Re: Debian and the future: IPv6
On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 11:35, Paul E Condon <pecondon@mesanetworks.net> wrote:
> There was a time, in the distant past, but within the time since
> I started using Debian, that the default /etc/hosts file did not
> contain the collection of lines beginning with the comment:
>
> "# The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts"
>
> When I first saw these lines, I knew very well that my Debian host, at
> that time, was not yet an "IPv6 capable host". But now I am running
> Lenny, and Debian stock linux kernel, 2.6.26-1-686. Is this host
> capable? If not, what is the current thinking about when IPv6 might
> actually arrive? Or is it likely to be one of those things, like World
> Peace, that has been in future and likely always will be --- in the
> future?
Parts of Debian and Linux in general have been IPv6 capable for a very
long time, (e.g. Red Hat 7.0 with kernel ~2.4.4 had some IPv6 support;
so did kernel 2.2.x) and Etch had rather good coverage. Lenny is not
100%, but that just means there are a few apps in the repos that don't
do IPv6 yet. Certainly all the major apps and utilities support it.
I recently set up an IPv6 tunnel with Hurricane Electric. I was pretty easy
and it works fine. I also setup a tunnel to my Linode server, so my website
is IPv6-accessible now. Probably my next major network upgrade (in a
year or two) will be to make IPv6 my primary protocol, with a 6to4 gateway
to talk to the rest of the internet.
> I don't feel any need for IPv6. I'm just wondering when, if ever, I will
> need to confront it as a new reality in daily life.
It will be a while yet, but it is now in sight. Comcast and other cable
ISPs are moving aggressively to DOCSIS 3.0, which supports IPv6,
and Comcast in particular needs IPv6 for its management network.
That means there will that many more techs/admins with real-world
IPv6 experience, not to mention more reason for home "routers" to
be IPv6 capable (most/all enterprise class stuff has been IPv6 capable
for some time).
Comcast has been saying they will have 65% docsis 3 coverage by the
end of this year, and 99%-100% in 2010. They haven't talked about rolling
out customer-level IPv6 support, but I think it could happen by 2012.
Also, Vista and Win7 have IPv6 stacks that are enabled by default (in XP
it was disabled by default and for 2k you had to download it). OS X has
IPv6, and all recent Apple Airport devices have support turned on - in fact
this is enough to significantly affect the U.S. IPv6 numbers:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2008/11/google-more-macs-mean-higher-ipv6-usage-in-us.ars
tl;dr
Give it 3 or 4 years and it will be having a definite impact, 10 years
or less it
will be common, or even ubiquitous.
Cheers,
Kelly Clowers
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