Thanks Nivex! Here is Linode founder Christopher Aker's statement so that others don't have to track it down:



It sounds like they are going to keep procrastinating as long as they can get away with it. That is unfortunate, but it still helps a lot to know their plans. Caker does say that they'll implement it "in no time" once they see enough demand. So I hope they hear from this thread that many of us are ready and anxious to implement native IPv6 on our Linodes now. And I hope that other interested customers make themselves heard. Yes, I can (and do) use tunnel brokers and 6to4, but those are ugly (but necessary) hacks, and no substitute for real native connectivity. I hope Linode can be convinced to implement native IPv6 in time for World IPv6 day (June 8).

It is indeed a bit disappointing.

Also saw this in the irc logs.

< caker> No one seems to realize that IPv6 is 10 years away from ubiquity, easy.  maaaaybe 5 before it's popular

The pessimistic view fits with this recent talk by Geoff Huston if not the timeframe:
http://linuxconfau.blip.tv/file/4692762/

These are both smart guys. If I wasn't using native ipv6 with every device in my house talking to Google services that are mostly ipv6 and seeing hosting companies like Dreamhost move and my own ISP I would probably be a doubter as well. The thing is even if widespread adoption isn't going to happen soon many of the sort of people who have Linodes aren't going to want to sit on their hands for 10 years.

The full quote is:

"a near-term issue" I could have better worded as "a near-term solution to the eventual IP shortage". Despite IPv6, IPv4 will be in strong demand for a long while. Yes, it is my personal belief that the world is years away from IPv6 ubiquity. However, I don't want Linode to be part of the adoption problem (what comes first - IPv6 servers or IPv6 clients?) and as such IPv6 support for Linodes is imminent.

IPv6 will happen at Linode very soon. Stay tuned.

-Chris

Yay! After more than three years of this thread, that's what we've been waiting to hear! Of course the even-more-exciting announcement will be actual native IPv6 availability. I've been a very satisfied Linode customer, and I'm glad you're not letting us down!

I agree that IPv6 won't be ubiquitous for years. But I'd rather be ahead of the curve, and I'm glad Linode will be supporting us in that.

Don't worry, the threads demanding IPv8 will begin soon.

Ahead of the curve? IPv6 has been in most O/S's for over a decade. Continuing to adopt a 'wait-and-see' attitude is *waaaaaaay behind* the curve.

That's one way of looking at it. But I'd rather get it working on my linodes sooner, before it becomes "actually necessary," so that I have that headache out of the way.

If a hurricane is coming, and I can get the plywood to board up my house a day before the storm hits, I'd much rather do that than getting pelted by debris as I hammer away while the storm is already hitting.

This article gives some pretty realistic time frames for when we'll begin to see *real* problems:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news ... ns-dry.ars



Don't worry, no one is trying to take your precious IPv4 address away from you. Having IPv6 up and running doesn't mean you have to say goodbye to v4. Modern OSes have been capable of running dual stacks for a long time now. So you can have your IPv4 address as long as it's there, and an IPv6 address.

Or not. If you don't ever, ever, ever want your Linode to even know what IPv6 is, then you can do that too. Others' pro-activeness will not affect your refusal to know or care about this.

In fact, dual-stack will probably be the reality for a long, long time.

This assessment is fair, I think. My suspicion is that VPSes cater to enough random edge cases (not the least of which is people wanting experience with IPv6) that Linode probably stands to make money from it sooner than that, but you're obviously weighting it against other features you could be working on.

I also suspect that IP addresses will become a bottleneck for selling Linodes before IPv6 can usefully remove the bottleneck, which probably means reverse proxies and so forth.

Yeah, considering that linode is in a position where they absolutely cannot sign up another customer without having an ip for them (where as shared hosting companies can just do more and more virtual hosting) you'd think linode would be more proactive about ipv6.

Still, it's good to hear that it's coming. ipv6 is way, way overdue.

It is unlikely that the masses would find utility in IPv6-only Linodes until the majority of users are IPv6 enabled, and that's not going to happen for a long time. People are going to require IPv4 for a long time. IPv6 is not an immediate answer - please stop implying it is.

-Chris

You're right, IPv6 is not an immediate answer, but neither is waiting til the last minute.

If linode has a solution within a year (as caker has implied), that's hardly last minute.

What makes you say that?

What can name-based virtual-hosting do that name-based proxying can't? In the simplest case you could set up a bunch of apache vhosts with mod_proxy directives in them.

IPv6 doesn't even avoid this until clients have v6 too.

Because each VPS needs a routable IP.