IPv6

[Robert Bass]

Here's a topic I'm surprised to not already see on the engineering forum. IPv6

I'm assuming everyone is keeping up with the gradual transition from IPv4 to IPv6. I'm sort of looking at that now for my own network and have some confusion about compatibility. I know for example that neither my DSL modem nor my D-Link router are IPv6 compatible, and will eventually need to be replaced. But what about my Ethernet NAS device? Will it still work on my existing network whenever I replace my router with one compatible to IPv6?

R

 

[RadioMan203]

I would say for 99% of us there's little need for IPv6 on our own internal networks. Unless you have a giant mega-network you probably won't run out of network addresses. I help manage things at a 20 building facility and while we're close we haven't run out of internal addresses ... yet!

Dealing with the outside world that may be a different thing.

 

[chriscollins]

You may see IPv6 on your external connection, but all your internal stuff will stay IPv4 for a long time.

IPv6 is more about providing more static addresses to the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6

 

[The F Mister]

IPv6 is much more than just extending the bit mask and thus generating more ip's. It has a lot of improvements on QoS and other services supported native in the IPv6 protocol that, even for local networks, might be interessting.

 

[chriscollins]

It's just my opinion that IPv6 offers little to the broadcast industry.

Unless you are doing a corporate wide VPN (and you have many clusters), I could see some benefit.

 

[ScottJ]

Echoing what others have said, for most small internal networks IPv6 is a non-issue. If you're running a class C network (and if your internal addresses all begin with 192.168, you probably are) then staying with IPv4 internally is still your best choice. Only devices that are directly exposed to the Internet will need to be IPv6 compatible in the coming months and years.

Replacing your router with an IPv6 compatible one doesn't necessarily require any changes to your internal network (the LAN side). Only the WAN side of the router needs to speak IPv6.

Most equipment manufactured in the last year or two (including our WheatNet-IP system) is IPv6 compatible, but still has IPv4 compatibility as well.

Some large corporate / enterprise networks may benefit from a transition to IPv6 internally, not because of address space but because of certain other management features the new protocol supports.

 

[jesseg]

IPv6 offers little to the broadcast industry.

As long as all streaming stays unicast, yes.

Even private network multicast systems for broadcast have failed in the past. Such as UltraVOX (UVOX) by Nullsoft/Comcast. At least they got two loaded Enterprise 10000s out of the deal, which btw can handle 750,000 unicast connections per box (after Sun tweaked the kernel & stack to make it work). And we got a new replacement to the SHOUTcast protocol.

 

[SirRoxalot]

Note that most new boxes come with IPv6 installed and enabled. I've talked with several network administrators who've found that those boxes are much slower on an IPv4 network if you leave IPv6 enabled, and may slow the entire network down as more of them get into the mix. It may have something to do with the tunneling protocols that IPv6 uses for backward compatibility with IPv4 networks. Sounds to me like it needs to be an either/or choice - with the other protocol disabled.

 

[chriscollins]

I have no problems on Windows 7 Pro 32 or 64 with both being enabled.

I've been running that way for a while now with Audiovault. Network performance is important here, we stream all linear audio from 2 file servers, so everything happens within the network.

I could see a potential conflict, if you had a router that was giving IPv6 DHCP addresses to boxes, but I leave IPv6 off at the router level to the LAN and then assign statics to all the internal machines via IPv4.