On Mon, 2004-01-12 at 22:33, Daniel Crookston wrote: > So is a larger address space the only benefit to IPv6?
Seems to me that IPv6 eliminates the need for IP Masquarading and private addressing. The widespread proliferation of NATted connections has really, in many ways, broken the internet. The whole idea, while cool within the framework of IPv4, is very hackish and actually quite lazy (NAT is often used as a poor man's firewall). The advantages I see of IPv6: 1. bigger address space 2. no need for NAT or private address space 3. packets are self-routing. (hopefully meaning smaller routing tables) 4. there are fields in the header for doing various kinds of authenticity and anti-spoofing checks 5. They can contain existing IPv4 addresses, allowing slow (and I mean slow) migration to IPv6 using tunnels and gateways The disadvantages: 1. poor support from vendors (hardware and software) 2. increase in complexity 3. increase in protocol overhead (the IPv6 header is bigger than the IPv4 header) 4. requires correct firewalling (by subnet or host), since each ip address is world addressable 5. during the transition period, there will be islands of IPv6 networks connected by gateways and tunnels through the IPv4 network. This means there are few routes between nodes, and the tunnels and gateways could be bottlenecks. The fact of the matter is that IPv4 is getting to the end of it's useful life. Home NAT boxes have severely crippled the capabilities of IPv4. In Asia we will soon be out of IP addresses. Maybe not for 10 years, but it will happen. Border gateway routing tables are getting huge (hundreds, if not thousands of entries). There was a day that Evan's dad remembers when each internet user downloaded a static routing table every day that gave him access to the entire internet (all 500 hosts or whatever it was)! We also will soon start to see devices not even on earth needing addresses and routing (say, satellites, space station, etc). And don't forget Microsoft's house of the future: your toaster needs an ip address so it can send you an instant message (Palladium DRM-controlled of course) when your toast is just right. Anyway, Windows XP, Mac OS X, and Linux all support IPv6 today. It's just a matter of figuring out how to deploy it. My powerbook already gives itself a IPv6 address automatically (based on the IPv4 address). Anyway. Michael > Dan > > ____________________ > BYU Unix Users Group > http://uug.byu.edu/ > ___________________________________________________________________ > List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list -- Michael L Torrie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ____________________ BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
