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No IPv6 For UK Broadband Users

Journal written by farnz (625056) and posted by timothy on Thursday October 09, @01:19PM
from the not-now-love-not-now dept.
The Internet Networking
BT (the incumbent telephone company in the United Kingdom) are in the process of spending millions of pounds on upgrading their network to an all-IP core. However, they have failed to consider 21st Century protocol support, preferring to insist that IPv4 is enough for everyone. Haven't they noticed the IPv4 exhaustion report yet?
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Firehose:No IPv6 for UK broadband users by farnz (625056)
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  • Sounds about right (Score:4, Informative)

    by lililalancia (752496) on Thursday October 09, @01:24PM (#25316841)
    I read this snippet from Computer Weekly earlier on: - http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/it-downtime-blog/2008/10/microsoft-speech-glitch-raises.html [computerweekly.com] Which pretty much sums up how not to do it!

  • Internet in the UK will fall over... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by click2005 (921437) on Thursday October 09, @01:26PM (#25316863)

    BT is too busy selling everyone's personal info and browsing habits to notice that in a few years their customers wont be able to do anything on t'internet because of a lack of IPv6.

    It'll give them a good excuse to jack up prices because their 21CN (21st Century Network) is about as efficient as 1st century roman plumbing and is unable to handle current traffic let alone allow for any growth.

  • The border routers (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 09, @01:26PM (#25316875)

    Well I'm sure that we can address at border routers with the UK. Since they have to switch all of the bits from the left side to the right side of the tubes, they might as well do 6to4 as well.

  • Not all users though (Score:5, Informative)

    by el_chupanegre (1052384) on Thursday October 09, @01:27PM (#25316901)

    The summary clearly fails to realise that not all broadband in the UK goes through BT's network. Virgin Media offers cable broadband through fibre optic. Don't know what their take on IPv6 is though.

    Yet more FUD?

  • Unwillingness to learn something new? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by erroneus (253617) on Thursday October 09, @01:27PM (#25316905) Homepage

    I find a disturbing unwillingness to learn in the IT world.

    I too am guilty of being reluctant to deploy technologies I don't fully understand...IPv6 being one of them. (I am told it isn't THAT big a deal but still... I don't know it and I know IPv4) And it is my guess that just as many IT groups want to solve problems with MS Windows (because that's all they know) BT probably wants to solve their problems with IPv4.

    • Re:Unwillingness to learn something new? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mollymoo (202721) on Thursday October 09, @02:39PM (#25318043) Journal
      They don't want to "solve their problem with IPv4". It's not like they've invested billions on 21CN and it can't do IPv6. There was some Cisco bug which meant IPv6 didn't work, so they said their wholesale broadband products (the products ISPs re-sell) don't support IPv6. The Cisco bug is now fixed, but they've apparently not deployed the fix everywhere. That's the story straight from TFA, so quite how they got that summary from it I don't know. BT haven't failed to consider IPv6 support at all, that's pure bullshit. IPv6 doesn't currently work properly on some of BT's kit, but is that because there's no demand so they haven't bothered with the fix? No, no. It can't be that. They must be idiots, or stuck in the past, or part of some fucking huge conspiracy to regress the country to the dark ages.

  • Stop whining, (Score:5, Insightful)

    by alta (1263) on Thursday October 09, @01:30PM (#25316955) Homepage Journal

    I'm sure everyone is going to see that your IP address is 10.x.x.x soon. Enjoy the big NAT box in the sky. And I wish you luck getting your ports forwarded.

  • What BT Stands For (Score:5, Funny)

    by manlygeek (958223) on Thursday October 09, @01:31PM (#25316967) Homepage
    Didn't you know that "BT" stands for "Behind the Times?" OTOH, If you insist on IPv6 you get to do lots of tunneling since almost no one else is on it either. Just goes to show you what happens to innovation in the presence of a large userbase and expensive infrastructure.

  • IPv6 is a dud (maybe) (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Spazmania (174582) on Thursday October 09, @01:41PM (#25317119) Homepage

    There is a small but growing number of folks who think IPv6 may be stillborn. The rationale goes something like this:

    1. It's very expensive to upgrade an infrastructure of non-trivial size to IPv6 and that's only one of the several serious disincentives against deploying IPv6.

    2. IPv6's rate of deployment to date can only be described as an abysmal commercial failure.

    3. IPv6 fails to solve the Internet's core routing problem (reference the IRTF Routing Research Group). It's possible that a protocol which does solve that problem will leapfrog IPv6's deployment.

    4. 2^32 addresses IS enough for everybody, IF most client computers are behind a NAT firewall. The count is too low only if most client computers need their own globally-routable address. That most client computers need their own globally-routable address is a dubious claim in light of today's wide deployment of NAT.

    • 1. It's very expensive to upgrade an infrastructure of non-trivial size to IPv6 and that's only one of the several serious disincentives against deploying IPv6.

      Waaah Waaah! We cheaped out during our last hardware upgrade cycle so we'd have to upgrade everything this time around! Waaah!

      2. IPv6's rate of deployment to date can only be described as an abysmal commercial failure.

      True, this is partly because a lot of ISPs will simply say NO to customers asking about IPv6. The ISP I'm using at home basically told me they are officially "testing" IPv6 for residential users but that this testing is very very limited and that business customers who want IPv6 get to pay extra for it. So I'm using a Sixxs tunnel for now.

      3. IPv6 fails to solve the Internet's core routing problem (reference the IRTF Routing Research Group). It's possible that a protocol which does solve that problem will leapfrog IPv6's deployment.

      The main problem IPv6 is supposed to solve is the same problem that the original IP protocol was supposed to solve, the lack of end-to-end addressing on the internet.

      4. 2^32 addresses IS enough for everybody, IF most client computers are behind a NAT firewall. The count is too low only if most client computers need their own globally-routable address. That most client computers need their own globally-routable address is a dubious claim in light of today's wide deployment of NAT.

      NAT breaks the internet and is essentially an ugly workaround that results in the need for lots of other workarounds. If you think this isn't so then you need to get your head out of the sand/your ass (your choice) and pay better attention.

      /Mikael

      • Breaking the Internet (Score:5, Insightful)

        by PCM2 (4486) on Thursday October 09, @03:15PM (#25318611) Homepage

        You have succinctly summed up the opinion of most of the network-engineer types that I have spoken to on the subject. Especially the part about "breaking the Internet" -- that's a very familiar refrain.

        And you know what? You're probably right, in a hypothetical, pie-in-the-sky network engineer's world. But the rest of us have already accepted the fact that, as with so many other things in life, we're going to have to put up with what we get. I don't own an ISP. You don't own an ISP. So what are we going to do? Write letters? Threaten to take our business -- where? To the ISP down the block? Which has the exact same policies as the one I subscribe to now?

        Telling the major telcos that they need to convert their entire infrastructures to IPv6 is like telling America it needs to switch to the metric system. Again, quite astute -- so where are we on that? The engineers have pretty much gone over to metric, but the rest of us are still counting rods to the hog's-head. Think it's going to change?

        It takes force to overcome inertia. The more inertia, the more force to overcome it. In this case, the "force" is going to have to be a market force. Until the telcos see a real problem with IPv4 -- a business problem, such as being unable to reach new customers, or their services not being perceived as competitive -- they won't change. Network engineers are demanding change, but they aren't offering any reasons -- not reasons of the type that businesses understand.

        And not the type of reasons that customers understand, either. I get my email, I get my Web, I get my movies and MP3s and chat rooms and everything else. In 1988 I had a 1200 baud modem. In 2008 I have a 6 megabit dedicated Internet feed. "Waah waah," indeed! Your response? "I have my head in the sand/my ass." Well, again -- as well-reasoned and cogent an argument as that may be, it's just not a compelling reason to go IPv6, in my opinion.

  • we are switching over from analog to digital television transmission in february 2009. at that date, analog tv will simply disappear. if you have an older tv without a converter, it simply won't work. to get this to happen, the government and broadcasters had to sit down, make a timetable, and implement it

    in this way, and ONLY IN THIS WAY, were we ever going to switch to digital transmission. furthermore, in this way, and only in this way, will any country ever make the switch to IPv6

    there is no free market solution to this problem. in fact, according to principles of the free market, you are punished for making the extra expense and becoming a first adapter: you spend all this time and money, and no one is going to consume what you offer on the new protocol. why? because everyone is making their material avaiable on IPv4, so that's where the audience stays. the inertia is heavy

    so either everyone switches to IPv6, or no one switches IPv6. there is no gradual changeover, because there is no incentive, and only punishment for all of the effort, for being a first adapter

    governments have to mandate IPv6 changeover. that is only way IPv6 will ever happen. doesn't matter in the slightest how superior IPv6 is. punishment of early adapters trumps all observations of technological superiority

  • Non-story. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Pahalial (580781) on Thursday October 09, @02:01PM (#25317409)

    The whole issue has come about because of a bug in CISCO equipment which BT use which is affecting use of IPv6 for some of AAISP's customers. It only affects some of BT's network. Even though we believe this bug was identified and fixed by CISCO a long time ago, BT appear to be refusing to rectify the problem, preferring to simply say they do not support IPv6.

    So in short, as soon as they start having to pay more for IPv4 blocks, they'll update their firmware. Merely some billable network admin hours, not millions of pounds wasted as the summary implies.

  • Offshore IP address drilling (Score:4, Funny)

    by jassa (1092003) on Thursday October 09, @02:02PM (#25317417)
    The solution to IPv4 address exhaustion is offshore IP address drilling, but Obama would rather punish small business owners with outdated equipment!

    ...I think I've been watching too many political conferences/debates.

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