How not to get a protocol implementation merged [LWN.net]

How not to get a protocol implementation merged

Posted Jan 20, 2011 4:54 UTC (Thu) by pukunui (guest, #65961)
Parent article: How not to get a protocol implementation merged

"no base stations currently provided IPv6 functionality"

If this is true, it's more than a bit of a worry - the first place that IPv4 addresses will run out and where operators will need to offer IPv6 addresses is the mobile space. After all, most of the smartphone handsets are already IPv6-capable.
By the time local ISPs start to really hurt for IPv4 address space (mid- to late-2012 maybe in parts of the APNIC area?), the vast majority of the fast-churn smartphones will be IPv6, but very few home fixed users will be. For example, in the NZ market, you CANNOT buy an IPv6-capable ADSL modem from a mass market supplier even today, and these boxes last far longer than the 18 months to three years of a typical smartphone.

So the first part of the market that needs to go IPv6 is the mobile part. And there are *no* base stations that do IPv6?

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How not to get a protocol implementation merged

Posted Jan 20, 2011 8:39 UTC (Thu) by ericc72 (guest, #41737) [Link]

I'm not an expert on this stuff, but my understanding is that most mobile operators, when it comes to stuff done that needs an IP address, often just uses addresses in the private space so really this in not an issue with conflict with the number of public IP addresses. It is kind of like a lot of DSL connections, where you are getting issued a private IP address by the provider and they do NAT at their central office onto the public internet.

How not to get a protocol implementation merged

Posted Jan 20, 2011 11:11 UTC (Thu) by foom (subscriber, #14868) [Link]

Well, T-mobile USA, at least, doesn't use official private addresses, because they would conflict with the addresses on users' network's when people are connected via cell and via Wifi. T-mobile instead uses (unrouteable, NATed) addresses in the 25.* network, which is assigned to the UK Ministry of defense. But yes, they don't have to worry about running out of addresses at least...

How not to get a protocol implementation merged

Posted Jan 21, 2011 7:33 UTC (Fri) by Imroy (guest, #62286) [Link]

> the first place that IPv4 addresses will run out and where operators will need to offer IPv6 addresses is the mobile space.

Maybe I'm understanding it wrong, but it appears that this protocol is a tunnelling/encapsulation protocol for transporting low-level packets between base stations and their components. It's not involved with the actual internet connectivity of the mobile phones - in the current 2.5G/3G network structure that happens in a specific component (with even more encapsulation - http://laforge.gnumonks.org/weblog/2009/10/27/#20091027-i...). So these base stations and other parts talking UDPCP will likely have private IPv4 addresses and would not cause a problem for IPv6 migration.

Of course, we'd like to move *everything* to IPv6 in the distant (or not so distant) future. But until then I don't see this IPv4-only implementation posing any problems.