[ale] IPv6 vs IPv4 (was: uptime)

[Michael B. Trausch]

On 03/17/2010 10:59 PM, Jeff Hubbs wrote:
> What does a greybeard need to do today if they'd like to start putting
> IPv4 behind them?

Start using IPv6 with regularity.  Start making public services that you 
manage available on the IPv6 Internet.  Public IPv6 addresses for your 
hosts.  When working on new projects, or even doing significant updates 
on old projects, begin to add IPv6 to networks (and of course, put in a 
proper firewall to keep things nice and secure).

Given that all current versions of all operating systems that I am aware 
of support IPv6, this means that over time, people will transparently 
start using IPv6.  One could also show that it is working by proxying 
DNS and changing the names google.com and www.google.com to be CNAMEs 
for ipv6.google.com.  :-)  People will wonder why there are hopping o's 
on their screen!

Seriously, though:  Make everything you work on over time be truly ready 
for IPv6.  If you try to setup IPv6 on a network and you find that there 
is network equipment that won't carry protocol 41, for example, find out 
why and make the necessary changes for it to work so that they can get 
tunneled address space in the short term.  In the mid-term, we will all 
have IPv6 address space anyway.  The ISPs in the United States are 
starting to realize that it is pretty important that they start offering 
IPv6 service.  Nobody wants to be the first one to do it, I think, 
because they're afraid that they will be blamed for transitory problems, 
but everyone knows that it needs to be done.

	--- Mike

-- 
Michael B. Trausch                                    ☎ (404) 492-6475