News AAISP to drop IPv4
1st April 2010: Andrews & Arnold Ltd are pleased to announce that we are dropping IPv4 totally and only providing services and broadband via IPv6. This bold move will finally shake off the legacy IPv4 internet.
We have been doing IPv6 broadband for 7 years now, and around 10% of our customers already have an IPv6 allocation. We'll be allocating a /48 to each of the rest of them and emailing them details.
The change over is pretty simple. You just have to either get an IPv6 capable router or set up PPPoE to an IPv6 capable PPPoE gateway such as your average linux box. I am sure everyone has several linux boxes, and the config is quite simple.
Once we have allocated IPv6 addresses the PPP negotiation will refuse IPv4 as not supported and only negotiate IPv6. If that does not work for anyone, they just need to email us for help.
In an unrelated move, the email servers will only accept email from our customer IPv6 addresses.
Legacy internet access
IPv4/6 converter cable for legacy equipment
Obviously we'll continue to provide access to the old IPv4 internet for a while, until the rest of the world catches up. We have already tested our DNS mapping and our carrier grade IPv6/4 NAT gateway from FireBrick. This lets people access old web sites that still use IPv4.
For anyone trying to contact our service via IPv4 we will set up one IPv4 address at our border with port mapping to email, web pages, and so on. After all, we don't need more than one legacy IPv4 address. This will be the address we use for the IPv6/4 NAT as well.
Helping the music industry
Obviously we expect our customers to obey the law, but we expect most illegal music downloads that happen will still be via IPv4. This change means that the only IPv4 address visible to the music industry will be the address of our IPv6/4 NAT gateway. As the new Digital Economy Bill requires them to identify the subscriber IP address they won't be able to send any notices. This will, of course, save them lots of paperwork and administration as well as saving them paying us the fee for passing on the violation notice.
Legacy equipment
Some kit still only does IPv4 it seems. e.g. Games consoles, printers, etc. For these, we have these special converter cables (see picture).
Comments
Adrian Kennard, Director, said only "NAT is evil" when asked for more details.
Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the new version of internet protocol which is being deployed by internet providers in light of the impending exhaustion of IP version 4 addresses. The IPv4 addresses that have been used since the early days of the internet were conceived at a time when hand-held computing devices and mobile phones were not even dreamt of. The number of addresses available were thought to be more than enough. Changes in the way we all use computers means that IPv4 addresses are running out. Internet providers are getting ready for the next version, IPv6, which has enough addresses to give every atom on the planet its own address - so should never run out. more
