IPv6 lobby is pushing for change in the system.

By 2010, the Federal Government promises to be there in Germany for high-speed Internet (almost) everyone. That makes it faster but not better, says the German IPv6 Council and calls for the system changeover. With good reason: Until 2011 the web is the address space.

 

The Sextillion is a number which sounds as if they come from a Donald Duck comic: One can imagine that the number of crowns in money Dagobert memory means. Something large, measureless numerous, almost cosmic beyond normal human imagination anyway. The Sextillion is a one with 36 zeros hintendran.

Corbis
Total communication: IPv6 is the protocol that is always room for more services create

Christoph Meinel, Director of the Potsdam Hasso-Plattner-Institute and head of the
German IPv6 Council, is among the growing number of people who believe that we urgently need 340 of them - and 340 Sextillionen IP addresses. That would be the next expansion step of the so-called address space, because that is slowly running out. No later than 2012, perhaps even 2011, concluded with fresh Internet addresses, then the mere 4.29 billion, the old IPv4 protocol allows exhausted and forgiven.

Nearly 90 percent of all possible addresses are assigned - and that, although only about 20 percent of the world ever have access to the networks. Pro onliners there are several addresses, among other things because of all companies and organizations occupy what even remotely reminds them. In addition, in the early days, when only a few servers connected to Internet, with the addresses of force was geaast: universities and organizations got bundles available to millions of addresses included. The need is nobody, but you had enough of it. Now that the address space is running out, they are missing: Some organizations are sitting on 16 million addresses, but they can not back out.

It runs only with Notnägeln

For several years, the trick question of registrars and providers, even to the last out of the still available address space herauszukitzeln - otherwise it would have long since been concluded.

The trick goes as follows: Previously, each Internet address to the specimen www.blogs.de a specific IP address assigned to the model 255,255,255,255. With the help of the so-called Network Address Port Translation (NAPT) today but arrange Provider entire set of addresses a single IP address.

Simplified you can say so: A large number of addresses is one and the same IP number. The provider on whose server the sites are located, is a NAPT router upstream of the different WWW addresses various ports, terminals, so to speak, on its servers assigns. The actual IP address only, in which Provider or hosting the requested data is available, and ensures that the requests are distributed appropriately.

That creates space, but also constraints and is not a concept that you could drive any further. Problems makes it not only if, for example, for legal reasons a website will be blocked - and the same with hundreds of additional blocked. If you like, NAPT documented more clearly than anything else, as needed for the conversion to IPv6 is now.

Once everything seemed oversized

In the seventies, when the Internet Protocol TCP / IP and IPv4 have been developed, all that was not conceivable: as seemed possible even four billion Internet addresses, which are using 32 bit short decimal IP addresses can construct, immeasurably more. 340 Sextillionen however, constructed from a 128-bit hexadecimal address, one would still be "daring" perceived.

Loosely said at the weekend in the "News York Times," no less than Vint Cerf, co nevertheless the TCP-IP protocol. And blew into the same horn as Meinel.

Welcomed at the week start on the one hand the decision of the Federal Government in 2010 for an extensive range of very powerful broadband connections to want to make. But if, because: "If more people in Germany, access to fast Internet, should be so here also the transition to the new traffic rules of the standard IPv6 connected," said Meinel.

IPv6 has been developed since 1995, is considered ready and is now twenty-six years old, current, valid IP version 4 protocol replaces. It defined not only the address space is too narrow, it was never intended for things for which it is used today. What started in the early eighties as a digital development of telegraphy began, has long been an international network for the transmission of multimedia content developed.

IPv6 is not just a fresh address space, but also optimize the flow of data and various security problems. Moreover, it should simplify networking: devices should be easily and automatically connect to networks and make available - the protocol for the Always-on society.

Not least, IPv6 also provides the conditions for a real sensitive issue to tackle. With the help of the protocol can be certain data streams to assign a clear preference - Internet TV, video telephony or data traffic of research networks may be grassy, while BitTorrent flows could crawl. Even if broadband connections web entertainment into the living room should bear, but it is a prerequisite: Commercial IPTV offerings fail not only to lack of infrastructure and program gaps, but also because few customers are really satisfied with those performance.

The pressure grows

ON TO ONLINE blogs

Broadband for all: The desire is there, just hard to find (03.02.2009)

Broadband: Telecom offers billions - and calls for less regulation (15.12.2008)

Broadband Internet: Germany has gray spots (12.12.2008)

National IT Summit: Breitbandschmusen in Darmstadt, Germany (20.11.2008)

The transition from IPv4 to IPv6 is fluent proceed. In a transitional phase, both protocols in parallel, which in theory is already the case, practically in Germany, however, hardly happens: most providers, it is part of the IPv6 Council, blocked the transition to the new protocol.

Because it constitutes the broadband program of the Federal Government is a welcome leverage that a little development in their own country to afford. If the state in developing the Provider of Broadband Internet promotes, should the allocation of funds to be made but that the provider to its customers an IPv6-enabled connection available, called Meinel. Most computers and their operating systems dominated the new standard already.

Because this is the main reason for the reluctance of providers and infrastructure companies: IPv4 and IPv6 have different hardware requirements. And even though IPv6 is designed for networks and network hardware to significantly relieve costs arise only once - and not too tight. The EU Commission, insisting that a quarter of businesses, governments and households in the EU in 2010 will be converted, calculates a cost of several billion euros.