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Ärende: FidoNews 28:04 [02/05]: General Articles
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GENERAL ARTICLES
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FidoNet and IPv4 depletion
By Michiel van der Vlist, 2:280/5555
In the morning of Last Friday, januari 21st, there were 7 /8 blocks of
IPv4 addresses left in the central global pool administered by IANA.
Later that day, APNIC, the Asian Pacific regional internet registry
requested and was granted another two /8 blocks. That left five /8
blocks, which triggered the prearranged policy agreed on for that
event. Each of the five RIRs (Regional InterNet Registries) got one
last block and IANA's barrel was empty.
... Or so almost every IPv4 depletion watcher thought would happen. It
was expected that APINC would follow what by now has become more or
less standard procedure and request two more blocks when her own pool
dropped below two free /8 blocks and that happened last Tuesday. But
now the APNIC pool is down to 1.66 free blocks and nothing is
happening. No one knows the reason for the delay. My guess - which is
as good as anyone else's - is that they want to to raise some media
attention and they need a bit of time for preparations. There is no
doubt it will happen very soon now. it may already have happened when
your read this.
So the IANA pool has run dry or will be in a few days. This does not
mean all the IPv4 address space is used up, but it does mark an
important event. Everyone who has done nothing yet to implement IPv6,
the successor of the IPv4 protocol, has reason to engage in a mild
panic.
How does it affect FidoNet? It is hard to say. It will probably be a
while before the first sysop encounters a problem. It all depends on
what the ISP's will do. The InterNet backbone is ready for IPv6, but
many ISPs around the world have been playing the chicken and egg game.
Customers that have a public routable IPv4 address may be allowed to
keep it. OTOH, there may be a panic when ISP's have to start saying
"no" to new customers asking for IPv4 addresses. They may put their
customers behind NATs and give them addresses in the private range
like 10.0.x.y, unless they pay extra and that may not even apply to
new customers but to existing customers as well. The "extra" may be so
much that it is unaffordable for most individuals. So the IPv4
exhaustion may not only affect new sysops, but it may affect existing
sysops as well.
To fully participate in FidoNet one has to run a server. A server can
be run behind a NAT, /if/ on has access to the router's port
forwarding table. No problem if it is your own router, but very
problematic if the router is under control of your ISP. From behind an
ISP's NAT one can run client software, but no servers. The situation
is the same as someone who is on a company's private branch exchange
with no direct dial in. One can usualy make outgoing calls, but for
incoming calls, one needs the assistance of the operator. A FidoNet
system in that position has the reacheability of a point. Obviously
FidoNet can not function if everyone can only make outgoing calls.
So what should we do? I think in the end there is no alternative but
to go IPv6. If we do not, a large number of FidoNet IP systems will be
unable to accept incoming calls via IP and that will seriously degrade
the performance of the network. Here are some steps that we need to go
through. Not necessarily in that order:
o Someone will have to write an IPv6 capable IP mailer.
This may be the easy part. Rumour has it that some are already looking
into adding Iv6 capability to Binkd. I say this is the easy part,
because we only need ONE able and willing programmer to do it.
o We must upgrade our systems to have IPv6 capability.
In the long run everyone will have to do that, but I think that - like
we did with modems, we should once again be the pioneers. Why? Because
we can! Most modern OS's support IPv6 out of the box. But there are a
lot of legacy systems around in FidoNet. If you still run a DOS
system, you can forget it. There is no IPv6 support for DOS or any of
its clones and derivatives and it is extremely unlikely that there
ever will be. Well, this may be a good time to finally dump DOS
anyway. If you run WIN95, WIN98, WINME or WIN2000, you may forget it
too. WIN9X and WINME are in the same postion as DOS. No support for
IPv6 and it will stay that way. For WIN2K there is a hotfix, but it is
highly experimental and I would not recommend it. If you have one of
those, you had better upgrade. WIN XP may be a good choice for a
FidoNet system. Legal copies can be had for under EUR 20 and XP is a
proven stable platform for a FidoNet system. In XP, IPv6 is not
enabled by default, but installing it, is very s imple, everyone
capable of setting up a FidoNet system - which is not all that easy -
should have no problem with turning on IPv6 in XP. There are a few
things missing in XPs implementation of IPv6, but that is not really a
problem for use in a FidoNet system. For the Linux adepts: most *nix
implementations support IPv6 out of the box and for some, the sysop
needs to do a little bit of work. OS/2? Forget it. It is abandonware
and so is its successor, EcomStation by now. Mac OS has good support
for IPv6, but I do not know any details.
o We have to obtain globally routable IPv6 addresses for our systems..
Having your local machines IPv6 enabled gives you the ability to let
them communicate with each other on your LAN. They will all get a so
called link local adres by stateless autoconfiguration. Run
"ipconfig" from the command line and you will see such an address for
each interface. They are recognisable by their prefix that starts with
fe80. Link local addresses never pass a router, so they can not be
used for communication with the global internet. For that each machine
needs a globally unique unicast address. To obtain such an address,
you need a provider that gives you a subnet. If your ISP provides
native IPv6 you are fine. If you have an IPv6 capable modem/router all
you have to do is, plug it in and each machine on your LAN will get a
globally routable IPv6 address out of you assigned subnet. Those
addresses start with '2' or '3' as the first digit. My present IPv6
address is 2001:7b8:2ff:3a9::2. Feel free to ping6 it if you are IPv6
capable. Or ping6 test6.vlist,eu.
Unfortunately. Very few ISPs offer native IPv6 yet. Mine does not and
they do not seem to be in a hurry. The alternative is a tunnel.
Tunneling is encapsulating IPv6 packets in IPv4 packets by adding an
IPv4 header. This is done by the tunnel software. It is a way to
connect "Iv6 islands" over an IPv4 connection. Most OS's provide some
automatic tunneling mechanism such as 6to4 or Teredo. With those you
have little control over the assigned address. More suitable when you
want to run servers is to make use of a tunnel broker. There are
several who offer such a service for free, al you need to do is
register and create an account. SixXs and Hurricane Electric come to
mind. HE will give you a tunnel and a /48 subnet without questions.
But they are a commercial organisation, which means that at some time
in the future they may charge for the service. SixXs is an entirely
volunteer organisation run by a couple of what could be described as
.. eh .. nerds. They use some odd credit system. You get "points" for
keeping your tunnel alive and lose points for doing stupid things. It
sounds a bit odd, but keep in mind that they are volunteers doing it
all for the good cause. SixXs originated in The Netherlands and they
know about Fido. If you mention in your application that you are a
FidoNet sysop, you may get some bonus points, like I got.
If you have a tunnel, there are two ways to run it. You can get an
IPv6 capable router that can act as your tunnel end point. This is a
"clean" solution, but also a bit expensive as home routers that can do
that are still scarse and in the EUR 150+ range. If you have a
computer running 24/7 anyway - as any fidonet syop has - you may as
well configure that as an IPv6 router and keep using your IPv4 only
router for the time being. Surely when IPv6 deployment increases,
prices of IPv6 capable home routers will drop and the choise will
increase. Configuring a computer to act as a tunnel end point and
router for a subnet is well documented in the howtos and FAQs of the
tunnel brokers. It is not trivial, but it is very doable for someone
who has gone through the learning curve of configuring a FidoNet
system.
o Let's get those ISP's out of their chair.
Let them get their arses moving in implementing IPv6. If they tell
you, they still have enough IPv6 addresses to keep their customers
happy for years - as does mine - tell them it will do no good when
soon parts of the InterNet in other parts of the world will be IPv6
only. If they make moves to put you behind a NAT, tell them in no
uncertain terms that you will not accept being put behind a NAT
without them offering IPv6 to you. If they tell you no one is asking
for IPv6, tell them "here is one, expect more to come". Don't be shy,
be a pest. An ISP that has done nothing yet towards IPv6 deserves it.
o What else is there to do?
When you have gained some experience with IPv6 upgrading your own
systems, you can start helping others. Sooner or later everyone who
uses the InterNet will have to add IPv6 capability to his system. If
the ISPs do their jobs, this may go without much pain for most, but I
fear the reality will be a bit different. The average user will run
into all kind of problems during the transition and this is where we
can come in to help our family, friends and neighbours. Not only will
it help them, it will also get you even more experience. In addition
to that being fun, it looks good on your CV as well.
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