<div id="logo"><a href="http://www.techworld.com/news/index.cfm?NewsID=105980">http://www.techworld.com/news/index.cfm?NewsID=105980</a><br></div><div id="logo"><br></div><div id="logo"><img src="http://media.techworld.com/graphics/twstrip510.gif" alt="" width="510" height="12">
<div class="logotext"><span class="bold"><a href="http://www.techworld.com">www.techworld.com</a></span> : the UK's infrastructure & network knowledge centre</div></div>
<div id="main" style="top: 40px;" class="maindiv">
<div class="gap10"></div>
<div class="maindivintro">
This page should print automatically. If not select <span class="bold">Print</span> from the <span class="bold">File</span> menu.
</div>
<div class="gap10"></div>
<div class="ruletop"></div>
<div><h2>Vint Cerf warns on IPv6 uptake</h2></div>
<div><h3>You have until mid-2010, says Google sage.</h3></div>
<div>
<h5>Mikael Ricknäs, IDG News Service<br>21 October 2008</h5></div>
<p>The Internet will get support for IPv6, a more secure domain name
system and international characters, during the next couple of years,
according to Vint Cerf, chief Internet evangelist at Google.</p>
<p>"This year and the next year are probably the most significant years
for Internet's evolution that I can remember," said Cerf, who was one
of the keynote speakers at the Internetdagarna (The Internet Days)
conference in Stockholm.</p>
<p>The biggest change is the move to IPv6, which will give the Internet
a much larger address space and ensure future growth. The current
estimate is that the number of IPv4 addresses that can be allocated
will be exhausted around the middle of 2010, according to Cerf.</p>
<p>"It's slowly entering into the network, but people haven't felt very much pressure up until now to implement it," said Cerf.</p>
<p>But the deadline is coming closer, and it's becoming more apparent
to many people that it's time to start implementing IPv6 in parallel
with IPv4, according to Cerf.</p>
<p>Besides its 128-bit address space, IPv6 has other benefits. "One of
them is that if the other side says I need to go into encrypted mode
you are supposed to comply with that, it's optional in IPv4," said Cerf.</p>
<p>There are also some problems, the network management tools are for
example not yet as mature the ones for IPv4, according to Cerf.</p>
<p>He says the current lack of addresses, and the IPv4 32-bit address
space, is his fault. "My only defence is that decision was made in
1977, at a time when it was uncertain if the Internet would work," said
Cerf, and adding that a 128-bit address space seemed excessive back
then.</p>
<p>But IPv6 isn't the only project that will keep the industry busy.
The implementation of domain name system security using DNSSEC (Domain
Name System Security Extensions) has also got off the ground.</p>
<p>"The idea here is to improve the assurance that when you do a domain
name hookup you get back the IP address that was intended, as opposed
to something that was modified by a hacker," said Cerf.</p>
<p>If the DNSSEC is supposed to improve security on the Internet, the
addition of internationalised domain names (the support for non-Latin
character sets) is supposed to make it a more global place. Languages
such as Arabic, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and so on,
will all become a part of the domain name systems vocabulary, according
to Cerf.</p>
<p>"This is a big change, because for the last 30 years the only thing
you could use was Latin characters, and just the letters A though Z,
digits 0 to 9 and a hyphen," said Cerf.</p>
<p>There is still a lot to be done to make the Internet more useful
than it is today. Broadcast and support for multihoming, which can make
it convenient for users to have more than one ISP, are two areas where
there is room for improvement, according to Cerf.</p>
<p>"So we have lots of potential, new designs to add to the Internet to
make it more functional and effective than it is today," said Cerf.</p>
<div class="ruletop"></div>
<div class="gap10"></div>
<div align="center">
This article was printed from <span class="bold">Techworld : <a href="http://www.techworld.com/">www.techworld.com</a></span><br>
The UK's infrastructure & network knowledge centre<br>
© 2008 : All rights reserved</div>
<div class="gap10"></div></div><br>-- <br>Anne-Rachel Inne<br>