Showing posts with label dsl. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dsl. Show all posts

30 April 2007

Easy Access to IPv6 at Last?

You probably don't realise it, but the Internet is a dinosaur. More specially, the Internet numbering system is palaeolithic, and needs sorting out. Ironically, the solution has been around for years (I first wrote about it nearly a decade ago). It's called IPv6, and instead of the measly 4 billion or so addresses that IPv4 allows (and which are allocated in a particularly arbitrary way), IPv6 will give us

340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456

of them, which should keep us going for a while.

And yet we hear little of IPv6 these days. So I was glad to see that down-under they are doing something on this front with the IPv6 for e-Business initiative. As well as scads of useful IPv6 resources, this site also has links to a highly-practical outcome of the Australian project, the memorably-named "Easy Access Device":

The Easy Access Device (EAD) has been developed with the purpose of providing a small businesses (leas than 50 employees) with a simple, easy to use IPv6 Internet access device. The system is designed as a small unit that would be installed in a small business, and connects directly into a DSL, cable or wireless broadband termination unit (typically a modem). The unit provides the basic network services normally required at a small office network boundary for both IPv6 and IPv4 networks.

Apparently it's a PC box running Ubuntu. Providing a cheap solution is probably as good a way as any of moving on from the poor old IPv4.