[ale] IPv4 devices on IPv6 network

[Michael H. Warfield]

On Fri, 2012-06-29 at 22:37 -0700, Alex Carver wrote:
> On 6/29/2012 22:20, mike at trausch.us wrote:
> > On 06/30/2012 01:10 AM, Alex Carver wrote:
> >> Everything I've searched for with whatever Google-fu I could use
> >> indicates I'll need to perform translation using NAT64 or equivalent but
> >> there's nothing out there that says how this should be done specifically
> >> (i.e. what magical incantations of iptables are needed if indeed
> >> iptables is the eventual handler of this).  The various docs just say
> >> "You need it".  Well no kidding.
> >
> > You can have your 10.0.0.0/8 as well as your IPv6 space.  That simply
> > means that you'll need a DHCP server that hands addresses in that space out.
> >
> > You will also likely be able to keep at least a single IPv4 address from
> > your ISP for quite some time, so you can still do normal IPv4 NAT for
> > your RFC 1918 segment(s).
> >
> > You'll only need some form of proxy or protocol translator if you
> > absolutely need to have the device(s) have IPv6 addresses and be able to
> > communicate on the IPv6 network.  That would be a pain in the rear end,
> > but it would work just fine for many types of protocols (e.g., not ones
> > like SIP or FTP).

> There's no guarantee I'll keep an IPv4.  This is both a home plan ahead 
> and a work plan ahead.  At home it's up to AT&T whether they give me an 
> extra IPv4 or not.  At work I likely wouldn't get the choice and get 
> handed an IPv6 and that's it.

Actually, that's extremely unlikely to happen in our lifetimes.  You
will continue to have (albeit fewer and fewer) IPv4-only devices but
they will continue to exist.  I already have some devices (mostly
Avocent IP KVMs) which can be IPv4 or IPv6, but not both (sucks but
their firmware is horrible anyways).  And we may, in the future, see
some IPv6 only devices start showing up, but I doubt that will happen
anytime soon.

ITMT, your carriers and providers are not going to remove or discontinue
IPv4, it would just break too many customers, and business are going to
continue supporting IPv4 for the foreseeable future, as long as they
have IPv4 clients, customers, and partners.  IPv4 is NOT going away.
You will find more and more of it is behind NAT on private address
spaces and more and more of that buried behind CGNAT.  That WILL break
at lot of esoteric things like some VPN's and certain peer-to-peer
protocols and you can forget about running that little IPv4 server.
Some VPNs like OpenVPN and IPsec (IKEv2) which can directly tunnel v6
over v4 and v4 over v6, even where NAT is interfering, so you can link
up your islands of each over the other.

IPv6 will deliver those services that will not longer work over multiple
layers of NAT / CGNAT, but the basic stuff will continue to work for
IPv4 and it's not going away anytime soon.  IPv6 isn't even in full
saturation deployment yet and may be decades away from that even still.
20 or 30 years from now we'll still find IPv4 squatting on our networks
like an ugly step child that just will not move out.

> All the devices speak plain TCP/telnet (at work it's ModBusTCP, HTTP or 
> straight TCP/telnet).  At home the devices are TCP, HTTP, or LPR (two 
> hardware print servers).
> 
> I know I can dual-stack most of the machines so data collection and/or 
> printing could continue but the details of giving one of these things a 
> connection to IPv6 space is fuzzy at best but it's also what I'm most 
> curious about.  I want to have the option to assign a single IPv6 
> address to the device by way of the translator/proxy but I can't seem to 
> find any information about such a translator/proxy.
> 
> (I guess I should also make sure that my next experiment with Asterisk 
> and IP phones involves getting phones that support IPv6.)
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-- 
Michael H. Warfield (AI4NB) | (770) 985-6132 |  mhw at WittsEnd.com
   /\/\|=mhw=|\/\/          | (678) 463-0932 |  http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/
   NIC whois: MHW9          | An optimist believes we live in the best of all
 PGP Key: 0x674627FF        | possible worlds.  A pessimist is sure of it!
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