Re: [44net] An anniversary of a sort - 36 years

Bill, The best person to answer is Brian Kantor. Till he chimes in... I don't expect to see IPv4 switched off on the general internet in my lifetime. The adoption rate of v6 is pretty sad. We don't even have everyone dual stacks yet. There has been some casual discussions from foreign hams to try and get an IPv6 allocation for ham radio from RIPE ( I believe).. but there will be so many addresses available I am not even sure ham radio needs its own allocation. Moving forward the whole online ham authentication thing (that OH7LZB has pointed out) makes more sense in my opinion. Use one of your many-many IPv6 addreses from your ISP, but add some sort of authentication to the process of interacting with other ham services. That is presently a lure of 44net.. knowing the guy on the other end is a ham, and whatever traffic is being generated (VOIP, data etc) should it key an actual transmitter it will be legit. [There was a proposal in 1998 to encode a "call sign" into IPv6 address titled "Take the Next Step with the Next Generation Protocol" by Naoto Shimazaki. And in 2012 a few members from the Mesa Amateur Radio Club of Arizona took this to code.) I guess the more pertinent questions I have for Brian would be: Are there a plan so that folks who only have IPv6 commercial address or are suck behind carrier grade IPv4 with no firewall access (some cellular carriers presently) can participate with the amprnet? In other words are there plans to make amprgw dual stack? 73 Steve, KB9MWR