Yes, I do, and I fully understand your previous point about not being able to find a free ephemeral port if 2000 devices are NAT'd together on the same IP address. But that's exactly why I think your argument is alarmist and unrealistic.

There simply aren't enough Internet-facing devices in the USA to put 2000 of them per available IP address. In fact, we're only now approaching 1 device per available IP address, or else the IPv4 space would have been exhausted long ago. There is no reason to suppose that the number of Internet-facing devices will increase by three orders of magnitude, or even two orders of magnitude, within the next decade or two. There's a huge difference between 2000 devices per IP and 20 devices per IP. The latter is definitely manageable if the ISP knows what it's doing.

Many popular protocols, such as HTTP(S), do not require the client to have its own IP address. Millions of people use web sites every day without even realizing that the modem they leased from the ISP uses NAT to connect their PC, laptop, PS3, and other devices together. The friggin' future smartfridge doesn't need its own IP address to run a don't-forget-the-milk app. Some smartphones require their own IP address only because the phones and their apps were designed with unrealistic assumptions. Given that most smartphones become obsolete in 2-3 years, it is entirely possible for newer phones and apps to gain NAT compatibility before the ISPs really run out of IPv4 addresses.

I never said that there won't be any problems when we run out of IPv4 addresses. There will be. But the problems will be nowhere as serious as you make them out to be. Acceptable solutions can and will be found, and people will learn to live with a few more milliseconds of latency on their 3G connection for a few years while IPv6 settles down. Heck, 3G in many areas already has a latency of over 100ms.

Case in point: I've seen a VPS host in the Asia-Pacific region where they don't give public IPv4 addresses to their customers. NAT on the server side? Impossible! No, it's not impossible. HTTP (port 80) is proxied through a shared IP address, and there's an automated control panel where you can add/edit/delete your hostnames. Other ports can also be forwarded in a similar manner, including HTTPS. There are always enough ports to go around, because they put only a handful of customers per IP address. Where there's a will, there's a solution. There's no need for alarmism.

The vast majority of consumers are already behind NAT. Either they've got a wireless router, or they're using their modem's built-in NAT router. For example, Bell Canada distributes DSL modems pre-loaded with the customer's username and password so that they only have to plug it into the computer/switch and go.

NAT causes none of the problems that you describe, since most people have already been using it for years without these problems.

You're referring NAT in 1 home vs NAT to a group of customers... There's a pretty significant difference.

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As someone who works for an integrator/VAR IPv6 is an AWESOME money spinner. Seriously, its the next y2k, only its going to last 50 times as long cause theres no cut-off date like with y2k.

But the reality is that its mostly hype and fudd (which will only ever increase). The interesting part though is that the driving force behind it so far is government. Its (so far) only the governements of the world that have any real plans to adopt it (internally) - though a large number of ISP's already have it and are pushing their own IPv6 projects because of the government drivers - I.E. ISP's with no IPv6 = no government contracts.

The reality is that NAT poses few problems for the vast majority of protocols out there, even more importantly though is that the smarts in most firewalls are capable of even dealing with using the same ports for data transmission so long as the destination IP address differs. Most FW's have been able to do that for some time, and im aware of people with 5-6 digit's of IP addresses behind single IP's because of it.

There are (as yet) few reasons to adopt IPv6 that relate to running out of IPv4 addresses - in reality it probably wont happen until most of china and india have mobile phones on the internet (and even thats really not a huge driver for it).

But, alot of that is reasonably irrelevant. IPv6 is a step forward in terms of technology, much like ssh was over telnet - sure we still use telnet in some places, but that doesn't mean people dismiss ssh as irrelavent. Its an absolutely MAMMOTH task to adopt it on the internet and i personally dont believe IPv6 was as big a leap as they could have made, but its already 15 years old. In terms of a pure technology view, IPv4 is an absolute dinosaur with numerous problems that IPv6 addresses. But being the geek that I am, I started with IPv6 simply because it was interesting (much like i find google's go language fun and even worthwhile to program even though i already know a variety of other languages).

If you want a real reason to love it though, put it on your resume, publish it into any job-hunting website and see how many calls you get. It will truly astound you how many people are looking for IPv6 capable people.

I personally dont even care if the internet does run out of IPv4, if IPv6 isnt the panacea (as in there are still key parts of everyday life that have no solutions in the IPv6 space), there are non-IPv6 alternatives.

Repetition of FUD doesn't make it true.

You're really arguing that carrier grade NAT, which is what we are talking about when ISPs implement NAT, is essentially equivalent to the NAT performed by a typical home gateway?

For me, NAT is a major bummer. I have multiple computers at home, and need to be able to reach them from the outside world. I think that as large-scale NAT becomes more common, IPv6 will become a more attractive alternative for people in my market segment (cheap bastards with end-to-end connectivity needs). I can have a unique public IP address for each computer, and I don't have to remember to add/remove port forwards to be able to reach them.

Setting up a firewall isn't difficult at all, and allowing port 22 obviates the need for most adjustments. When I do need to let more stuff through, it's no more difficult than a port forward through the IPv4 NAT (and probably significantly less, should my ISP go the large-scale NAT route).

Is this a problem for most people? No. Application developers have become quite good at working through NAT. Skype is amazingly good at this.

However, as someone who developed a SIP-based residential/small-office VoIP service, I could make a case for the overall amount of money/effort required to move to IPv6 being substantially less than the money/effort invested in working around NAT. I could probably also argue that the sole reason we don't have automatic flying cars right now is because we cannot guarantee reliable end-to-end communication between vehicles, but that's taking it a little too far

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Every large corporation I've worked at has their users on private IP's (my current uses in the 172.16-31 range).

Every large org (bar 1 which was 90% disconnected anyway) i've worked at had public IPs for the >1000 hosts in them

SIP with NAT sucks
peer to peer gaming with more than 1 layer of NATsucks (1 layer works with stuff like UPNP)
Direct video conferencing (not something like sykpe that uses a central server to coordinate the connections) sucks
Me being able to SSH to my home machines sucks with NAT

I'd much rather be given a /60 or similar for my home so that i can have direct access to my home machines and a /64 for each my vpses(or dc account(one /64 for hosts in fremont one for london etc) so that I can have Certs for all of my domains.

VPN? My router is cheap and it has VPN software built in. I've not tried it but even if I did and it didn't live up to expectations I could install OpenVPN on one of my home machines.

IPv6 means I have to buy all new equipment and learn a weird addressing scheme when none of it is necessary.

All of my equipment is compatible, aside from the cable modem from my ISP (it's also rented, so it'll be their expense to replace as well). Any recent router (as of the past 4+ years) supports IPv6, per the military and their threats of not accepting contracts with non-IPv6 companies.




Right, laziness will solve all of the world's problems. Oh, and btw, it is necessary, because they are real problems.

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You have to ask yourself if you're just scared of change. Is that the reason you are making up reasons not to change?

Being reluctant to change is a very bad thing in the workplace, since it means you don't recognize improved methods and technologies. It also means that you can't be moved from a system being sunset to a new one. So, you get laid-off when the system sunsets.

There seem to be a lot of luddites in this thread. Are you a luddite?

You misspelled "chickenlittle" there. Twice.

I already VPN into my network. the ability to ssh to a specific machine without having to think about opening my vpn tunnel or my ssh tunnels


What is weird about ipv6 addressing? it's hexadecimal? it's bigger? it has awesome cool network discovery backed in? it lacks broadcast?

if you are going to specify static v6 addresses 6 is easier to work with than 4

$prefix:subnet::1 == gateway
$prefix:subnet::2 == vps1 admin interface
$prefix:subnet::3 == virtualhost 1
$prefix:subnet::3 == virtualhost 2 etc. etc.


Ack i fail at dateline and timezones
in 23 hours and 55 minutes they are giving out the final five

Completely wrong information below
btw in 18 minutes they are giving out the final 5 /8s

Why do you people have to be so childish when someone makes a request that *you* think is stupid? Just because you think someone is overreacting doesn't mean they don't have valid reasons. Am I in a big hurry to implement IPv6? No. Am I here making dumbass comments like the one above? No. Would I like to have native IPv6 so I can learn and be ahead of all of you who refuse to move past the use NAT for everything argument? Absolutely.

I'm not against IPv4 or NAT, but I want to be prepared for IPv6. The people who are prepared are the ones who excel and make lots and lots of money.

Now, STFU and quit displaying your lack of desire to succeed.