Re: [44net] AMPRNet Address Sale

On 7/18/19 23:12, Holger Baust wrote: I was assured that this block was not actively allocated to any hams. Is it possible they're using it unofficially? If there isn't, I'm sure there could be. But this isn't strictly necessary just to run IPv6 over ham radio. Hurricane Electric (HE) still runs their free IPv6 tunnel broker service, which I still use at home alongside native IPv6 from my own ISP (Spectrum Cable, formerly Time Warner Cable). By default they'll give you a /64 that you can have tunneled to any routable IPv4 address you like. To optimize routing you can choose the closest from a long list of tunnel gateways around the world and if you pass a few quizzes to show that you know what you're doing, they'll also give you a /48. I sub-delegated a /64 from my /48 to the Mt. Carmel HS ham club network (W6SUN) where I am a mentor. HE will even delegate PTR zones, again if you can show you know what you're doing. Most ISPs that natively support IPv6 also support prefix delegation. They'll typically give you a /64 that you can hand out on your LAN with DHCPv6 or stateless autoconfiguration (e.g., advertise with the Linux radvd daemon). Some will give you more than one /64 if you ask, but nothing actually says you must use a /64 only on a single LAN. You can always divide it further if you like, and with twice as many bits in the host part of an IPv6 /64 as in the entire IPv4 address space, this can't be hard. While in theory these delegated prefixes can change, in my experience this is very rare. Also, a major design consideration in IPv6 was to make large-scale readdressing as painless as possible. (I wasn't personally involved in IPv6 development but I was active in the IETF during that time and I did follow the discussions.) I don't think so. IPv6 has been out for a very long time. Every major OS has had it for years, and it is stable and well supported. More and more ISPs support it natively, and even if yours don't you can still use a tunnel broker like HE, provided you have a single routable IPv4 address for tunneling (i.e., you're not on carrier-grade NAT). The one ISP I use that does have carrier grade IPv4 NAT is Verizon Wireless but they also support native IPv6 so there's no problem. If by this you mean we have to convince people to simply turn it on, you are correct. In my personal experience, the biggest practical drawback to IPv6 is that it is enabled on very few public WiFi hotspots. Since many of them are too overloaded to be useful anyway, probably by automatic iOS and Android app updates, I generally just fall back to the hotspot in my Verizon iPhone. But at home, I use IPv6 quite heavily. It. Just. Works. Really, it does. As I said, IPv6 is much more widely supported than many people realize and the only problem is just getting people to turn it on. I think that's simple, at least compared with the steep learning (and development) curve we were facing back in 1986 when I first began the AMPRNet project with Brian. I still remember the snowy night in a Harrisburg PA hotel in early 1986 when Bdale Garbee, Mike Cheponis, Bob Hoffmann and I sketched out a hierarchical addressing plan for AMPRNet on the back of a proverbial napkin. That's when I invented the slash subnet notation ("44/8") that everybody still uses today. 73, Phil