Text 29819, 124 rader
Skriven 2015-12-28 00:42:14 av FidoNews Robot (2:2/2.0)
Ärende: FidoNews 32:52 [02/07]: General Articles
================================================
=================================================================
                        GENERAL ARTICLES
=================================================================

       IPv6 in Fidonet by the end of 2015

       By Michiel van der Vlist, 2:280/5555



The first Fidonet connect via IPv6 was made on 1 November 2011
between the systems of Andre Grueneberg of 2:241/545 and that of
Benny Pedersen of 2:203/0. That was a little over four years ago.




  40 _|  N                                .
      |
     _|
      |
  30 _|
      |
     _|                             .
      |
  20 _|
      |
     _|
      |
  10 _|                       .
      |
     _|                 .
      |           .
   0 _|________.______________________________
      |     |     |     |     |     |     |
     2010  2011  2012  2013  2014  2015  2016

Fig 1. Number of IPv6 nodes over the years.

When we look at figure 1, we see a steady rise. From 0 in 2011 to 39
at the end of 2015. Fig 2 shows the result on a logaritmic scale.



  2.0_|  Log N
      |
     _|
      |                                   .
  1.5_|
      |
     _|                             .
      |
  1.0_|
      |                       .
     _|
      |                 .
  0.5_|
      |
     _|           .
      |
   0 _|_______________________________________
      |     |     |     |     |     |     |
     2010  2011  2012  2013  2014  2015  2016


Fig 2 Logarithm of number of IPv6 nodes.


Here we see that the growth is almost exponential, the number
doubling every year. Exponential growth is what one may expect
in a healthy young population when there are still unlimited
resources and there is no competition yet.

Considering that all these 39 nodes are alive, that Fidonet as a whole
is shrinking and that an estimated 30 to 70% of the nodelist is dead
wood, this isn't all that bad. It means that a substantial fraction of
the active Fidonet sysops has made the plunge and upgraded their
systems to IPv6.

So the good news is that the subset of Fidonet systems running an
IPv6 system is still healthy.


Another interesting observation is that this year we saw some new
and returning sysops that emerged with a working IPv6 configuration
right from the start.

This may be related to another statistic: the rise of native IPv6.
Of the 39 listed IPv6 capable nodes, almost half (19) are connec-
ted via native IPv6. The early adopters had to set up tunnels to
be IPv6 capable, but now more and more are offered native IPv6
out of the box by their ISP.

There is a flip side to that. While ISPs are offering native IPv6,
some of them are doing it via Dslite. This means they no longer
offer full IPv4 connectivity, but the customers are issued an RFC
1918 or RFC 6598 IPv4 address. The practical consequence is that
they can no longer run servers on IPv4. Running a Fidonet node is
running a server, so this has consequences for Fidonet. In the
foreseeable future we will see IPv6 only nodes. They can make
outgoing connections on IPv4 and IPv6, but only accept incoming
on IPv6. There is already one such node in the nodelist: 2:280/5006
and no doubt we will see more of it in the coming decade. The extent
of the impact on Fidonet is hard to predict.

What we may see is a repetition of what we saw for the first time
with the coming of ISDN only nodes and for the second time with the
coming of IP only nodes. Nodes using different protocols that can not
interconnect. Fidonet survived both these changes and I have every
confidence it will survive the coming of IPv6 only nodes too.


Happy New Year.



¸ Michiel van der Vlist, all rights reserved.
Permission to publish in the FIDONEWS file echo and the FIDONEWS
discussion echo as originating from 2:2/2

-----------------------------------------------------------------

--- Azure/NewsPrep 3.0
 * Origin: Home of the Fidonews (2:2/2.0)