IPv6 and Amiga

[kolla]

Since I have been ranting about this for 15+ years, I can just as well continue.

Which Amigoid system is most likely to implement IPv6 first? I hold a button on MorphOS, some devs there at least recognize the issue. Interesting times ahead as providers are now moving up in high percentage numbers of clients using IPv6 for connectivity, when those numbers get high enough, providers may wish to switch fully and have IPv6 only clients. Transition technology for reaching IPv4 only services are already present and adopted, but keeping IPv4 for clients is not a priority for anyone, which means tough luck for Amiga systems (and a handful other retro systems).

http://www.internetsociety.org/deploy360/blog/2015/05/verizon-wireless-nears-70-ipv6-att-crosses-50-more/

[Matt_H]

Important, yes, but I wonder if it's less urgent than we think? Correct me if I'm wrong understanding the technical nuances here, but our Amigas aren't connected directly to the internet - they go through a router and then some kind of modem. As long as the router can provide IPv6-to-IPv4 WAN-to-LAN translation, I think we're okay. I would guess that this translation will be a part of standard router software for a long time to come. If it's not, I'm sure some specialty manufacturer will fill the void with one that does. I suspect we're not the only users effectively "stuck" on IPv4 - a bunch of banks and government systems are probably in the same boat.

[Duce]

IPv4 isn't going away anytime soon, and even if it suddenly did, your home NAT equipped router would handle it just fine and make the bridge between the outside IPv6 network and keep our moldy oldie IPv4 stuff running just fine with NAT loopback.

[kolla]

All right you clever people, exactly what protocol, what NAT solution will help you when your provider goes IPv6 only? Transition technologies have been all about how to let IPv6 clients (the big number) reach legacy IPv4 services (small numbers), extremely few transition protocols have been about IPv4 legacy clients surviving on an IPv6 only network (ISP).

I am a person who have worked with IPv6 for more than a decade and a half - please enlighten me about what protocol you all are talking about.

[kolla]

Banks and governments are mostly on IPv6 already, I just happen to know because I work in that sector. And again, the transition protocols allow banks and government services to run on IPv4 till kingdom come, but nobody cares about legacy clients and home computers. IPv6 clients have no trouble looking up and addressing IPv4 only services using NAT64/DNS64 hacks, but IPv4 clients have no way of addressing, or being able to look up and grasp AAAA records in DNS. There are a few proposals for NAT46, but nothing implemented, nothing working.

Keep digging heads in the sand, folks.

[kolla]

Btw - I want a list of other operating systems with no IPv6 support, please enlighten me.

[whabang]

IPv6-only ISP's? My provider doesn't even provide IPv6 yet. Even so, most providers will probably provide an IPv4 address through NAT for quite some time, even if they start focusing on IPv6 (hint: many web hosts don't support it yet).

[kolla]

Hint: webhosts do not have to, IPv6-only clients can reach IPv4 only web services, and other services through well tested and implemented protocols like NAT64/DNS64. The other way around is not possible.

Hint2: all main stream OSes support IPv6 already, sometimes even by default set up IPv6 tunnels all on their own if your ISP does not do IPv6 natively (Teredo on Windows, f.eks).

You may very well have machines you use daily, connecting over IPv6 and you do not even know it. Did you read my link? About 70% of Verizone wireless clients now use IPv6, about half of AT&T. All new clients (cell phones, pads, whatever) use IPv6 by default, and some do bypass ISPs NATs with tunnels. Providers offering IPTV are moving to IPv6, new upstart providers offer IPv6 (because buying IPv4 is extra cost with little gain), old ISPs are in various stages of transitions... at what point should Amiga users start to worry?

[eliyahu]

You may very well have machines you use daily, connecting over IPv6 and you do not even know it. Did you read my link? About 70% of Verizone wireless clients now use IPv6, about half of AT&T. All new clients (cell phones, pads, whatever) use IPv6 by default, and some do bypass ISPs NATs with tunnels. Providers offering IPTV are moving to IPv6, new upstart providers offer IPv6 (because buying IPv4 is extra cost with little gain), old ISPs are in various stages of transitions... at what point should Amiga users start to worry?

as someone expert in the field, you're the perfect guy to help me understand this issue. both of my blackberrys (which are verizon wireless phones here in the US) connect via IPv6. and my router connection to my ISP (via a cable modem) is also via IPv6. but i have been able to connect to both as access points for my amigas -- and both provide IPv4 services to them.

so... is the issue that at some point internet service providers will not allow IPv4-connected devices to IPv4-to-IPv6 bridges (like my phones and home router)? what will change from the current scenario where i have a local network (with my amigas) running on IPv4, connecting to some router (either my phone or cable modem) which connects downstream to the ISP over IPv6?

what am i missing here?

-- eliyahu

[paul1981]

Every problem has a solution does it not? When the time comes it will be solved; should there be enough interest in the platform by that time.

[itix]

Btw - I want a list of other operating systems with no IPv6 support, please enlighten me.

We are using Windows Server 2008 and Linux but all our servers and embedded products are IPv4 only. However, they dont have to reach anything in Internet. It is enough I can reach them via Internet.

Works for me and so far none of our customers asked IPv6 configuration for our servers. Our embedded products are not even capable to use IPv6 addresses even when they are running in Linux... (4 byte IP address is hardcoded to too many places...)

So in the end question is not if the OS supports IPv6 but is the software supporting IPv6... unfortunately it often doesnt.

[Rob]

@Kolla

Is it in some way extremely difficult/time consuming to implement IPv6 in an Amiga (like) TCP/IP stack?

[kolla]

as someone expert in the field, you're the perfect guy to help me understand this issue. both of my blackberrys (which are verizon wireless phones here in the US) connect via IPv6. and my router connection to my ISP (via a cable modem) is also via IPv6. but i have been able to connect to both as access points for my amigas -- and both provide IPv4 services to them.

so... is the issue that at some point internet service providers will not allow IPv4-connected devices to IPv4-to-IPv6 bridges (like my phones and home router)? what will change from the current scenario where i have a local network (with my amigas) running on IPv4, connecting to some router (either my phone or cable modem) which connects downstream to the ISP over IPv6?

what am i missing here?

-- eliyahu

You are missing that there is no IPv6-IPv4 bridging going on
 Once you set up your device, be it router or blackberry, to act as an access point, it fires up the IPv4 stack, gets an IPv4 address from Verizon, and runs dual-stack, routing your IPv4 traffic as normal. Same for any other software on your device that for some reason still doesn't support IPv6. No magic here, and the question is just how long will Verizon keep supporting this.

[kolla]

@Itix: interesting times ahead then, look out for competition that may be able to offer your customers more future proof solutions, not to mention customers you miss out on because of lacking support. Company I work for had turned on quite a few offers over the years because of lacking support for IPv6. But what you do on your internal networks with machines that do not even go connect out is of little relevance, you can run pure netbios, declan or envoy for that matter. And yes, it is very much about the software, and luckily the ammount of software in use that does not support IPv6 is shrinking.

[kolla]

@Kolla

Is it in some way extremely difficult/time consuming to implement IPv6 in an Amiga (like) TCP/IP stack?

In my view, Amigoid systems should do like Haiku and others, and look at porting the KAME derived IP stack of FreeBSD or NetBSD. Is it difficult and time consuming? Yes, because very few Amiga programmers have knowledge required.