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.'"
How about one that creates the slightest interest (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Figures are off (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:All packets are created equal (Score:5, Insightful)
unless you (and your ISP) are manually setting all of your TOS bits to 0, that is.
Protocols are mechanism, not policy. The reason why you haven't complained as yet of your IPv4 traffic being "slowed to a crawl" is that TCP's QOS features (minimal though they are) are typically only used when needed and ignored otherwise.
I would rather have the possibility open to shape traffic, should I want to, than to pre-emptively close the door because others might use it in ways I disapprove of. There are plenty of legitimate uses for QOS besides pissing off gamers (though I consider that an important activity in its own right
Hrm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:what this contest proves (Score:1, Insightful)
Current allocation strategies are punitive, and the aggregation problems already have caused some small organisations to "fall off the network" due to routing table overflow.
We have to transition to IPv6, and it makes sense to do it in calm orderly fashion, rather than waking up to a Slashdot story like "European IP addresses exhausted. RIPE says users must switch to IPv6 on Tuesday". Of course this means people like you are going to imagine a conspiracy right up until they notice that now 10 billion hosts are on the Internet...
As to an "open, free-entry consortium" there are any number of organisations that more or less match that description. Governments and larger ISPs have given a lot of money to these projects so that the transition goes smoothly. Far sighted people (e.g. those who can do a quick head count and see that 6 billion potential users on a network with 4 billion addresses won't work) have been trying to kick start this for ages, and the longer we wait the more painful it will be.
Re:what this contest proves (Score:2, Insightful)
Funny how the term "hack" is a pejorative with regard to NAT.
Why doesn't my mobile phone have a real IP address?
Why should it?
Why does a 1 MBit residential ADSL service come with just
Because the ISP is being frugal with their netblock. They know, as well as you do, that 1 address is enough. Do you think that IPv6 will suddenly provide the means to operate a vast subnet with that ADSL service? That's naive. Most DSL contracts for home users already prevent this sort of thing.
Do they think the average home with DSL has only one computer?
Nope. They know damn well there's likely to be >1 host behind those endpoints. I bet they're also well aware of the fact the most of those hosts are vulnerable to no end of remote attacks that most of their customers are blissfully unaware of this because they're safely behind NAT.
Current allocation strategies are punitive, and the aggregation problems already have caused some small organizations to "fall off the network" due to routing table overflow.
There are routers available that are capable of keeping up. You get what you pay for in ISPs just like everything else. If an ISP allows this to happen to it's customers, what makes you think they're interested in the investment necessary for IPv6?
Of course this means people like you are going to imagine a conspiracy right up until they notice that now 10 billion hosts are on the Internet...
I agree. This is no corporate conspiracy. This is a conspiracy of the elite. The commercial world solved the IPv4 problem. The academic world doesn't care to hear about it.
As to an "open, free-entry consortium" there are any number of organizations that more or less match that description. Governments and larger ISPs have given a lot of money to these projects so that the transition goes smoothly. Far sighted people (e.g. those who can do a quick head count and see that 6 billion potential users on a network with 4 billion addresses won't work) have been trying to kick start this for ages, and the longer we wait the more painful it will be.
If there were a real problem IPv6 wouldn't need all this nursing.
No need for panic (Score:4, Insightful)
Look at it this way:
IPv4 addresses were indeed first allocated badly. It can be said that it's unfair that apple.com and
Now. Let's pretend that we could snap our fingers and give every "site" on the Internet a *single* IPv4 address. That means that apple.com gets a single IPv4 address and every cable modem user gets a single IPv4 address. All of the class As and class Cs get freed up. All of a sudden there are a lot more addresses available.
That's the case with IPv6, except that the public hierarchy is SIXTEEN TIMES larger than that. Sites in IPv6 are supposed to get a single
IPv6 is designed to last us 50 years or so. Personally, I think it will last a lot longer than that.
Re:The polite, wired Canadians (Score:1, Insightful)
The study I cited refers to actual use. Read it. Does it not make sense that the number of subnets assigned is proportional to usage? If you accept that assumption, then you'll accept my claim that Canada is underrepresented. Their ratio of assigned subnets to population is lower than that of the USA. Yet their ratio of usage to population is higher. Simple math.
If you don't accept my assumption, then by what criteria should subnets be assigned? Oh right, by the number of asses with guns per square mile. Sorry. You win. That must feel super.
Re:what this contest proves (Score:5, Insightful)
Dumb network, smart edges.
When IPv4 was designed, there was no plan for exponential user growth outside of military/R&D/education. If there had been, addresses would've been 48+ bits from 1980 onward.
The failing with pre-existing networks which IP was meant to surmount is that the interior of the network was too intelligent. That sounds like a good thing, but it means that the network as a whole is less flexible- the inner nodes (routers) cannot be easily upgraded to support new applications and features. Under IP, all interesting computers are into hosts on the edge of the network. Each can be upgraded by an end-user, without supplication to the network templars- be they Bell Atlantic frame relay technicians, or Novell NOS admins. Those smart edges are served by a dumb cloud- the rest of the network just passes data from one place to another, without translating or modifying it in anyway. In the past, network application growth was slowed because users couldn't easily tell what was going on inside the cloud. IP made the cloud's job boring, so that you were no longer interested in seeing what went on there.
That change triggered the explosive growth of computer networks until they combined into the shared entity we all know and love.
NAT betrays this heritage
NAT boxes move intelligence back into the cloud- instead of IP packets being routed to the desired host and no other, there are now entities hidden in the cloud which waylay your packets. They seize them, pull them apart, inspect their innards- then, maybe, they'll deign to alter the packet and send it along further.
The damage isn't just a theoretical one- real end-users are being held back by NAT and other violations of the IP promise. New applications which would be easier to deploy with real per-host addressing are difficult or impossible to install reliably. This is things like high-speed game servers, file/web servers, P2P clients, cheap VOIP, videoconferencing, VPN, and prehaps things that haven't been invented yet.
The internet should be about giving power to the users on its edges. IPv6 would encourage that, but NAT hinders it. There are forces who don't want to empower users- major content providers and big ISPs. (Which may be the same [aol.com] thing [time.com]). Fearful of losing control of mass audience's entertainment patterns, they want to keep mass creativity centralized. AOL doesn't want users to download ClickNRun IRC-like servers to create TeenTalkDaytonville chatrooms, they want to sell them as a value added service. Time Warner doesn't want 100s of cheap FTP servers passing out free copies of 56 year old TV shows (which by rights are public domain [eldred.cc]), they want you to wait for the DVD or PPV options.
The desire exists. A chicken in every pot, and permanent IP address in every study! The powers that be are fearful, though. The existing entertainment/datacomm oligopoly was harmed enough by the Internet. End-users sharing data amoung themselves could ruin them- but the exhaustion of IP addresses provided an excuse to keep end-users cordoned off from the real internet. They could download, but not serve files- as long as the people remain "consumers", the corporations can keep them under control.
NAT boxes bring the internet a tiny bit back towards the shape of traditional TV and telephone networks, which is just how big business likes it.
Re:what this contest proves (Score:3, Insightful)
I want to use peer services with my phone. My solution is IPv6. Your solution "Don't do that".
I want to use peer services with my laptop in the kitchen, from a pad in the TV room, and with my games PC upstairs. My solution is IPv6. Your solution? "Don't do that".
Five billion more people want to use the Internet. My solution is IPv6. Your solution is to either deny them service or provide a 2nd class "host" service behind NAT.
You're not American by any chance are you? This "the customer can go fuck himself" type of solution reminds me of dealing with US banks, and certainly Americans are very smug about the fact that >50% of routable addresses are permanently assigned to their low population continent.
Sadly, people with this attitude will be saved at the last minute by the efforts of others, like those dopes who refuse to move from their home because "God is with me, and the floods won't come this high" and then have to be rescued by helicopter. Once in a while we should leave a few of you behind.
Re:what this contest proves (Score:3, Insightful)
I see... Then the car companies also *solved* the gasoline/oil problems. Intel and AMD *solved* the power consumption and heat issues.
A band-aid is not a solution...