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July 16, 2006
340,282,366,920,938,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 new web addresses created by internet chiefs
I can tell you right now this is going to be awesome. I've been working with IPv6 for a few years now and I can tell you it is very revolutionary in the way it works. Actually the Chinese are yet again ahead of America on this front, because we own the vast majority of addresses, making us incredibly lazy about working to upgrade. Instead we have adopted a virtual networking nightmare that makes everything more complicated and annoying. Probably about half the people reading this blog if they were to check their equivalent of ipconfig would be coming from an address 192.168.1.100, because of this virtual addressing. What happens is your real address is actually being stored in the router, and then every computer underneath it sends out a request to the router and then the router sends out requests with your real address. Then when it gets an answer if figures out who asked for the information and sends it back to them. The problem comes in when you want to dial into a computer behind a router without the router sending out the request first. Normally, this is actually a good thing because it makes it impossible for anyone to find your computer on the Internet. But if for example you actually wanted to take over someone's computer remotely to help them with a problem it's impossible to do. Or if you wanted to access your vast music library at home while you are at the beach, you can't access it. Or more importantly if you want to access all your favorite local televisions while you were on vacation, you can't get to them. And that's where IPv6 solves the problem. Every device can be given it's own address, then you can get access to them from anywhere. So you'll be turning on your oven to cook your dinner for you, open the door for a delivery guy from work, or a million other things because you will be able to address every single item in your life.
Read more over at Times Online.
Posted by Jamison at July 16, 2006 8:37 AM
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Comments
Well it's certainly a good thing that there will be more IP addresses. However, as an IT guy who uses IP on a daily basis, I can tell you that there are many ways around the tech support/router issue. You can use a program like Timbuktu Pro or Symantec pcAnywhere to get to a router, but of course you have to have a rule in your firewall to allow it. I can't see this changing with IPv6, considering you have to grant permission to access your devices, or else you'd have your neighbor making coffee for you. Actually that would be very nice of them ;P
There are also programs out there that can bypass router systems for tech support purposes. The catch is that you must have someone at the computer to click on a support link and then expressly grant permission. I've used one of these (of course I can't think of the name right now), with my IP phone system.
Security-wise, I predict that this will cause many headaches. If this is marketed as the appliance-over-the-internet gimmick, the tech- and security-ignorant will just open more devices up to outside takeover. People will *still* need firewalls, even more so because of the sheer number of devices that could be maliciously affected.
Of course, that's job security for people like me, but I'm not one of those IT people who partially fix things so I'll be needed later on. I like to solve the problem and move forward. M$FT will keep messing up anyway, so I'm not worried about the future of tech support.
Getting back to topic, IPv6 is definitely a cool technology. I wonder how long it'll take for it to enter the general lexicon. Can't wait to hear my Mom say, "yeah Tommy, but is it IPv6 compatible?" On second thought, that'll probably never happen lol.
Posted by: Tom M. at July 16, 2006 11:10 AM