end user.

            Reasons they don't :

            1) Possible admin overhead (automatic assignment needs to handle non-contiguous blocks, returned IPs, etc)
            2) Why waste the time on this? Is a static IP guaranteed as part of your service?
            3) We can charge for static IPs!

            • My ISP actually does offer DHCP to assign static addresses - my package comes with no less than 8 static IPs, and if I wanted to I could use DHCP for them.

              In reality, I have an OpenBSD box acting as a router with static IPs (and NAT, natch), and on the other side I have . . . static IPs distributed over DHCP because it's just plain easier. My computers have static IPs, friend's laptops get assigned dynamic IPs, everything works.

              DHCP is awesome whether you have static or dynamic IPs.
        • You do know that DHCP can assign a fixed IP don't you?

          "Get IP address automatically" has nothing to do with dynamic / fixed assignment.
          • Man, I had mod points YESTERDAY... but parent is right. That IP may have been dynamically assigned to you the first time you used the service and has never changed. Just because it doesn't change now doesn't mean they won't change it to some other DHCP settings later if they need to, which *may* change your IP. For example, I have Cox here in Tulsa, my IP rarely changes, but to ENSURE it never changes, no matter what, I have to pay like about another $15-$20 a month.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by grahammm ( 9083 ) *

          Dynamic IP addresses are used because its the only possible way to do it without having techs setting up every joe six pack or grandmothers computer.
          Surely dynamic IP addresses are a legacy of dial-up where each dial-in port has a fixed IP address and this is assigned to whoever is connected to that port at the time.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Kizeh ( 71312 )
            No. It's the only sane way to allow for changes in network address assignments and for zero-configuration networking on machines. In larger installations it also allows for essentially statistical multiplexing; not every computer hooked up to the network is going to be on at the same time, so the total number of addresses needed is lower than the number of computers.
        • They do. Because I have a list of about 110 addresses on my mail server that gets 3-4 messages a day, I was blocked "because your computer has a virus", smtp both inbound and outbound. Mailhop outbound and mailhop relay from dydns fixed the problem for now by letting me run on a different port.
      • AOL is the best example. Global network, hundreds of thousands of users.
        Do you really think they dont give out static ips because they dont like home servers?

        Yeah some ISPs dont like servers. Some even block certain ports (25 is occasionally blocked).
        It everyone had static ips though then we'd be using ipv6 a long time ago.
        • If I recall correctly, you don't get routable IP Addresses from AOL, you get stuff in the 172.16.0.0/12 address range. Net requests are then all run through some form of proxy or NAT out to the real net.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )
        Well that is not completely accurate. They don't do it to stop you from running a server, they do it to 'charge you a lot extra' if you want to easily run a server.

        So with IPv6 comes the dirt cheap home web/mail/file server (bye bye web and ISP email), enormously long and ever growing IP address blocking lists (billions of entries), possibly hardware manufactured with a fixed IP address and compulsory personal registration (government and corporations watching and monitoring all of your digital interactio

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by SeaFox ( 739806 )
      What makes you think they are going to start giving you a free static IP just because they transition to IPv6? Right now most providers charge for a static IP, they have no reason to give away a revenue stream.
  • First of all--this is great news. We need breaks from the past like this. Maybe we'll see computers natively handle 128-bit words. UUIDs are already there. I'm sure the custom networking hardware already has it down, but this could be something that drives it. 128-bits seems like overkill for addressing, but it could be put to use as well.
    • Why in the world was the parent modded offtopic? IPv6 addresses are 128 bits in length. He was wondering if their use would eventually lead to CPUs with 128-bit native words. That seems ontopic enough for me.

  • So when will I be able to connect? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AlexMax2742 ( 602517 ) on Thursday January 03, 2008 @04:47PM (#21900280)
    So when will this mean that I can actually use IPv6 for connecting to servers?

    Like, when will I be able to open my browser window, type in an IPv6 address, and connect to...say..google?
    • Three years after the sun goes dark.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by dmayle ( 200765 ) *

      Right now.

      No, really.

      There are tunnel brokers who will give you an IPv6 address now, and tell you how to create an IPv6 over IPv4 tunnel and keep it up. I've got one public server already set up on IPv6 by tunnel.

      Some ISPs are starting to offer native IPv6, as well. My ISP from when I lived in France, Free.fr, offers 30Mbit/2Mbit ADSL with unlimited calling to 40 odd countries with 300 odd channels for 29.99 Euros. They just added IPv6 addresses for those who request them. Makes my Optimum Online ser

    • Re:So when will I be able to connect? (Score:5, Funny)

      by discogravy ( 455376 ) on Thursday January 03, 2008 @06:28PM (#21901916) Homepage
      if you're browsing by IP now anyway you're doing it wrong.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Pedrito ( 94783 )
        if you're browsing by IP now anyway you're doing it wrong.

        Imposter! Real hackers always browse by IP!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rwyoder ( 759998 )

      So when will this mean that I can actually use IPv6 for connecting to servers? Like, when will I be able to open my browser window, type in an IPv6 address, and connect to...say..google?

      dig www.google.com any aaaa

      Pretty tough to connect via IPv6 to a server not advertising an IPv6 address.

      If you want to use IPv6, you need to do one of the following:

      • Get an ISP offering IPv6.
      • Use IPv6 Anycast.
      • Get a tunnel broker.

      I currently use Anycast. I've used a tunnel broker in the past, but with a dynamic

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kizeh ( 71312 )
      When Google decides to support it and when your ISP decides to support it. My university is natively IPv6 connected, and for any of the few places that have IPv6 running I use IPv6 on stock Vista 64 bit, no changes necessary. Client and server OSs, routers/switches and a lot of applications support it just fine today. Our FTP mirror syncs some distros using rsync over IPv6, and there are some public audio streaming servers and random other resources on the net, although presently precious few.

  • About time.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by ch-chuck ( 9622 ) on Thursday January 03, 2008 @04:50PM (#21900316) Homepage
    Great, now we can soon get on with the job of assigning static ip addresses to all our toasters, refrigerators, furnaces, thermostats, tv sets, electric hairdryers, etc.

    • With IPv6 I think everyone in the world could have enough ips for one per atom in your body with plenty left over for any population increases.

      2^128 is a very very big number. :)
      • If you were attempting to assign an IP to every molecule in the atmosphere, starting at the surface of the earth and working up, you'd only cover a thickness of 2.5 centimeters:

        2^128 / 6.02E23 = 5.16E14 moles of IP-addressable gasses

        5.16E14 * 22.4 = 1.226E16 liters worth of IP-addressable gasses at STP

        1.226E16 / 1000 = 1.226E13 meters cubed of IP-addressable gasses at STP

        1.226E13 / 5.1E14 = 0.024 meters height if you spread that volume over the surface of the earth.
        • 12.26 petaliters of ips* aint bad. ;)

          * at STP of course.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dyefade ( 735994 )
          If you were attempting to assign an IP to every molecule in the atmosphere, starting at the surface of the earth and working up, you'd only cover a thickness of 2.5 centimeters

          Well it hardly seems worth doing then. Only 2.5 centimetres - so not even an inch! Lame.
      • 2^128 = 3.40282367 × 10^38, says the Googles.

        This page says [jlab.org] "A 70 kg body would have approximately 7*10^27 atoms." So enough for all the atoms in all the people on Earth.
    • I want to be able to configure my Christmas lights via SNMP. Each and every single bulb, individually.

      Sure, you may laugh now and recommend a controller-based architecture with different instance IDs for each bulb, BUT SOMEDAY IT SHALL BE SO!!!!!!!11

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by fm6 ( 162816 )
        You don't need IPv6 to give every light bulb you own its own IP address. You just need to use a private address space. The biggest one is 10.*.*.*, which should be plenty for any (relatively) sane person.

        You should do it that way anyway, or else somebody is going to hack into your Christmas ornamentation and do evil things.
    • There are some people who don't even have their own public ip address. These people are surfing by sharing the same ip address with thousands of other people and only thing they have in common is that they don't live in the USA and they have the same ISP.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fm6 ( 162816 )
      Forget that! I'm not letting every script kiddy hack into my toaster! It took me years to find the right setting, and I don't let anybody else touch it!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by joshuac ( 53492 ) *
      Terrible visions trying to visualize what the non-electric hairdryers are like...

      Welding torch?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Cajal ( 154122 )
      Actually, you probably wouldn't assign them static IPv6 addresses. It's much more likely that they would use IPv6 stateless address autoconfiguration [ietf.org] (btw, www.ietf.org is an Ipv6-accessible site), to obtain an address automatically.

  • two of 'em, eh? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    With this transition, it will finally be possible for two internet hosts to communicate without using IPv4 at all

    Well, I guess that IPv6 transition is coming along nicely.

    HAR HAR HAR.

    Yeah, when slashdot drops it's IPv4 address, then I'll believe in this IPv6 nonsense.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by shentino ( 1139071 )
      Actually, v4 and v6 are quite independent. A single host can have BOTH at the same time.

      I'd hope /. keeps its v4's at least until my college switches to v6.

      I think it's backward compatibility IIRC.

    • Re:two of 'em, eh? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by evanbd ( 210358 ) on Thursday January 03, 2008 @05:22PM (#21900808)

      Yeah, when slashdot drops it's IPv4 address, then I'll believe in this IPv6 nonsense.

      OK, admit it... how many of us would go figure out how to run IPv6 if it was required to get a /. fix?

  • Best IPv6 Read ever (not the article) (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 03, 2008 @04:55PM (#21900390)
    But the off topic link I'm making to the wikipedia page...

    IPv6 [wikipedia.org]

    common to see examples that attempt to show that the IPv6 address space is absurdly large. For example, IPv6 supports 2128 (about 3.4×1038) addresses, or approximately 5×1028 addresses for each of the roughly 6.5 billion people[1] alive today. In a different perspective, this is 252 addresses for every star in the known universe [1] - a million times as many addresses per star than IPv4 supported for our single planet. These examples, however, have an underlying and inco

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kindbud ( 90044 )
      Yeah, yeah, yeah. But will it require boiling the oceans [htp] to fully populate IPv6 space?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kindbud ( 90044 )
        Hmmmmm..... boiling the oceans [wikipedia.org] is how that was supposed to work.

        No, no, chances are, I am NOT behind a firewall or proxy, I am trying to correct a post on a board that is too goddamn old-school, its own admins don't know how to fix it to offer modern features, like editing posts. :rolleyes:

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by lokedhs ( 672255 )

          No, no, chances are, I am NOT behind a firewall or proxy, I am trying to correct a post on a board that is too goddamn old-school, its own admins don't know how to fix it to offer modern features, like editing posts. :rolleyes:

          I don't care how "modern" the ability to edit posts is. It's utterly stupid, and messes up every single forum that uses it. When you say something publicly, you've said it. If you don't want to say it then don't publish it in the first place.

          Especially on Slashdot this would be a

      • Yeah, yeah, yeah. But will it require boiling the oceans [wikipedia.org] to fully populate IPv6 space?

        No, but you could make a good effort of trying.

        Both ZFS and IPv6 are 128-bit systems. Populating an IPv6 address can probably be defined as a one-bit operation, unlike the multiple bits required for each ZFS block allocation. Adjusting his math for a one-bit allocation of an IPv6 address gives us an energy of 3.06x10^24 J, and thus 1.3x10^18 kg of water. This works out to 13 million km^3 of water that we can boil. This is roughly comparable to the volume of the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean Sea, and Mediter

  • No, wait, not THAT game server... (Score:4, Funny)

    by jackpot777 ( 1159971 ) on Thursday January 03, 2008 @05:02PM (#21900512)
    I'm just hoping the Enemy Territory server I play on doesn't move too quickly to the switch to IPv6. It took me ages to load their map rotation, but it's a good selection and their bots are a nice challenge. It has taken me months already to remember the 216.27.112... wait, is it 112.48, or 48.112 at the end? And that 27 doesn't look right. It ends in :27962, I know that. Or is it :27964?

    Ah crap, I forgot the number again.

    Damn you, progress.

    • Re:No, wait, not THAT game server... (Score:5, Funny)

      by VGPowerlord ( 621254 ) on Thursday January 03, 2008 @05:26PM (#21900872)
      Don't worry, you'll have no trouble remembering the new address. It's b439:88fa:31d3:0507:613a:426c:99ba:02e2 .

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Denis Lemire ( 27713 )
        Sorry, thats not a valid IPv6 unicast address. The unicast block is 2000::/3 so 2000: - 3FFF. ;)

        Also IPv6 addresses can be compressed if they contain contiguous 0's.

        ie) 2610:0078:00ad:0001:0000:0000:0000:0001 -> 2610:78:ad:1::1.

        Worry not though, this is what DNS is for... Humans need not memorize IP addresses.

      • Re:No, wait, not THAT game server... (Score:5, Funny)

        by teslatug ( 543527 ) on Thursday January 03, 2008 @06:38PM (#21902062)
        Indeed, just as easy as the new emergency number [youtube.com]
      • Don't worry, you'll have no trouble remembering the new address. It's b439:88fa:31d3:0507:613a:426c:99ba:02e2.

        And to connect to Windows systems, you'll need too make regular and extensive use of sed with escaped escape characters to yield

        \\\\b439-88fa-31d3-0507-613a-426c-99ba-02e2\\...

        For anyone that hasn't used, for example, wakeonlan scripts, laugh. It's funny.
  • The irony in all this is that neither Cisco or any of the developers of IPv6 compliant OSs (Microsoft, Apple, Kernel.org, for example) actually have AAAA records themselves.

  • IANAIANA (Score:5, Funny)

    by PixelScuba ( 686633 ) on Thursday January 03, 2008 @05:42PM (#21901182)
    I Am Not An Internet Assigned Numbers Authority.

  • Mixed up acronyms (Score:5, Funny)

    by MarkGriz ( 520778 ) on Thursday January 03, 2008 @05:51PM (#21901332)

    Certain obsolete software may face compatibility problems due to the change, but those issues are addressed in an ICANN report
    Wouldn't that be handled better with an ICANT report?

  • Human readability (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ddoctor ( 977173 )

    So, we've got lots of IPv6 addresses, thus we can assign static IP's to everything. Catch: IPv6 addresses aren't very readable/memorable. I can remember all of the IPv4 addresses on my network, but I wouldn't remember the v6 ones.

    So, what's the solution there: well there's DNS and DHCP... man I hate DHCP. What if my local DHCP server or DNS server goes down? And, then I try to ping it to diagnose... oh, if only I could remember its address!

    What about web hosting providers? Dear Hosting Support, can you

    • Re:Human readability (Score:4, Insightful)

      by gbjbaanb ( 229885 ) on Thursday January 03, 2008 @06:57PM (#21902298)
      IP addresses:
      I can't remember my IPv4 addresses without looking them up, so I'd be no worse off than with IPv6. You'll get older too son, then you'll agree with me :)

      As for web hosting providers, they won;t ever have to 'change your IP address', they'll just have to tell you it in the first place, then you're done.

      In both cases, IPv6 supports auto-registration so you won't have to fiddle with it anyway. As the IETF says [ietf.org] "Since IPv6 addresses are too long to remember and EUI64-based addresses are too complicated to remember, they are not suitable for such identifiers"

      IIRC you don't need DHCP anymore with stateless autoconfiguration.

      NAT:
      think for a moment what NAT does. All you have is your router attached to the internet, and all your computers connected to the router. Unless you explicitly allow incoming connections to pass through, your PCs are "firewalled" at the router.

      If you have IPv6, you'll still have the router. I hope that all router manufacturers will be shipping them with incoming connectivity disabled by default, just like it is at the moment. Then, you'll be no less secure with IPv6 than you are today.

      You will have the benefit of being able to "DMZ" as many of your PCs as you like, not just one of them. This is best of both worlds.

      I think IPv6 will be a good thing, if it ever happens. I can't see that happening anytime soon though, there's too much infrastructure out there.
  • When i think of the subnets i've used/worked in, i tend to believe that remembering ipv6 addresses isnt going to be that hard in reality.

    Ok, they're long - but in my head right now i can remember 4 subnets, work, previous work, home and the university i went to. Now i tend to think in terms of subnets. For example lets say my home is 192.168.1.0/24, my router is 1, my dns is 2, my mailserver is 3, my printer is 4, etc etc. The bit at the front replacing the 192.168.1 may have got alot bigger, but i still on

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kizeh ( 71312 )
      Also, it's fairly common practice to not use autoconfigured or throwaway addresses for things such as gateways and DNS servers. Then you end up with ::1. Depending on your network, the prefix is going to always be the same, or only have a few changing portions, so suddenly the addresses are a lot more manageable.
  • "it will finally be possible for two internet hosts to communicate without using IPv4 at all." DNS has nothing to do with enabling to IPV6 hosts to communicate on the internet... it only provides name resolution. The routers make it possible for 2 IPV6 hosts to communicate... you just do so by using their IPV6 address instead of the name..

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