The IPv6 Switchover

lets you do a whole lot more than one. Yes, but you know two can be as sad as one. That's true. That's true. That's one. I here. So we we've talked about this before, I think on the podcast, but we've never really delved into it and gotten really like knee deep in this. In this topic, we're talking about the I p V six switchover and why it's necessary and why it's going a little slowly. Although that that that's a little more difficult to answer, because that's

that's getting into lots of different factors. But really you've probably heard about this. You may have been following the news. You might have even seen that back in February of that the last big batch of I p V four addresses was assigned and that this means that we are running out of I p v four addresses. Before we get too far into it, I guess we need to kind of talk about protocols and addresses. Yep, yep. And uh,

this is something that is hardly new. I mean, uh, people like uh, you know, the the Internet founders, people like J. C. R. Licklider and so many of the others, um vent Surf among them. Back in the day Con Robert Con and the sixties and seventies were looking into how to share information between machines and um they basically they had a couple of trials, but the version of the protocols that we use to communicate on the Internet

today date back decades at this point, right, yeah. Now, Originally they had a protocol they called the Network Control Protocol or in CP, but that was not nearly robust enough for it to truly allow networks of machines to

communicate with one another. And thankfully, the people working on our pannet recognize that, and they began to work immediately on a a system that would or a set of protocols that would replace in CP and that ended up being a pair of protocols UH, I P and t c P, which are almost always grouped together when you're talking about them because they are so closely related one the first is a transmission control protocol and the other is Internet protocol and it's they're often UH separated by

just a slash, So you hear people talk about a t c P, I P, yeah, and and connection. And here's why they're connected so closely. So the transport the the TCP that in charge of taking streams of data, essentially chopping up those streams of data UH and then handing it over to the I P, and then the IP handles the actual packet routing. The packets are the

packets of information. Files are are essentially divided up into packets of bits, and those are sent off across the the Internet and then TCP once uh IT the the packets arrive at their destination, is in charge of placing those packets together again to reform a data stream so that the receiving computer is able to see the actual file or information that was being sent across rather than

just a bunch of seemingly meaningless bits and bytes. Because otherwise, if you know if you didn't have those protocols in place, It's would be kind of like if I were to say, take a framed uh picture, and then I cut it up all into these tiny little pieces, and then I put all those tiny little pieces into various envelopes and then sent all the envelopes to Chris and did not give Chris a way of finding out how to put

those pieces back together. Well, that would just mean that I sent Chris a whole bunch of envelopes filled with broken glass and pieces of picture, which frankly I do anyway, but that's just for funzies. But if I wanted to actually give him something that was meaningful, I would have to have something in place that would reassemble all those pieces back into the original format that it was in when I sent it the first in the first place, so that Chris could see it. So, come on, boys,

let's take some pictures. Hey, airplane reference and so um uh. That's that's how the the information gets spread across the internet, how you send information across the internet. But but one key component of this is you have to have an address for your machine so that when you send information across the internet. Uh. There the systems on the Internet. No,

what direction to send that that information in? Right? Yeah, that's this is the thing about Internet protocol is it serves the sort of a lingua franca for uh, different computers on the net. So you can be running Linux and talk to a Windows machine or a Mac and come on, Max, don't talk to anyone but other Max. Have you seen those people? They just sit in a click and they're all cool kids, and they all look like they've just stepped out of a hipster boutique and

nobody said you have an anti Mac bias. In sometime you just enjoy that, don't you. Yeah, once in a while, I like to, I like to you don't bring that back, which is just funny. That's why I totally just being silly. Yeah, but no, any any computer that is able to communicate UM with T C P I P to the Internet and back should be able to communicate with other machines. So you you should be able to to share information

pretty easily. That's the beauty of this. But as you said, the the addressing system has to support that, and there has to be a way to know where the packets are are being sent to, especially since you know there's some redundant in this, you know network, their packets being sent to one machine and then to another machine and hopefully one of them will get there on time to build the file back. And let's say let's say that one server is sending out the same file to like

eight different computers. Well, has to know how you know, it has to be able to identify those computers to send in the right information. Has to send the right packets to each one, even if it's the same file. You wouldn't want to send the same packet to computer number one and a different packet to computer number two and a different because you wouldn't be able to to put those packets into any meaningful form, right. You would have to set the same series of packets, not necessarily

in the same order either. That's the one of the wonderful thing about the Internet is that the routing system is really flexible. So if machines go down on the Internet, the packets can be rerouted by other machines to go around the outage and still get to their final destination. So as long as the host computers that are in charge of sending and receiving the information remain on the network.

Theoretically that information should eventually get there. It may take little longer than ideally, just because computers that are on that pathway may have failed along the way, but the information should still get there. I mean, that's the whole robust nature of the Internet. So we've got this address

issue now. The issue here is that the uh, the Internet protocol address that was set up was for reasons that I could not figure out, really, reasons that are so obscure that that it might as well be forgotten. Um is called i p v C V four. Rather, this was the the protocol that was settled upon for the addresses, and it uses a thirty two bit address, all right, three two bit address, and it's in the

format of four eight bit values separated by periods. Right, so it could be anything from zero dot zero dot zero dot zero to accept. And that that's your range of addresses. Some of those you can't use. Yeah, Actually, technically, if if you could use all of the addresses, you would have access to four billion, two d million, nine hundred sixty seven thousand, two d addresses. If you could use all of them, you can't. There are more than half a half a billion of them that are off limits.

So and and we've we've had people right into us before to explain that, you know, there are certain you cannot use zero in four times and two four times, there are some that that you cannot use. But that does give you an awful lot of addresses. Three point

seven billion with a B addresses are we're available initially. Now, the problem was that even back as early as the ninety nineties, I mean back even further than that, but in the ninety n it was recognized that there was gonna come a time where we'd run out of these addresses. Now there's certain ways to kind of uh to to mitigate that somewhat. One of those ways is called network address translation or not yes, network address translation that we've

had people right into us about this as well. That's when you have a system like a router that has its own IP address, So the router has an IP address that's public. That's the other part of the system is that these addresses have to be public. If they're private, then the system cannot won't be able to see the computer and won't be able to send information to that computer.

So you have to have these public addresses. So the router has a public address, and then the machines connected to the router all are assigned private addresses by the router. So let's say that I have a computer connected to this router, I send I wanna go check a website, So I type in an address in my my browser bar uh. The request is sent to the router. The router then replaces my private address that the router has assigned me with the router's own public address, then sends

the request out to the Internet. So then the request goes out to whatever server has that website stored on it. The server then sends the information back to the router. Now, at this point, the router has to determine which of the computers connected or devices connected to its system is the one that requested the information in the first place. So there's some protocols that are that you need in addition support mapping that you need to do in order

for this to work. But in general, you can create a system where the router then sends that information to the right device, in this case, my computer and I get to see the website. Now you might ask, well, why would you bother to do this, Well, it conserves I P addresses because the router is the only one that has a public IP address, And so you might have a whole network of computers hooked up through this router, but those computers don't have their individual I P addresses.

They have a little private address that's assigned by the router. UM. But so, so anything that comes back I'm sorry, didn't go ahead. UM. So your computer or sends a request to your router in your house. Say you have two computers in your house, and from there, the router sends a request to wherever it is that the information you're looking for is coming from. UM. Meanwhile, the person using the other computer UM in the household makes a request

and it goes to somewhere else. Well, the information is all coming back to the router. The router itself in your house is making the determination of which packet needs to go to which machine. So that that cuts down on some of the confusion and it and it helped to support I V I P V four addresses for a while past there, I would say, past their shelf life. UM,

but yeah, this is the decision. They realized this was going to happen in the early nineties and in the mid nineties they were working on a way to to figure this out, and it wasn't until the UH till, which at this point seems like a long time ago. But it's a long time ago when you think that that was when this was proposed. Yes, but the Internet Engineering hask Force, by the way, it does not much

care for that. Yeah. Well, and they actually prefer the idea of every device having its own public address as opposed to having a middleman like you can think of that router almost like a mailman, Like the mailman gets all the mail in the bag and then has to deliver it to the right houses. The only thing is that in this case the mailman is also the one who assigns the addresses to the houses, and the addresses can change over time. Yeah, it is, it is inelegant,

but it is a solution. But the thing is um another another thing that factored into this that I I haven't read, but I'm guessing based on my UH history of working at an Internet service provider, I would guess that I I p V four also survived a little longer than it probably would have ordinarily because so many people in the nineties were using dial up service and it's really coming to uh, you know a point where we have to make a move now, especially because so

many more people are using um, you know, broadband connections that don't that you don't have to get off. And then we're getting things so you stay connected all the time, and you've got things like lt E and y max that are also starting to to create issues as well. You're you know, your tablet has an IP address, your phone has an IP address, your computer has an IP address, your netbook has an IP address, and then so does everyone else's. Yeah, and that they're not giving them up exactly.

And like we said in February two eleven, the last free block of I p V four addresses was a sign. Now that doesn't mean again like there's still I P addresses out there in these various blocks that have not been assigned. Um uh two individuals or two machines. But it's just a matter of time before those run out. So the solution really that the I E t F. That's the that's the Internet Engineering Task Force that we talked about a couple of times eight I need UM.

The solution that they proposed was sort of a a nuclear bomb solution to this problem. You know, there are times where we accuse engineers of taking the the bare minimum number of steps in order to solve a problem. For example, the Y two K problem. Part of that was an issue with encoding the year as a two digit number, and so what happens when it hits zero zero and rolls over and there? That was what caused that whole y two k panic, which some of you

may not even be old enough to remember. I remember it very well because I remember having a Y two k New Year's Eve party in Athens, Georgia with a bunch of my friends where we dance to the song about fifty billion times um. So the I E T F solution was, well, if the I p V four uses a thirty two bit system, let's let's amp that up a bit. And they didn't go to sixty four bit, which would have made quite a few more addresses. No, no, no, they went all the way to one hundred twenty eight bit,

which increases the number of addresses dramatically. And that's an understatement if ever there was one. Yes, do you know how many addresses there will be under a hundred twenty eight bit? Would you like to? Actually I did have that down according to mine notes too to the hundred power. That's no one understands that number. Chris, Well, you you

provide a better solution. Here we go three hundred forty death, sillion, two hundred eighty two, non nillion, three hundred sixty six, octillion, nine hundred twenty septillion, nine hundred thirty eight, sex tillion, four hundred sixty three, quintillion, three hundred seventy four, quadrillion, six hundred seven trillion, four hundred thirty one billion, seven sixty eight million, two hundred eleven thousand, four hundred fifty six.

Or if you want to really just make that simple, you can write down three four zero and then at thirty six zeros behind it. That's that's a that's rounding down how many addresses there will be under there are under I p V six. I shouldn't say will be, because I p V six is implemented right now, it's just not widely deployed. I'm sorry. While you were doing that, I got you a sandwich. I hope it's awesome. So, um yeah, there, that's that's you might wonder it's spicy

must now, um you might. Well, let's let's before we go into adoption. Well, Yeah. One of the things that's kind of neat about this UM is it's it's much the address is here much longer now, as I was saying before, UM, with some exceptions, the minimum value you have you have four sets of numbers and an IPv four address, four sets of eight bit number, dot number, dot number, dot number, and the number can be between zero and two five five there. You can't add any

more numbers on top of that. That's as far as it goes, and that's how you create these these addresses. But for my research, the the addresses are physically longer as well, because in yes, in addition to and in addition to numbers, you can also include letters address. It's because it's uh an IPv six address, you can write that out as an it's a series of well, it's eight sixteen bit values. So instead of four eight bit values, which is the thirty two bit address of I p

V four, it's eight sixteen bit values. And you can use hexadecimal format, and instead of periods between the numbers, which is what how we see an IPv for address, use Colon's so UM. I got this from ours Technica.

Ours Technica has a great article about I p V six um, and so I would I'm just gonna read off the sample address that they used in their article, which was to zero zero one, colon d b eight, colon three one, colon one, colon two zero A, colon nine five f f colon f e F five, colon two four six E. Now, when you can see formats like that, you can imagine, Yeah, there's gonna be a huge variety, which was pretty clear from my my my recitation of the number, and that certainly solves the problem

of how many devices can connect to the Internet at a at a time, each with its own address. In fact, according to the ARS Technica article, uh, essentially our son will wither and die before we run out of addresses, even plotting the same or increased population growth that we're experiencing right now on and then assuming that the number

of devices each person has increases as well. It's just it's such an enormous number that there's no conceivable way we could run out within the span of time that we the human race would be around. Another cool feature of the address, I'm just I'm trying to get my head around that, and I figured I should just move on. Another cool feature of I P. B. Six addresses is that if you have a section that has all zeros in it, you can skip it. Yeah, any any sequence

as long as you can skip it once. So if you have if you had two sequences of zeros, like if you had a sequence of zeros and then a number and then another sequence of zeros, I'm not sure you can skip both of them. I believe you. Well, Okay, According to a paper I found from the University Hawaii by A. Wilson Chan, Um, you can, oh, okay, if there are no if there are no other characters in there besides zeros, you can. And you do this with

a double colon. Yeah, so if you had if you had a section on your address, actually you could technically have zero colon, zero colon, zero colon, zero colon, zero colon all the way down to one and you could just change that to colon colon one. I don't know if that works, according to ours Technica does well, okay, So yeah, yeah, I mean multiple, multiple sections of zeros can be replaced with that double colon. So that's really

cool too that you can use that as shorthand. Now, um, you were right though, Although people have been taking up i p v six. They're not not. Everybody is in a in a great big hurry to do this. Why because I would guess because it involves labor, and people are saying, well, the IPv for addresses are working just fine until I have to. I'm not gonna be exactly if it ain't broke, don't fix it now here. Here's

the thing. In order to switch over to i p v six, you have to have support on multiple fronts. You have to have software support from the operating system front, which most I would say that. I think all modern operating systems, like all the most current operating systems support I p v six and I know that that uh Windows and the macOS, and I'm pretty darn sure that Lennox for a while now. They all have for several iterations. Window Vista was the first one to support it, and

even Windows XP. I think there was a way where you could you could do it. It just wasn't doing It wasn't native to Windows XP. But Windows Vista and Windows seven both support it natively. Mac Os does as well, and I'm sure Lenox doesn't. I can't imagine considering and considering Google's role in advocating for I p v six. I bet chromos is as well. I would be. I would be surprised to find otherwise I would I would be about as shocked as I possibly could be. So

you've got that. You have to have the support on the operating system and for the so that your computer can actually send information across I p v six protocols and then through the Internet. Okay, I got that. Well. Now you also have to make sure that all the other devices on the Internet are working on the I p v six protocols. So in some cases, with things like routers and nodes, you may have to have a

firmware or software update so that you can either. Um, it's almost like teaching these machines how to handle a different format of information. Now, in some cases, you're gonna have devices that are truly physically incapable of transmitting I p v six UH data. They just they won't be because they're limited to I p v four. And in those cases, what would be required that you would have

to go in and replace them. You would actually have to physically replace those machines with machines capable of running I p v six protocols. Okay, I'll be right back, let me go do that. Yeah, that that might take you a while. Uh, but but that's that's a worst case scenario. Most I would I don't even know if I can say most many of the devices that are currently connected to the Internet are capable of handling IPv

six with a software or firmware update. Then, uh, you've got to essentially run a an Internet that's kind of parallel to the one that every that most people are using today. Because I p v six and I p v four are not native lee compatible. Right, you can force some compatibility with something that's called tunneling, but it's

not the same thing. So, for example, let's say I'm on an I'm using an IPv for machine of some sort or that the information I am sending is going to have to pass through an I p v four device before it moves on to an I p v six destination. What it would need, what I would need to do, or actually what the devices would need to do, is to encapsulate my I p v six address within

an I p v four address. It's almost like you are uh, it's it's like a pill, like you've slipped this this thing into a different form factor so that it can travel across the network. When it gets to the destination, you pop the pill open and then you get the I p v six. And by the way, yes it does make those noises. Do not contradict me. That goes for all of you. I pointed at Chris, but that point goes to you Internet and all of your I p Goodness, Wow, that sounds awful, doesn't it. Anyway,

So tunneling is is an inelegant solution. It's not really it's not really a solution. It's just kind of a stop gap. Well, we have various systems convert over to I p v six and there's nothing. You know, there are a lot of initiatives that are suggesting that companies and especially like Internet service providers s which make the switch happen. But it's not necessarily uh mandated, right, it's not like legally mandated. It's funny you should mention that

because I was reading on Network World. There's an I p v six tutorial that Carolin Duffie Marsan wrote and said that the government set The United States government set a mandate of June of two thousand eight for agencies to be able to say that their equipment could handle i PP six. Now they're not. That doesn't mean that they had to switch over. But um, people are are saying that by two thousand twelve, Um, provided you know, the world doesn't end in one of the many uh apocalypse. Yeah,

pop apocalyptic theories that are going on right now. Is the plural for apocalypse apocalypse? I'm pretty sure Buffy the Vampire Slayer asked that same question in between deaths. Um. Yeah, but basically by um, they're saying that that network managers in the United States, because we do have a disproportionate share of uh, the world's Internet traffic. Um. But basically web born here, so it makes sense. Well it's true,

but it has spread nicely to other parts of the world. Um. But yeah, they're they're saying that if if websites aren't starting to use i p V six, then the network, then networks and the Internet are going to slow substantially, and it's it's going to start to create uh try aphic bottlenecks and problems. So um, it's not a mandate mandate, but it's a you know, hey, you have a business,

it's running on the internet. If you don't upgrade this by next year, people are going, your customers are going to and you know what that is going to It's going there is a mandate that's going to come close to it. Yeah, it's a fiscal mandate as opposed to a legal one. But but the government has has dipped a toe into that water and said, you know, look,

you have to be compatible. And I think that's probably she just said agencies in her article, but I think she probably means the federal government should be um ready to go. And I think I think the there might be a concern for some people out there who are using older machines that may be using antiquated operating systems that will not be able to handle I p V six. Yeah, it's it's kind of making me think of the digital uh transfer. Remember back when uh we went from analog

to digital for television transmission. I do remember that, Yeah, and uh and there was a fear that it was going to leave some customers completely without television service, which you know, really TV serves a lot of purposes and not just entertainment. So I could make a snarky comment of oh no, I'll be without my more can mindy, But let's be honest. TV has served a crucial role in spreading information, particularly information that's very timely. Like there

is a tornado bearing down on you. Take cover, Yeah, that that has been in the news quite a bit, yes lately, and just go out to all the people affected by that because we Chris and I both live in an area that has been uh devastated by tornadoes in the past, and so we are also familiar with that situation. So yeah, I mean you need to know these things, and that's how a lot of people get

their information exactly. So yeah, that I I think, Um, you know, clearly the same sort of expectation comes with people who are using the internet. The Internet is becoming that kind of important outlet to the world, to getting information and to really taking part in what it means to be a citizen of the world today. Right. Well, I mean I started using the internet, uh and at that point I was enraptured with it. I loved using it.

But I couldn't fathom then imagining what people are talking about now that the idea that internet access could be considered a human right, and the fact that that debate in two thousand eleven, just twenty one years later is is stirring up and people are really talking about that possibility, um, you know, and having access at that level, then we have to be able to if if that is true, if people really need that access over these networks, then you have to make sure that they can get it.

And I be I p v six is more of a necessity than anything else. And so yeah, you've got these two two conflicting but equally important necessities. Right. You've got the necessity to create a system that's going to have the addresses that will allow people to connect to the Internet in the first place. And then you have the necessity of making sure that people are aware of this change so that eventually they can switch over to

a machine that's capable of interacting interfacing with that system. Um. I think most people, I mean, just based upon how how people deal with electronics, the majority are going to be fine because I think most people out there are running a computer with an operating system that's recent enough to interface with I p V six. There. I know they are exceptions out there, but the majority is what we have to look at really, um. And then you know,

it's kind of interesting. Google did a study back in two thousand and eight where they wanted to see how much of the how much, how much percentage wise of Internet traffic was over the I p v six networks, and they found that less than one percent of Internet traffic in any country was I p v six two thousand eight, which is ten years after the p v six standard was finalized. So in a decade, less than

a percent of all traffic was over I p v six. Yep, And I mean that was you know, it's only been three years since then and we've already handed out the last big block of I p v four addresses. So hopefully we're going to see some some major movement in the next few months to kind of create this parallel network. And like we said, it is a parallel network. It's not like it's not only the I p v four network is necessarily going away overnight, although I would imagine

over time it would be phased out. But um but for the meantime, both systems would be running in parallel, and they both be you would have the same experience on each It's not like if you're on I p v six you would get one version of the website

that you're going to versus the one on IPv four. Um. Yeah, just as a note, UH, you might if if you aren't as familiar with UM I P addresses and you say, well, wait a minute, you know these when you're talking about everybody needing to upgrade their there UH websites addressed to an a new I P address. You know, I don't. I don't get that. I I go to how stuff works dot com and I don't. I don't see that. I go to how stuff works dot com. What is

this for UM octet number that you're talking about. Well, that's the thing. Each address on the Internet, including the server wear how stuff works dot Com is UH stored. UM has an IP address, a numeric or and you know when I p V six comes out alpha numeric UH IP address, the thing is UM. You don't necessarily see it. And that's because of the domain name servers. That's a different system that we could talk about again in the future. But yeah, that that basically layers on.

And when you buy a domain UH for your you know, for your own personal website, you basically and that's how you can change hosting companies. If you wanted to go to you know, my host from you know, green and Purple and Orange host, you can you can do that because although their servers have different IP addresses, the domain name that you have, you know, my website is really cool. Dot com can be mapped to a different You basically say, hey, don't go when somebody clicks on this name, go to

this I P address, not that IP address. So yeah, that that system is underlying that. I don't know that everybody necessarily is that. We didn't really mention it. Well, the domain name server is really a separate thing anyway, just like you were saying, uh that that's because as people, we have trouble remembering um strings of digits in general. I mean, I know there are people out there who can rattle off pie to you know, a crazy number

of digits, but hey, what just happened? Hey will happen um, but the uh, most of us have trouble with that, and so of course the domain domain name server was a solution for that, where we created um uh an address system for U r l s or earls as my buddy calls them um earls, and that we can, uh, that's easier for us to remember, you know, how stuff works. Dot Com is a lot easier to remember than a

string of numbers. So yes, same sort of thing that the domain name servers will still be mapping, uh, the the English or or not even English, but the the word form of a website's address to its UM to its IP address, whether it's I p V four or I p v six, So that should not change. You won't be expected to type in a you know, eight sixteen bit value number in hexadecimal format in order to visit your favorite websites to get your lulls. Yeah, I'm laite,

you sure are. Let me just say, alright, all right, well that was a great discussion on I p V six. I hope that that clears some stuff up for you guys out there. I know that there are a lot of you who have been wondering about this topic and just kind of kind of curious about, you know, what's the deal with this? Why is it necessary? And it's

necessary because we all wants our internets. So y'all, if you have any other topics you want us to talk about, you can let us know on Facebook and Twitter are handled. There is tech Stuff h s W or you can send us an email and that email address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com. Chris and I will talk to you again, really soon. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most

promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The How Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you