UK Organization Set Up To Encourage IPv6 Adoption Closes 100
New submitter Sesostris III writes "In April 2010, with £20,000 of government money, 6uk was set up to encourage the adoption of the IPv6 protocol in the UK. In December 2012 the board resigned en-masse in protest at official indifference to its work. 'The biggest organization we needed to join 6UK was the government,' the former director, Philip Sheldrake, is quoted as saying. Without government support, 'there's no material incentive for any organization to go for IPv6.' Government interest can be gauged by the fact that no government website currently sat on an IPv6 address. The UK is among the nations that have done the least to move to IPv6, and lags behind other nations in adopting the new protocol. In contrast, governments like that in the U.S. are encouraging adoption of the new protocol by mandating IPv6 compliance in contracts."
The IP Class diviation was never honest anyway (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:The IP Class diviation was never honest anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
Asia got all the address it asked for, until the pool ran out. Unless the address sharing stated in the last year (after the IANA pool ran dry), it was your own choice to use shared IP space.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:1)
So? You could have gotten them while they were available. Mind you, you couldn't reserve them, you only got what you were actually going to use, but if you had a use for them, there was nothing stopping you from getting IPv4 addresses.
Now there aren't any IPv4 addresses left except the ones which are set aside for transitioning methods, but of course now you can get as many IPv6 addresses as you want. With IPv6 you're even encouraged to get as many as you're ever going to need right away, to reduce address
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
There's a large cultural difference. Many guys and girls on asia use web cafes. When they later get own connection theres not usually enough ip's. You're talking about billions of people. Not everyone is going to have their own ip address from that pool.
Which brings us back on topic: IPv6 ...
I have two IPv4 addresses, four computers, and 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 IPv6 addresses ... all that's missing is for the people who run servers to get their shit straight.
Re: (Score:1)
>With £20,000 of government money
Tells you right there how much the UK cares about IPV6 - they've got plenty of IP4 to carry them through the next election cycle and more, why should they care?
Re: (Score:1)
Tells you right there how much the UK cares about IPV6
Their business is golden as long as resources are very limited and controlled by them. When they adopt IPv6 it's like forefeit investment. v4 becomes obsolete and address pools turn into... So it's like "let's spend some money making our wealth into nothing."
Re: (Score:1)
According to Hurricane Electric [he.net] Asia (APNIC) has 18M addresses left while Europe (RIPE) has 17M. I will grant you that the US (ARIN) has nearly 100M, but we also have the largest use which explains the big allocation. And yet we're doing something about migrating to IPv6...
Re: (Score:2)
According to Hurricane Electric [he.net] Asia (APNIC) has 18M addresses left while Europe (RIPE) has 17M. I will grant you that the US (ARIN) has nearly 100M, but we also have the largest use which explains the big allocation. And yet we're doing something about migrating to IPv6...
Yeap, free them as soon as possible... :) and sell them while they still have value :)
'US' IPv4 allocation? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Putting together other two [wikipedia.org] lists [wikipedia.org], one can see that
* UK - 63 mils population, IPV4/population=1.958, IPV4/internet users=2.342 - 0.21% IPv6 adoption
* US - 313 mils population, IPv4/population=4.911, IPv4/internet users=6.28 - 1.97% IPv6 adoption
In UK's case, the IPV6 adoption may have little to do with the need - as countries with lower need (higher IPV4 availability) adopted IPv6 in higher percentage?
Re:The IP Class diviation was never honest anyway (Score:4, Insightful)
I am from Europe and I think that Asian countries have a huge advantage. You are forced to adopt IPv6, so while the rest of the world still hesitates and waits, you gain lots of experience and get plenty of people trained in a new technology that will eventually become essential. Once the rest of the world wakes up to the reality, you are ready. This actually worries me for my own country...
Re: (Score:2)
Pardon me for saying so, but what's so vitally important or different about IPv6? Is the Internet going to change in some way once we're all on IPv6? My impression is that it's more like the Y2K problem, a bunch of people have to work on a bunch of code to fix all the places it assumes an IP is a dotted quad and fits in 32 bits, but when all is said and done nobody is really going to notice the difference, except that it continues to work and scale. I don't really think you got "lots of experience and train
Re: (Score:2)
First, I agree w/ the GP. The Asian countries that have been forced to adapt IPv6 early have an advantage here.
That's the tough sell - the internet by itself is not gonna change - you won't see better websites, more shiny boxes. But to use the standard /. car analogy, if you had a V6 engine in a Subaru Tribeca replaced w/ a V8, would you notice any difference in the exterior? It's when you drive it on the I-5 that you'll notice a difference. It's the same w/ IPv6.
One of the biggest places I can see
Re: (Score:2)
It wasn't a class 'deviation' as such. There are quite a few factors to note about IPv4:
Maybe they were totally inept... (Score:2)
Perhaps it's best when government money isn't wasted on ineptitude. Heck, if more people thought like that in the USA we could eliminate the national debt in three years.
Sadly, most of the idiots out there still equate throwing government shekels at a problem with 'doing something.'
Next up, ... (Score:2)
Bloody yanks!
Re: (Score:1)
I don't really care (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
All my sites have ipv6 availability too, and i get a surprising number of hits from v6 users... Quite a few isps seem to provide v6 by default now, and the users are generally not even aware that they have it.
Re: (Score:2)
Not here in Canada.
The main ISPs all have done exactly the same thing for IPv6 day.
Last years ago, they made their home page available over IPv6 for that one day.
This year, they made their home page available over IPv6 and left it enabled.
They aren't even giving out routers that are IPv6 enabled [they MIGHT be capable with a firmware update].
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's not that hard to read a product's description to determine if it has IPv6 support before you buy it.
Re: (Score:2)
While I strongly advocate for IPv6 adoption/support at the ISP, large scale network, and datacenter levels, I believe you're totally correct on your basic premise. Until having native IPv6 connectivity for your LAN devices represents a value add in terms of functionality, IPv4 only capabilities are fine for them. IPv6 and IPv4 can and do comfortably coexist; in fact, this is how the Internet will look for many, many years to come.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Because people are generally used to IPv4 and can remember something like 192.168.0.1 or whatever, but when you get into IPv6 and use something like:
2001:0db8:0000:0000:0000:ff00:0042:8329
That's a bit harder... but oh, they made it easy because you can eliminate leading and consecutive 0's with colons or some shit so you end up with:
2001:db8::ff00:42:8329
But that doesn't make it easier... it's just totally fucking confusing. (Example stolen from Wikipedia)
Now, don't get me wrong, we need IPv6 and everyone
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
The point - which if you look, way, way up, you may be able to see - is that the issue is also hidden from bean counters and decision makers until things actually grind to a halt.
Pre-emptive switching relies on techies to push it proactively. As one such, I have to admit to being IPv6 phobic. I like the simple dotted IPv4 addresses, they're familiar, they're comfortable, they are memorable and communicable - ever tried shouting an IPv6 address to across the room to Alice?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Right, because end users give a flying fuck about the length of an ip address they NEVER SEE.
Im sorry. I wasnt aware it was end users implementing and deploying IPv6.
As an Admin I refuse to deal with this long shit while IPv4 works just fine. I will NAT the crap out of it if I have to just to ignore IPv6 longer.
Re: (Score:3)
As an Admin I refuse to deal with this long shit while IPv4 works just fine. I will NAT the crap out of it if I have to just to ignore IPv6 longer.
And I hope it's *real* issue which is preventing me from using IPv6 today, and not this kind of pettiness (or job security, or whatever psychology is behind the anti-IPv6 attitudes you encounter on Slashdot).
Re: (Score:2)
I've been using IPv6 for 8 years or so and I really don't care what other people do. The main value for me is that all boxen on the LAN have their own IPv6 IPs so I can ssh to them and scp stuff around.
Really, that was it? What was wrong with giving them a 192.168.x.x or even 10.x.x.x IPv4 address, you have over 16 million "boxen" on your network so you ran out?
Re: (Score:2)
The answer to that was in the part you quoted. "so I can ssh to them and scp stuff around." Presumably, he didn't mean "while I'm sitting in my house". And NAT is a bitch for something like that.
Re: (Score:2)
The answer to that was in the part you quoted. "so I can ssh to them and scp stuff around." Presumably, he didn't mean "while I'm sitting in my house"
And how exactly would he have been doing that for the last 8 years when "the rest of the world" for the most part haven't used IPv6, so none of his boxes could be reached? If you need to connect to an IPv4/IPv6 bridge then you could have just as easily done a port forward instead.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Absolutely agree, I do the same for home use. Only trouble is that when I get proper native IPv6 my addresses are going to change around all the time (Some DNS update script will fix that though). Another good thing is to use transport mode IPSec, so all connections between the computers are encrypted, and only allow minimal stuff like SSH without IPSec. There's nothing like browsing my 8 TB share from anywhere on my Windows laptop, or watching MythTV (well there *is* something like that called a Slingbox,
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Lasted A Lot Longer Than Expected (Score:4, Insightful)
They lasted a lot longer than I expected. £20,000 is a really small amount of money so for it to last over two years is impressive.
£20,000 isn't a "really" small amount of money. £20,000 is an absurdly small amount of money. :-O
I notice that the website describes it as "seed funding". Realistically, I'd have thought that £20,000 was very low even for that purpose. That would about cover the pay of a *single* person for *one* year at less than average UK wages. And that wouldn't leave anything over for expenses.
At any rate, I was going to comment something along the lines of...
April 2010 - Labour gives government support to new body 6uk.
May 2010 - Labour kicked out of power, David Cameron and his Etonian chums, er... the Conservatives come in to power. Somewhat indifferent to Labour-supported project. Hmm.
Re: (Score:3)
Age of Austerity (Score:3)
I hate to say it, but I think IPv6 is at the bottom of the priority queue of David Cameron. Anything that drive up the cost should be avoided. This includes the cost of equipment upgrade, and the cost of hiring sensible contractor...
I think the government is a bit too thick to see that mandating IPv6 is a business opportunity for the private sectors...
Re: (Score:2)
if you think you have to upgrade to do IPv6, you're either foolhardy or not buying the right equipment in the first place. If you buy the right stuff no upgrades should be required for IPv6 functionality, including hiring people.
Re: (Score:3)
if you think you have to upgrade to do IPv6, you're either foolhardy or not buying the right equipment in the first place. If you buy the right stuff no upgrades should be required for IPv6 functionality, including hiring people.
They have loads of outdated equipment in the government.
Re: (Score:3)
Even if all your hardware supports IPv6 out of the box (which most of the major stuff does these days), there is still plenty that goes wrong in the software world. Tons of fucked up protocols out there, like SIP, that the devices and software doesn't handle IPv6 quite right to this day. I've seen plenty of stuff that stored IPs in databases using fields that v6 addresses wouldn't fit in. Both the App has to be upgraded and DB schematic changed. There are still plenty of expensive messes from the past that
Re: (Score:1)
Right, so the best course of action is to buy new stuff so the government doesn't have to buy new stuff to get ip6 working.
News flash: governments probably have shit from the 1990s sitting around, quietly humming away at some critical task, forgotten in a closet somewhere. It works, it's fine, and leave it alone, that's the attitude.
A lot of this gear probably predates the RFCs, let alone the actual devices that support ip6.
Re: (Score:2)
A lot of government computers are still running NT4, and the software doesn't work on later versions of Windows.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
if you think you have to upgrade to do IPv6, you're either foolhardy or not buying the right equipment in the first place.
Or you have just had the equipment for a while. Proper routers that can route IP packets in hardware are expensive so companies generally only replace them when they have to.
AIUI there are plenty of older routers out there that do v4 in hardware but do v6 in software. So you can bring up IPv6 on them and everything is fine until people start really using it then you have problems and the only solutions are to either turn off IPv6 or do a forklift upgrade. For some ISPs the forklift upgrades were needed anyw
Re: (Score:2)
"mandating IPv6 is a business opportunity for the private sectors"
Sounds like the Broken Window Fallacy.
Re: (Score:2)
And moving critical infrastructure away from the shoreline also is a business opportunity for the private sectors, but if you decide to stay where you'll be flooded in 10 years that's your own fault.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
"Why evacuate now? The hurricane is still 10 miles away."
Re: (Score:2)
UKs "new" Government Network is IPv4 (Score:5, Interesting)
The UK is currently in the process of developing & deploying a network for government agencies to use called the PSN [cabinetoffice.gov.uk] (public services network). It's sort of a replacement for the GSI [wikipedia.org]. It runs on IPv4, most likely using the DWP address space discussed here [slashdot.org].
Pretty much all the UK telcos & several global network manufacturers are involved with the PSN so it's a real missed opportunity that they didn't go with IPv6 for it.
No more IPv4 addresses for you! (Score:2)
OK, no more IPv4 addresses for the UK.
(I've been at this too long. I remember when the ARPANET went from 8-bit to 16-bit IMP addresses. I ordered one of the first class B networks in the early 1980s, [128.5.xxx.xxx]. I considered ordering a class C, but there was no charge for a class B, and we thought we might exceed 256 hosts some day.)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There are no more anyway.. RIPE ran out in September.
In the future ISPs and Government are going to have to go ipv6 or have everyone dealing with cgnat (which will be 'fun').
Compare with Global Warming response... (Score:3, Interesting)
I like to observe the ineptitude of governments around the world in driving IPv6 adoption and compare it with their similarly inept response to Global Warming.
In both cases, a slow but steady change is going to cause inevitable disaster. Foresight and planning is required, and government incentives or lawmaking is basically a must, because in both cases no individual benefits from saving the world, so why spend the money?
The difference is that the IP address shortage is a trivial problem to foresee and solve. It's like a toy version of Global Warming. A mock disaster to test the government's mettle. For example, unlike Global Warming, the IP address shortage is trivially predicted. We knew what month the last block was going to run out something like two years ahead of time! It's simple maths. There's no theory. There's no complex feedback cycles. There's no doubt. We have a fixed, unchangeable amount of something, we're using it faster and faster, there's still a huge number of potential users. It's going to run out.
Similarly, the fix is also trivial compared to Global Warming. Had, say, the EU made a new law that all imported electronics that can be connected to the Internet have mandatory IPv6 support enabled by default, that alone would have been sufficient. That's it. A piece of legislation, requiring some talking and a few pieces of paper. The cost of some electronics might have gone up an average of 50c or somesuch, but the problem would have been solved practically overnight! No manufacturer with a global market could afford to neglect IPv6 support. Common software platforms would have resulted in IPv6 everywhere, for everyone, because of one change in one law in one place.
Instead, what do we get? Half-solutions like NAT. Various groups with no teeth that can "encourage" and "assist" the adoption of IPv6. Piecemeal adoption that means that nobody can go IPv6-only any time soon. Meetings with "industry experts", half of which work for corporations that still have an IPv4-only Internet presence. Conferences. Studies. Wastes of time and money.
I bet 90% of legislators around the world haven't even heard of IPv6, or still don't know what it's all about.
Meanwhile, think about it: in the Western world and increasingly everywhere else, Internet access is now basically an "essential human right", much like clean drinking water, transport, electricity, or health care. I mean seriously, would YOU buy a house in a location where you could get water and electricity, but not the Internet? Exactly.
Now go back to the legislators. This -- now essential -- service is breaking in a trivially predictable way, and they haven't even fucking bothered to do the simplest things to actually fix the problem.
Instead what we're going to see is parasitic rent-seeking: the value of IPv4 addresses will skyrocket. Full, bi-directional Internet access will become a privilege, concentrated into the hands of corporations. Their investments in addresses will appreciate over time, hence predictably they will have a vested interest in maintaining and growing this wealth. Expect to see dirty tactics and corruption used to block IPv6 adoption to prevent a devaluation of IPv4 address "property". This might get bad enough that IPv6 will never be adopted, because there will be significant pressure against it!
Now think about how much worse Global Warming is going to be! It's far off into the future. Decades at least until serious effects are felt anywhere. The science is complex, and difficult for laymen to understand. There are already vested interests to deny it, to the tune of trillions of dollars. The fix -- if any -- wouldn't be 50c per purchase, it might be more like 50%!
Why the fuck do we keep voting these people into power?
Re: (Score:2)
Why the fuck do we keep voting these people into power?
Oh, various reasons, ranging from party-tribalism, PR (advertising that speaks to our emotions rather than to our reason), short-termism (individually and collectively), a biased press, and even the electoral system. Talking of which, we had the opportunity recently (in the UK) to try and improve (albeit slightly) our electoral system, and in a referendum, it was rejected - and rejected by a large margin - by the voters. I've really never quite understood why.
I think that the whole process of politics is
Re: (Score:2)
I like to observe the ineptitude of governments around the world in driving IPv6 adoption and compare it with their similarly inept response to Global Warming.
Yeah, and similar consequences?
http://penrose.uk6x.com/ [uk6x.com]
We're out of IPv4s, we've been out for ages. What has changed? Nothing. So what.
Re: (Score:2)
I like to observe the ineptitude of governments around the world in driving IPv6 adoption and compare it with their similarly inept response to Global Warming.
Yeah, and similar consequences? http://penrose.uk6x.com/ [uk6x.com]
We're out of IPv4s, we've been out for ages. What has changed? Nothing. So what.
UK still has almost two IPv4 addresses/each person [wikipedia.org].
If considering the Internet users only, UK has about 2.43 IPv4/each user (exaggerating a bit, you can say that each Internet user in UK can have one client and one server with their own IPv4).
If you throw into the picture the number of households [ons.gov.uk] (which can share a NAT-ing router) - it comes to 6.7 IPv4/household.
Re: (Score:2)
UK still has almost two IPv4 addresses/each person [wikipedia.org].
If considering the Internet users only, UK has about 2.43 IPv4/each user (exaggerating a bit, you can say that each Internet user in UK can have one client and one server with their own IPv4).
If you throw into the picture the number of households [ons.gov.uk] (which can share a NAT-ing router) - it comes to 6.7 IPv4/household.
So the IPv4 expiry panic was overblown?
Re: (Score:3)
Kind of buggers up anyone wanting to run a hosting business in the UK.
Re: (Score:2)
I won't say it's completely 'trivial'. There's a lot of software out there that can and does bug out with IPv6, most of it's older, but not all of it. Always interesting when someone sticks the first 32-bits of of an IP6 in a database meant for IPv4. The cost of making sure any software that evaluates IP addresses compliance with v6 will be -very- expensive.
Other then that, people can be very bad at dealing with creeping problems.
Re: (Score:2)
Full, bi-directional Internet access will become a privilege, concentrated into the hands of corporations
To them that's a benefit not a problem. Same goes for users not being able to P2P as well or run servers easily. Many corporations will be happy with that.
Verity Stob (Score:2)
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love IPv6 [theregister.co.uk]
IT in government (Score:2)
You don't get points for taking risk with taxpayers' money. You do, however, get points for showing an abundance of caution which typically leads to endless meetings, signoffs, prototypes that nobody can be bothered to evaluate and reams of docum
Re: (Score:2)
DD-WRT Replacement? (Score:2)
Is there a DD-WRT replacement for my WRT-54GL?
Every once in a while I go looking. I know I can type some arcane commands into Linux, and make the router route IPv6. However, for any of my customers, I need either a GUI or a webpage based tool. The ease of configuration, the ability to set up a wireless bridge, and the configuration options on DNSMasq, keeps me coming back to DD-WRT.
Is there a more modern device with a Linux based kernel, at a reasonable price, that does IPv6 and is set up with a GUI an
Re: (Score:2)
Domestic or business customers? You could do a lot worse than pfSense for businesses, but it's overkill for domestic. I know
IPv6 support is planned for pfsense, if not actually complete.
Its BSD rather than Linux, don't know if that's a problem.
Re:IPv6 DD-WRT Replacement? (Score:2)
Usually, I'm using DD-WRT in a small application. For instance, on a remote computer node that needs to connect to the office wirelessly. A small business or home network (less than 5 computers.) The home network of a business person that needs to connect to the office. etc.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The reason I say it's overkill for domestic is it has a list of features that goes on and on, but probably 95% of them would never be used in a domestic setting. It's also missing some features you would want in domestic - for instance, half-decent ADSL support and AIUI wireless support is somewhat lagging.
pfSense is a fork of m0n0wall - they forked some time ago so I'm not sure how far they've separated.
Mind you, ADSL and wireless support can be surprisingly poor in Linux router distributions - it's amazin
Re: (Score:2)
It's been a while since i've used DD-WRT. Last I checked, it was still using the 2.4 kernel with the closed-source drvier on many broadcom devices. Linux 2.6 has been out for 9 years, and the open source broadcom drivers have stabilized much since then.
I highly recommend OpenWRT with its Luci configuration interface. You're going to find it a worthwhile replacement for DD-WRT, including native IPv6 support (provided you go with the broadcom-2.6 kernel). You don't need to know much about using the command li
Indifference? (Score:2)
Of course Governments are indifferent, every large organisation resists change. You have to be like a wasp in their pocket, constantly giving them little stings. Blaming the UK Government for lack of IPv6 adoption is the lazy way out.
In contract the Irish IPv6 Task Force, devoid of any Government funding, frequently had Cabinet-level Ministers at its conferences and gave them an absolute grilling. Did you know that Irish procurement regulations require all IT equipment to be dual-stack capable out-of-the
still on imperial and no plan to switch to metric (Score:2)
comon - all of the U.K. is still on imperial and no plan to switch to metric - come to think of it - they still have a monarchy smack dab in the middle of their democracy - the british dont like change - and i dont think that'll change anytime soon..
2cents from toronto island
jp
Re: (Score:2)
comon - all of the U.K. is still on imperial and no plan to switch to metric
Err, no, you're thinking of the U.S, which not only uses arcane units like Fahrenheit in every day life, but actually use imperial figures in science and industry!
Re: (Score:1)
comon - all of the U.K. is still on imperial and no plan to switch to metric
I don't know why you state this so confidently when you are almost completely wrong.
Nearly all units in the UK are officially metric, with the official change having taken place many years ago (pre 1980) apart from a few very specific exceptions like road signs (miles/mph) beer (pints) milk (mostly pints, sometimes litres).
Informally, most people use a mishmash of imperial and metric, often switching between the two for convenience.