[TriLUG] Want to Participate in World IPv6 Day?

[matt at noway2.thruhere.net]

> The simplest reason I see for IPv6 follows from these two points:
> 1) Your's, mine, and everyone else's complacency is only possible
> because of Network Address Translation (NAT).  Otherwise, we'd have
> been out of addresses years and years ago.
> 2) NAT is bad for the Internet.
>
<snip>
> I for one welcome the departure of our IP-constrained IPv4 overlord,
<snip>
>> Until something changes, I have all the incentive in the world to
>> sit tight on 4, let more devices develop support, and show up late
>> to the party after there's reasonable transition paths.

My concern with the way IPv6 seems to be going is that we will wind up
with a total cluster-**** mix of Ipv4 and IPv6 that will be a nightmare to
manage.  I think transitioning is something that as a whole we either do,
or we don't.  The longer some parties sit on the side lines, holding out
because a few of their <sarcasm>precious customers</sarcasm> may be
inconvenienced the worse this mess will become.

I have a networking book on my desk right now, published in 1998 that says
we will be transitioned IPv6 within the next few years.  Clearly, that
didn't happen.  I am also no closer to truly understanding IPv6 and what
it means for me and my private and public networks.

I would like to understand what I need to do to convert to IPv6 on my LAN
and verify that everything works.  I want to know what kind of costs I am
going to incur: am I going to need to go out and buy new routers and
switches?  Are all my applications going to break?  Is my LAN's Bind and
DHCP going to still function and will the dynamic DNS still work?  Will my
public facing servers still be accessible?   These are all questions that
I don't have answers for and until I do have answers, I too am going to be
complacent and stay with IPV4.

I am also not certain how I feel about eliminating NAT.  I don't want
every device on my network to be directly available and I like having non
routing address spaces to use. I like having that extra security barrier
of a public gateway to my network and it seems like part of what IPv6
wants to do is do away with this.

In the mean time, I have some studying to do.