On Wednesday 21 July 2004 07:57, Kiggundu Mukasa wrote: > Vinton Cerf of the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers > (ICANN) said the next-generation protocol, IPv6, had been added to its > root server systems, making it possible for every person or device to > have an Internet protocol address.
I don't think it's something we should be worried about quite immediately. A lot is involved in transitioning to v6, let alone the fact that the rate of depletion of v4 address space has fallen drastically, mostly in part to the efforts being done by the RIR's (Ernest, maybe you can shed more light here). I think it may be anywhere from 5 to 7 years before we see significant non-geek demand of v6 address space. Equipment currently running v4 infrastructure would have to change quite a lot to accomodate current v4 service demand. To put it into perspective, a 7206-VXR Cisco router with an NPE-G1 network processing engine can switch packets at a rate of 1Mpps (Million Packets Per Second), or better still, a fairly high-end GSR will do some 50Mpps+, and the new 7600 will get away with some 30Mpps, in IPv4 mode. In v6 mode, this could fall to an entry-level low as/less than 200Kpps (Thousand pps); and this is before we ensure that the IOS v6 code isn't still as buggy as it might be today. But then again, Cisco aren't the only router vendors out there :). Mark. --------------------------------------------- This service is hosted on the Infocom network http://www.infocom.co.ug
