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Programming The Internet IT Technology

IPv6 Application Competition - win $10,000 217

sneekz writes "The IPv6 Promotion Council of Japan has announced a competition for developers of IPv6-enabled applications. Various prizes up to $10,000 for ideas and actual implementations, and you keep the rights to your work. From their site: 'The contest will award developers of applications and software which helps to create new possibilities in the Internet world.'"
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IPv6 Application Competition - win $10,000

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  • Re:but... (Score:5, Informative)

    by BJH ( 11355 ) on Monday February 10, 2003 @12:07AM (#5268348)
    The Japanese. Many Japanese ISPs will give you your own IPv6 subnet right now, for not very much money.
  • For Idea Contest... (Score:3, Informative)

    by robbyjo ( 315601 ) on Monday February 10, 2003 @12:13AM (#5268374) Homepage

    Aren't there enough papers [nec.com] already on IPv6? Especially on purpose #1 (i.e. increasing the internet experience).

    For #2 (i.e. promoting widespread), it's highly debatable, IMHO...

  • IPv6 info (Score:5, Informative)

    by phreak03 ( 621876 ) on Monday February 10, 2003 @12:13AM (#5268379) Homepage Journal
    from ipv6.org IPv6 is short for "Internet Protocol Version 6". IPv6 is the "next generation" protocol designed by the IETF to replace the current version Internet Protocol, IP Version 4 ("IPv4"). Most of today's internet uses IPv4, which is now nearly twenty years old. IPv4 has been remarkably resilient in spite of its age, but it is beginning to have problems. Most importantly, there is a growing shortage of IPv4 addresses, which are needed by all new machines added to the Internet. IPv6 fixes a number of problems in IPv4, such as the limited number of available IPv4 addresses. It also adds many improvements to IPv4 in areas such as routing and network autoconfiguration. IPv6 is expected to gradually replace IPv4, with the two coexisting for a number of years during a transition period. It prevents spoofed UDP backets (no more easy, D.O.S attacks, and spoofted packets) It makes the amount of posible adresses so large that worms that use simple seek algotrithems (such as slammer) would take like 20 years to infect enough systems to do any damage and would allow for all the future embedded apps, to get their own ip's.
  • Figures are off (Score:5, Informative)

    by Niadh ( 468443 ) on Monday February 10, 2003 @12:18AM (#5268401) Homepage
    Grand Prize is 1,000,000 yen... thats 8,306.775 USD not $10,000.

    Award for Promotion 5 works 150,000 yen each (1,246.03 USD)
    Award for Planning 5 works 50,000 yen each (415.332 USD)

    Grand Prix 1 work 1,000,000 yen (8,306.775 USD)
    Award for Excellence a few works Total 1,000,000 yen
    Award for Fine Works a few works Total 500,000 yen (4,153.15 USD)

    So they are paying people to port applications to IPv6 now? hmp.. I would have thought that the ISP's and telicos would have ported to it automaticly when Internet IP's started to dry up.
  • Sponsors (Score:5, Informative)

    by BJH ( 11355 ) on Monday February 10, 2003 @12:20AM (#5268409)
    Take a look at the sponsor list:

    NTT Communications Corporation
    A subcompany of the NTT group; the country's largest ISP.

    Fujitsu Limited
    One of Japan's largest manufacturers of PCs and servers.

    Impress Corporation /. users should know this one - it runs the Akiba PC Watch site.

    Internet Research Institute, Inc.
    A company founded to take advantage of academic research. Funded by Yahoo Japan/Softbank (Softbank's one of Japan's largest Internet-related companies, and actually runs Yahoo Japan).

    KDDI CORPORATION
    Japan's #2 phone company after NTT.

    Matsushita Electric Works, Ltd.
    Japan's largest manufacturer of electronic goods.

    Nokia-Japan Co., Ltd.
    Need I say more?

    Mitsubishi Research Institute, Inc.
    The Mitsubishi group's research organization.

    The reason Japan's so hot for IPv6 is that it got rather shortchanged in the IPv4 handout - the ratio of IPv4 addresses to users is much worse than in the US.

  • What's the point? (Score:0, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 10, 2003 @12:20AM (#5268413)
    IPv6 was stillborn 5+ years ago
  • Re:Wait a second... (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 10, 2003 @12:34AM (#5268472)
    It was an internal spec only, I believe, and never released as a standard.
  • Re:exchange rates... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Nexx ( 75873 ) on Monday February 10, 2003 @12:34AM (#5268474)
    closer to $400.

    Why /. doesn't allow me to reply a quick one-liner is beyond me. *sigh* :P
  • by fv ( 95460 ) <fyodor@insecure.org> on Monday February 10, 2003 @12:50AM (#5268534) Homepage
    > Many Japanese ISPs will give you your own IPv6 subnet right now, for not very much money.

    And even if your ISP won't assign you an IPv6 subnet, you can always utilize a free Tunnel Broker [tunnelbroker.net] to obtain a huge IPv6 address space of your very own (tunneled to your IPv4 IP). I used this recently when adding basic IPv6 support to the Nmap Security Scanner [insecure.org]. My announcement [insecure.org] also provides a concrete example of IPv6 being used to subvert firewall rulesets.

    A ton of useful IPv6 information is available from Kame.Net [kame.net] -- once your setup is working, the turtle on the top of that page starts to dance :). I also found the Linux IPv6 HOWTO [tldp.org] to be incredibly helpful.

    -Fyodor
    Concerned about your network security? Try the Free Nmap Security Scanner [insecure.org]

  • by tialaramex ( 61643 ) on Monday February 10, 2003 @01:13AM (#5268607) Homepage
    If the upstream router from you (whether that's a $20k rack box from Cisco or some Pentium Linux box) has IPv6 connectivity then all you need to do on your hosts is turn on IPv6 and the rest happens automatically.

    e.g RH Linux, set NETWORKING_IPV6=yes in /etc/sysconfig/network and restart networking

    If you don't have upstream IPv6 then (1) Tell your provider that you think they should look into it sooner rather than later (2) round up the OS specific documentation for a technology called "6to4" tunnels.

    A 6to4 tunnel can be created from any fully operational IPv4 host, even if it's a dialup link on some mom&pop ISP. Like the rest of IPv6 this is autoconfigured, you set a few options according to the documentation from your OS vendor and then it Just Works (TM).

    If you have a typical small office/ geek house NAT setup with a single router & a lot of hosts spread around a building, the 6to4 tunnel will let you give all those hosts unique IPv6 addresses too, by assigning a /48 to each subnet in the building.

    To check that it's working visit e.g. http://www.kame.net/ for visual confirmation. You may have to restart your browser if IPv6 wasn't installed when it was first started.
  • Re:but... (Score:5, Informative)

    by grid geek ( 532440 ) on Monday February 10, 2003 @01:16AM (#5268618) Homepage
    Some of the UK academic network [ukerna.ac.uk] has started an experimental IPv6 network [ja.net] for researchers to play with.
  • Re:Sponsors (Score:5, Informative)

    by BJH ( 11355 ) on Monday February 10, 2003 @01:17AM (#5268619)
    Well, based on the ARIN stats [arin.net] and APNIC stats [apnic.net] that are made available to the public...

    IP addresses (US): 1,847,483,219
    IP addresses (Japan): 41,943,663
    IP addresses (Canada): 61,747,968

    The number of users is debatable, but make it, say, around 30% of the population of each country.

    Users (US): 250 million x 0.2 = 50,000,000
    Users (Japan): 120 million x 0.2 = 24,000,000
    Users (Canada): 30 million x 0.2 = 6,000,000

    Which means the ratio of IP addresses to population is:

    US: 36.95 IPs/person
    Japan: 2.573 IPs/person
    Canada: 10.29 IPs/person

    So, as you can see, Japan's getting a little desparate... hell, even Canada has five times more IPv4 addresses per user.

  • by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Monday February 10, 2003 @01:23AM (#5268638) Homepage Journal
    IPv4 already has a TOS field which specifies whether one wants to optimize for latency, bandwidth, both, or neither, and one can filter packets based on this with sufficiently advanced rules processing. (Linux has this, of course. I've never done it with anything else but I assume most advanced packet filters have TOS matching.)
  • by Tailhook ( 98486 ) on Monday February 10, 2003 @01:57AM (#5268736)
    The folks at the receiving end of customer demands solved the IP shortage issue years ago. They simply subnet the last octet. I personally think the IETF could better serve us all by revising some of the early "over" allocations of netblocks to institutions like MIT, but that runs counter to the IPv6 agenda.

    The desire for point-to-point connectivity is nothing more than that; a desire. The real-world Internet doesn't really care all that much if it can't touch millions or billions of anonymous hosts behind NAT. The fact that it can't means, for example, that Slammer was only able to infect the routable hosts. Imagine the effects of something like Slammer if every single MS SQL server was actually routable from the public network. Yes, I know, NAT is not security. Until the IETF invents a way to force network operators to care enough about security to be worthy of allowing all their hosts to be routable, I'll remain pretty appreciative of the benefits of NAT in the real world.

    Claims that IPv4 is inherently doomed due to the demands placed on routers I find difficult to believe. The size of the graph that is the Internet will not get smaller with IPv6. If IPv6 provides a more efficient means for "routers" to comprehend that graph, why can't that solution also apply to IPv4? Routers get faster right along side all other computing devices. Routers are also becoming a figment of the IETFs imagination. The old fashioned IP Internet is quickly being supplanted by ATM et al, and most of the "routing" is being done via virtual circuits between IP endpoints. IP "routing" is being relegated to the edges of the core.

    The commercial world solved the IPv4 problem. IETF just doesn't care to notice.
  • by VoidEngineer ( 633446 ) on Monday February 10, 2003 @02:16AM (#5268787)
    who's actually using IPv6? I know some use it privately within their org, but are there any publicly using it?

    ah, lots of people, actually... it's all over the routers and servers, nowdays... but the local network admin and network engineers are probably doing their best to make the migration as invisible as possible.

    A good starting point to learn more about IPv6 would be www.internet2.edu [internet2.edu]. If you check out the corporate partners, you'll notice that ATT&T, Cisco, IBM, Intel, Lucent, Microsoft, Nortel, Qwest, SBC, and Sun are all in on the "Internet2" act, which includes the IPv6 protocol And the list of affiliated universities stretches nearly 200 members long...

    Anyhow, Sun Solaris 9, Microsoft Windows2000, Microsoft WindowsXP, and Cisco IOS all have support for IPv6, as I understand... They're publicaly using it and supporting it.

    If you want to know more about IPv6, check out this link [rfc-editor.org] and just search for the term "IPv6"... you should get about 93 articles regarding the Request For Comments (RFC) procedure used to define the protocol... As you will notice, IPv6 is a 128bit protocol, and was designed to be able to be broken up into 4 32bit packets, which allows it to interoperate with older IPv4 networks...

    Moral of the story is that there are millions of people already using IPv6 on their client machines, who already don't know and don't care about the specific protocol implementations...

    The article refers to an award for application developers to develop IPv6 enabled applications... If you calculate the ratio between IPv6 address and the total surface area of the earth, you will notice that there are approximately 2,000 IP addresses per square meter, with the IPv6 protocol... enough to give an address to every nut, bolt, and widget in every plane, train, and automobile on earth, with billions and billions left over... The awards will be going to people who figure out not just how to use IPv6, but how to code new applications and new uses for that kind of domain space...
  • IPv6 (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 10, 2003 @02:20AM (#5268804)
    Last year i did a research paper on IPv6 for my data communications class. People, those who think IPv6 is dumb, unecessary, or already dead, pull your head from where the sun ain't shining and take a look at what it has to offer, you might consider giving some RFC's a read, that is unless your a pussy, and if thats the case, why do you read /. ?

    IPv6 RFCs [hs247.com]

    It offers some really neat, and much need security imporovements, like secure hashing, encryption at the IP level(data link layer) and seriously, there is no longer a need for DHCP. It is a network administrators dream come true, now if only people would start using it...

    Sorry for being an anonymous coward, i haven't posted in so long, i forget my userid...
  • by WoofLu ( 459652 ) <slashdot@w o o f.lu> on Monday February 10, 2003 @02:21AM (#5268809) Homepage
    Unfortunately, there are not enough 6to4 endpoints around the internet ...

    If there would be more endpoints listening on the 6to4 prefix, it would be Good...
  • Re:Wait a second... (Score:2, Informative)

    by BJH ( 11355 ) on Monday February 10, 2003 @02:42AM (#5268862)
    Er... no.
    I quote:

    "IPv5 exists and it's specified in RFC 1819. It's a connection-oriented alternative to IPv4 but before discussions went too far the IPv6 standards were implemented, and other protocols provided the proposed functionality of IPv5. Some experimental implementations of IPv5 are in limited use but mostly outside the United States. You won't see many references to "IPv5" but you may encounter it by it's experimental name, "ST2" or "ST2+". This stands for "STreaming" protocol. Here's what RFC 1819 says about it:

    The Internet Stream Protocol, Version 2 (ST2) is an experimental connection-oriented internetworking protocol that operates at the same layer as connectionless IP. It has been developed to support the efficient delivery of data streams to single or multiple destinations in applications that require guaranteed quality of service. ST2 is part of the IP protocol family and serves as an adjunct to, not a replacement for, IP. The main application areas of the protocol are the real-time transport of multimedia data, e.g., digital audio and video packet streams, and distributed simulation/gaming, across internets.

    ST2 can be used to reserve bandwidth for real-time streams across network routes. This reservation, together with appropriate network access and packet scheduling mechanisms in all nodes running the protocol, guarantees a well-defined Quality of Service (QoS) to ST2 applications. It ensures that real-time packets are delivered within their deadlines, that is, at the time where they need to be presented. This facilitates a smooth delivery of data that is essential for time-critical applications, but can typically not be provided by best-effort IP communication."
  • Re:Paging Linksys... (Score:3, Informative)

    by nsayer ( 86181 ) <nsayer.kfu@com> on Monday February 10, 2003 @03:21AM (#5268967) Homepage
    They could do it a lot easier than that... All they really have to do is implement 6to4, use the RFC 3068 default route, and implement NAT-PT and a DNS proxy layer. If you have a box that does that, then IPv6-only clients would be able to experience the IPv4 internet seamlessly, but still gain all the advantages of being native IPv6.

    NAT is an abomination that must die.
  • by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Monday February 10, 2003 @03:38AM (#5269025) Journal
    No, I don't know what that part about IPv6 being a 128-bit protocol being broken down into 32-bit packets came from??

    Anyway, I think the most common ways to implement IPv6 and IPv4 "interoperability" are:

    - Use a dual IP layer to support both IPv4 and IPv6. This requires both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses however, and address selection rules. DSTM (Dual Stack Transition Mechanism) might help solve problems with too few IPv4 addresses for the mapping.

    - Tunnel the IPv6 traffic over the IPv4 infrastructure. Encapsulate IPv6 packets within IPv4. This method is used on the 6bone [6bone.net].

    - Translate the headers with transition tools. Simply translate the IPv4 header into an IPv6 header. This method can only translate information shared by both protocols. This method can be used to make IPv4 hosts on a LAN able to interoperate with an outside IPv6 network, where the translator function much the same as a NAT.
  • by nsayer ( 86181 ) <nsayer.kfu@com> on Monday February 10, 2003 @03:46AM (#5269046) Homepage
    Unfortunately, there are not enough 6to4 endpoints around the internet ...

    huh?

    6to4 users can interact perfectly well with non-6to4 IPv6 addresses. They just need to set a default route to a 6to4 relay router. And RFC 3068 makes that universally trivial.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 10, 2003 @04:30AM (#5269161)
    This sentence really intrigued me.

    "If you calculate the ratio between IPv6 address and the total surface area of the earth, you will notice that there are approximately 2,000 IP addresses per square meter..."

    However I can't seem to recreate it. Here is my math.

    IPv6 is 128 bits: 2^128 = 3.4028e38
    Surface area of Earth: 5.1007e14 m^2 (verified on 3 different sites)

    3.4028e38/5.1007e14 = 6.6713e23 IP/m^2

    That is a whole lot more than 2000, so one of us made a mistake. :)
  • by nsayer ( 86181 ) <nsayer.kfu@com> on Monday February 10, 2003 @02:00PM (#5271895) Homepage
    except that the public hierarchy is SIXTEEN TIMES larger than that

    It's actually 16 bits larger, or 65,536 times larger.

    But I can't let it go at that, because that's also a bit wrong.

    The top 3 bits of IPv6 addresses are a format prefix. It cuts the address space into 8 pieces. The top and bottom ones are used for things like multicast, link local and IPv4 mapped addresses. One of them is the place where allocations are happening today - the Agregatable Global Unicast space. So if we lop off the top 3 bits from the 16, we get that the current allocation space is 12 bits, or 4096 times larger than the IPv4 space.

    And we've got another 5 of those waiting in the wings if we need them.

  • by fuzzel ( 18438 ) on Tuesday February 11, 2003 @06:47AM (#5278201) Homepage
    Hmmm:
    8<-------------
    jeroen@purgatory:~$ host -t aaaa slashdot.org
    slashdot.org AAAA record currently not present
    -------------->8

    But:
    8<-------------
    jeroen@purgatory:~$ host -t aaaa slashdot.org.sixxs.org
    slashdot.org.sixxs.org CNAME ipv6gate.sixxs.org
    ipv6gate.sixxs.org AAAA 3FFE:4007:1:1:210:DCFF:FE20:7C7C
    ------------->8

    http://slashdot.org.sixxs.org [sixxs.org]

    Et tada.... Slashdot and every other IPv4 only site over IPv6 ;)
    Read more about it on http://ipv6gate.sixxs.net [sixxs.net]

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