Out of the UK this week comes word that, for the first time, root-and-master level domain name servers are returning addresses records that have the ability to map domain names to IPv6 addresses. This means that the foundation blocks are in place for all domain names to directly map to IPv6 addresses, essentially paving the way for machines across the planet to use IPv6 to reach a significant portion of the Internet.
In the near future, applications such as a browser or email will be able to directly map domain names to an IPv6 address without first communicating to a domain name server with an IPv4 address. This is an important step, because up until now resolving a domain name to an IPv6 address involved the use of an intermediary device to perform address mapping or translation -– and those intermediary devices are not in widespread use.
It also means that we may have the final piece of the puzzle in place to migrate the Internet addressing scheme to IPv6, a shift that has been in the works for more than a decade.
While IPv6 does offer advantages over IPv4, the transition to this new Internet addressing scheme is not without controversy and contention in the Internet community. There are more than a few technical issues that need solving before we see the deprecation of IPv4.
I wonder if this week’s development will accelerate the adoption of IPv6 or exacerbate the issues for network operators. It’s clear to me that, in order for the Internet to continue to grow and scale, it needs a migration path beyond IPv4 addresses. The news that domain name servers are being enabled to return IPv6 addresses is a step in the right direction -– I just wonder if this is the road we really want to take. To that end, are you building your infrastructure and applications to use IPv6 addresses, or is this still far in your future?
4 comments so far
11:28 AM PT
[...] up on my feeds, I read from GigaOM that there were reports in the UK “for the first time, root-and-master level domain name servers are returning addresses records that h….” I decided to do some further reading and found out that “On 4 February the master or [...]
5:31 PM PT
I just wonder where the developers are hiding who can look at the IPv6 and say “Wow, neat, I can do this, I can do that..” to explore not so much the unique features of IPv6 but unravel new opportunities that the whole concept will offer.
There are of course the companies who are pushed to adopting IPv6 platform because of the numbers. Take Verizon. They would never be able to have sufficient addresses, nor IPv4 infrastructure to cater for, say 100.000.000 on-the-go WiFi phones. Piece of cake with IPv6 inherently mobile IPv6 addressing.
Or take a look at the OLTP (One Laptop Per Child) program pushing PCs to far corners of this earth with no IP infrastructure of any kind. The secret sauce that makes it work is made out of IPv6-based mesh networking. It’s there. It works.
But I’m looking at it from the user’s perspective. We don’t care what addressing schemes are used but today establishing network connections and VPNs between or amongst family members, or classmates who may use very different types of computers a) requires a fair amount of technical knowledge and b) bunches of often misbehaving and difficult to tame applications and c) requires that those computers don’t move around a lot.
Easy enough to set up today but we need to do it without tunnel brokers in the middle or clumsy translations. Also, the programmers are asleep, I think, and very few end-user applications support IPv6 yet. Ekiga, which had IPv6 support built in since the beginning has mysteriously pulled the feature out. Who will fill the VoIP/IM vacuum for IPv6 adopters? To me, the time to write IPv6 support in your applications is TODAY. Thinking about it until the “1st World” wakes up and everyone else has it, is not very smart.
3:14 PM PT
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7:33 AM PT
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