Oh noes! it's IPv6!

[WhiteZero]

*butterflies fly out of the wallet*

Moving to IPv6 will present a number of challenges for the U.S. federal government, not the least of which is the associated price tag, which could hit $75 billion.

A new 63-page report issued late last week by the IPv6 Summit and Juniper Networks offers U.S. federal agencies a bevy of suggestions on how best to go about transitioning to IPv6.

Read on...
http://www.internetnews.com/infra/article.php/3570211

Ahhh, the price to pay for the internet to keep growing.

 

[Murray_H]

I fort it wus moffs in ur wallat?

 

[WhiteZero]

I fort it wus moffs in ur wallat?

Bleh, whichever.

 

[TechnoHippyChic]

The concept of IPv6 has been around for ages, doesn't seem like much more than a will to do it and some firmware upgrades would be needed...

 

[WhiteZero]

The concept of IPv6 has been around for ages, doesn't seem like much more than a will to do it and some firmware upgrades would be needed...

Apparently not though...


Even with firmware upgrades not all edged devices could support IPv6.

 

[TechnoHippyChic]

Perhaps, but this $75 billion is thing pretty vague. Almost like it's fishing for funding...

 

[tripleplay369]

Anyone in the know want to explain in simple terms what the advantages of IPv6 are?

-edit- Er, nevermind. According to wikipedia it just allows for longer IP addresses.

 

[Xaxor]

Hahaha, oh wow, that war just looks more wasteful every day.

 

[WhiteZero]

Anyone in the know want to explain in simple terms what the advantages of IPv6 are?

IPv4 is what were currently using. The 32bit IP addresses that it uses are pretty finite and are quickly running out. It's like trying to house everyone one in the USA into Texas, there just isnt enough room.

IPv6 uses a 128bit length address.
So heres your regular IPv4 address:
192.168.1.1
The address is translated down into binary, and each octet is limited to 255. And supports upto 4.2 billion total addresses.
Now, Heres an IPv6 address:
2001:0db8:85a3:0000:1319:8a2e:0370:7344
8 octets of 4 Hexadecimal strings. IPv6 supports upto 340 undecillion addresses.
So yeah, in the future when your asking your buddy for the servers IP for a game, it's going to be huge. lol

In other words, it gives us a much larger pool of addresses to give out to users/servers/etc.

Other than just the address, there are several other improvments, of which you can read all about IPv6 on it's Wiki site:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipv6

 

[TechnoHippyChic]

Nat Ftw \0/!

 

[WhiteZero]

Nat Ftw \0/!

Yeah, I'm sure plenty, if not all, of NATs will have v6 to v4 translation.

 

[Muffin Man]

sooo basically.... more computers can be on teh interwebs?