Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: Welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulette and
Speaker 1: I am an editor at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me, as always his senior writer, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: One is the loneliest number that you ever knew. Nice,
Speaker 1: Thank you, Except today we're gonna talk about something that
Speaker 1: lets you do a whole lot more than one. Yes,
Speaker 1: but you know two can be as sad as one.
Speaker 1: That's true. That's true. That's one. I here. So we
Speaker 1: we've talked about this before, I think on the podcast,
Speaker 1: but we've never really delved into it and gotten really
Speaker 1: like knee deep in this. In this topic, we're talking
Speaker 1: about the I p V six switchover and why it's
Speaker 1: necessary and why it's going a little slowly. Although that
Speaker 1: that that's a little more difficult to answer, because that's
Speaker 1: that's getting into lots of different factors. But really you've
Speaker 1: probably heard about this. You may have been following the news.
Speaker 1: You might have even seen that back in February of
Speaker 1: that the last big batch of I p V four
Speaker 1: addresses was assigned and that this means that we are
Speaker 1: running out of I p v four addresses. Before we
Speaker 1: get too far into it, I guess we need to
Speaker 1: kind of talk about protocols and addresses. Yep, yep. And uh,
Speaker 1: this is something that is hardly new. I mean, uh,
Speaker 1: people like uh, you know, the the Internet founders, people
Speaker 1: like J. C. R. Licklider and so many of the others,
Speaker 1: um vent Surf among them. Back in the day Con
Speaker 1: Robert Con and the sixties and seventies were looking into
Speaker 1: how to share information between machines and um they basically
Speaker 1: they had a couple of trials, but the version of
Speaker 1: the protocols that we use to communicate on the Internet
Speaker 1: today date back decades at this point, right, yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: Originally they had a protocol they called the Network Control
Speaker 1: Protocol or in CP, but that was not nearly robust
Speaker 1: enough for it to truly allow networks of machines to
Speaker 1: communicate with one another. And thankfully, the people working on
Speaker 1: our pannet recognize that, and they began to work immediately
Speaker 1: on a a system that would or a set of
Speaker 1: protocols that would replace in CP and that ended up
Speaker 1: being a pair of protocols UH, I P and t
Speaker 1: c P, which are almost always grouped together when you're
Speaker 1: talking about them because they are so closely related one
Speaker 1: the first is a transmission control protocol and the other
Speaker 1: is Internet protocol and it's they're often UH separated by
Speaker 1: just a slash, So you hear people talk about a
Speaker 1: t c P, I P, yeah, and and connection. And
Speaker 1: here's why they're connected so closely. So the transport the
Speaker 1: the TCP that in charge of taking streams of data,
Speaker 1: essentially chopping up those streams of data UH and then
Speaker 1: handing it over to the I P, and then the
Speaker 1: IP handles the actual packet routing. The packets are the
Speaker 1: packets of information. Files are are essentially divided up into
Speaker 1: packets of bits, and those are sent off across the
Speaker 1: the Internet and then TCP once uh IT the the
Speaker 1: packets arrive at their destination, is in charge of placing
Speaker 1: those packets together again to reform a data stream so
Speaker 1: that the receiving computer is able to see the actual
Speaker 1: file or information that was being sent across rather than
Speaker 1: just a bunch of seemingly meaningless bits and bytes. Because otherwise,
Speaker 1: if you know if you didn't have those protocols in place,
Speaker 1: It's would be kind of like if I were to say,
Speaker 1: take a framed uh picture, and then I cut it
Speaker 1: up all into these tiny little pieces, and then I
Speaker 1: put all those tiny little pieces into various envelopes and
Speaker 1: then sent all the envelopes to Chris and did not
Speaker 1: give Chris a way of finding out how to put
Speaker 1: those pieces back together. Well, that would just mean that
Speaker 1: I sent Chris a whole bunch of envelopes filled with
Speaker 1: broken glass and pieces of picture, which frankly I do anyway,
Speaker 1: but that's just for funzies. But if I wanted to
Speaker 1: actually give him something that was meaningful, I would have
Speaker 1: to have something in place that would reassemble all those
Speaker 1: pieces back into the original format that it was in
Speaker 1: when I sent it the first in the first place,
Speaker 1: so that Chris could see it. So, come on, boys,
Speaker 1: let's take some pictures. Hey, airplane reference and so um uh.
Speaker 1: That's that's how the the information gets spread across the internet,
Speaker 1: how you send information across the internet. But but one
Speaker 1: key component of this is you have to have an
Speaker 1: address for your machine so that when you send information
Speaker 1: across the internet. Uh. There the systems on the Internet. No,
Speaker 1: what direction to send that that information in? Right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's this is the thing about Internet protocol is it
Speaker 1: serves the sort of a lingua franca for uh, different
Speaker 1: computers on the net. So you can be running Linux
Speaker 1: and talk to a Windows machine or a Mac and
Speaker 1: come on, Max, don't talk to anyone but other Max.
Speaker 1: Have you seen those people? They just sit in a
Speaker 1: click and they're all cool kids, and they all look
Speaker 1: like they've just stepped out of a hipster boutique and
Speaker 1: nobody said you have an anti Mac bias. In sometime
Speaker 1: you just enjoy that, don't you. Yeah, once in a while,
Speaker 1: I like to, I like to you don't bring that back,
Speaker 1: which is just funny. That's why I totally just being silly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but no, any any computer that is able to communicate
Speaker 1: UM with T C P I P to the Internet
Speaker 1: and back should be able to communicate with other machines.
Speaker 1: So you you should be able to to share information
Speaker 1: pretty easily. That's the beauty of this. But as you said,
Speaker 1: the the addressing system has to support that, and there
Speaker 1: has to be a way to know where the packets
Speaker 1: are are being sent to, especially since you know there's
Speaker 1: some redundant in this, you know network, their packets being
Speaker 1: sent to one machine and then to another machine and
Speaker 1: hopefully one of them will get there on time to
Speaker 1: build the file back. And let's say let's say that
Speaker 1: one server is sending out the same file to like
Speaker 1: eight different computers. Well, has to know how you know,
Speaker 1: it has to be able to identify those computers to
Speaker 1: send in the right information. Has to send the right
Speaker 1: packets to each one, even if it's the same file.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't want to send the same packet to computer
Speaker 1: number one and a different packet to computer number two
Speaker 1: and a different because you wouldn't be able to to
Speaker 1: put those packets into any meaningful form, right. You would
Speaker 1: have to set the same series of packets, not necessarily
Speaker 1: in the same order either. That's the one of the
Speaker 1: wonderful thing about the Internet is that the routing system
Speaker 1: is really flexible. So if machines go down on the Internet,
Speaker 1: the packets can be rerouted by other machines to go
Speaker 1: around the outage and still get to their final destination.
Speaker 1: So as long as the host computers that are in
Speaker 1: charge of sending and receiving the information remain on the network.
Speaker 1: Theoretically that information should eventually get there. It may take
Speaker 1: little longer than ideally, just because computers that are on
Speaker 1: that pathway may have failed along the way, but the
Speaker 1: information should still get there. I mean, that's the whole
Speaker 1: robust nature of the Internet. So we've got this address
Speaker 1: issue now. The issue here is that the uh, the
Speaker 1: Internet protocol address that was set up was for reasons
Speaker 1: that I could not figure out, really, reasons that are
Speaker 1: so obscure that that it might as well be forgotten.
Speaker 1: Um is called i p v C V four. Rather,
Speaker 1: this was the the protocol that was settled upon for
Speaker 1: the addresses, and it uses a thirty two bit address,
Speaker 1: all right, three two bit address, and it's in the
Speaker 1: format of four eight bit values separated by periods. Right,
Speaker 1: so it could be anything from zero dot zero dot
Speaker 1: zero dot zero to accept. And that that's your range
Speaker 1: of addresses. Some of those you can't use. Yeah, Actually, technically,
Speaker 1: if if you could use all of the addresses, you
Speaker 1: would have access to four billion, two d million, nine
Speaker 1: hundred sixty seven thousand, two d addresses. If you could
Speaker 1: use all of them, you can't. There are more than
Speaker 1: half a half a billion of them that are off limits.
Speaker 1: So and and we've we've had people right into us
Speaker 1: before to explain that, you know, there are certain you
Speaker 1: cannot use zero in four times and two four times,
Speaker 1: there are some that that you cannot use. But that
Speaker 1: does give you an awful lot of addresses. Three point
Speaker 1: seven billion with a B addresses are we're available initially. Now,
Speaker 1: the problem was that even back as early as the
Speaker 1: ninety nineties, I mean back even further than that, but
Speaker 1: in the ninety n it was recognized that there was
Speaker 1: gonna come a time where we'd run out of these addresses.
Speaker 1: Now there's certain ways to kind of uh to to
Speaker 1: mitigate that somewhat. One of those ways is called network
Speaker 1: address translation or not yes, network address translation that we've
Speaker 1: had people right into us about this as well. That's
Speaker 1: when you have a system like a router that has
Speaker 1: its own IP address, So the router has an IP
Speaker 1: address that's public. That's the other part of the system
Speaker 1: is that these addresses have to be public. If they're private,
Speaker 1: then the system cannot won't be able to see the
Speaker 1: computer and won't be able to send information to that computer.
Speaker 1: So you have to have these public addresses. So the
Speaker 1: router has a public address, and then the machines connected
Speaker 1: to the router all are assigned private addresses by the router.
Speaker 1: So let's say that I have a computer connected to
Speaker 1: this router, I send I wanna go check a website,
Speaker 1: So I type in an address in my my browser
Speaker 1: bar uh. The request is sent to the router. The
Speaker 1: router then replaces my private address that the router has
Speaker 1: assigned me with the router's own public address, then sends
Speaker 1: the request out to the Internet. So then the request
Speaker 1: goes out to whatever server has that website stored on it.
Speaker 1: The server then sends the information back to the router. Now,
Speaker 1: at this point, the router has to determine which of
Speaker 1: the computers connected or devices connected to its system is
Speaker 1: the one that requested the information in the first place.
Speaker 1: So there's some protocols that are that you need in
Speaker 1: addition support mapping that you need to do in order
Speaker 1: for this to work. But in general, you can create
Speaker 1: a system where the router then sends that information to
Speaker 1: the right device, in this case, my computer and I
Speaker 1: get to see the website. Now you might ask, well,
Speaker 1: why would you bother to do this, Well, it conserves
Speaker 1: I P addresses because the router is the only one
Speaker 1: that has a public IP address, And so you might
Speaker 1: have a whole network of computers hooked up through this router,
Speaker 1: but those computers don't have their individual I P addresses.
Speaker 1: They have a little private address that's assigned by the router. UM.
Speaker 1: But so, so anything that comes back I'm sorry, didn't
Speaker 1: go ahead. UM. So your computer or sends a request
Speaker 1: to your router in your house. Say you have two
Speaker 1: computers in your house, and from there, the router sends
Speaker 1: a request to wherever it is that the information you're
Speaker 1: looking for is coming from. UM. Meanwhile, the person using
Speaker 1: the other computer UM in the household makes a request
Speaker 1: and it goes to somewhere else. Well, the information is
Speaker 1: all coming back to the router. The router itself in
Speaker 1: your house is making the determination of which packet needs
Speaker 1: to go to which machine. So that that cuts down
Speaker 1: on some of the confusion and it and it helped
Speaker 1: to support I V I P V four addresses for
Speaker 1: a while past there, I would say, past their shelf life. UM,
Speaker 1: but yeah, this is the decision. They realized this was
Speaker 1: going to happen in the early nineties and in the
Speaker 1: mid nineties they were working on a way to to
Speaker 1: figure this out, and it wasn't until the UH till,
Speaker 1: which at this point seems like a long time ago.
Speaker 1: But it's a long time ago when you think that
Speaker 1: that was when this was proposed. Yes, but the Internet
Speaker 1: Engineering hask Force, by the way, it does not much
Speaker 1: care for that. Yeah. Well, and they actually prefer the
Speaker 1: idea of every device having its own public address as
Speaker 1: opposed to having a middleman like you can think of
Speaker 1: that router almost like a mailman, Like the mailman gets
Speaker 1: all the mail in the bag and then has to
Speaker 1: deliver it to the right houses. The only thing is
Speaker 1: that in this case the mailman is also the one
Speaker 1: who assigns the addresses to the houses, and the addresses
Speaker 1: can change over time. Yeah, it is, it is inelegant,
Speaker 1: but it is a solution. But the thing is um
Speaker 1: another another thing that factored into this that I I
Speaker 1: haven't read, but I'm guessing based on my UH history
Speaker 1: of working at an Internet service provider, I would guess
Speaker 1: that I I p V four also survived a little
Speaker 1: longer than it probably would have ordinarily because so many
Speaker 1: people in the nineties were using dial up service and
Speaker 1: it's really coming to uh, you know a point where
Speaker 1: we have to make a move now, especially because so
Speaker 1: many more people are using um, you know, broadband connections
Speaker 1: that don't that you don't have to get off. And
Speaker 1: then we're getting things so you stay connected all the time,
Speaker 1: and you've got things like lt E and y max
Speaker 1: that are also starting to to create issues as well.
Speaker 1: You're you know, your tablet has an IP address, your
Speaker 1: phone has an IP address, your computer has an IP address,
Speaker 1: your netbook has an IP address, and then so does
Speaker 1: everyone else's. Yeah, and that they're not giving them up exactly.
Speaker 1: And like we said in February two eleven, the last
Speaker 1: free block of I p V four addresses was a sign.
Speaker 1: Now that doesn't mean again like there's still I P
Speaker 1: addresses out there in these various blocks that have not
Speaker 1: been assigned. Um uh two individuals or two machines. But
Speaker 1: it's just a matter of time before those run out.
Speaker 1: So the solution really that the I E t F.
Speaker 1: That's the that's the Internet Engineering Task Force that we
Speaker 1: talked about a couple of times eight I need UM.
Speaker 1: The solution that they proposed was sort of a a
Speaker 1: nuclear bomb solution to this problem. You know, there are
Speaker 1: times where we accuse engineers of taking the the bare
Speaker 1: minimum number of steps in order to solve a problem.
Speaker 1: For example, the Y two K problem. Part of that
Speaker 1: was an issue with encoding the year as a two
Speaker 1: digit number, and so what happens when it hits zero
Speaker 1: zero and rolls over and there? That was what caused
Speaker 1: that whole y two k panic, which some of you
Speaker 1: may not even be old enough to remember. I remember
Speaker 1: it very well because I remember having a Y two
Speaker 1: k New Year's Eve party in Athens, Georgia with a
Speaker 1: bunch of my friends where we dance to the song
Speaker 1: about fifty billion times um. So the I E T
Speaker 1: F solution was, well, if the I p V four
Speaker 1: uses a thirty two bit system, let's let's amp that
Speaker 1: up a bit. And they didn't go to sixty four bit,
Speaker 1: which would have made quite a few more addresses. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: they went all the way to one hundred twenty eight bit,
Speaker 1: which increases the number of addresses dramatically. And that's an
Speaker 1: understatement if ever there was one. Yes, do you know
Speaker 1: how many addresses there will be under a hundred twenty
Speaker 1: eight bit? Would you like to? Actually I did have
Speaker 1: that down according to mine notes too to the hundred power.
Speaker 1: That's no one understands that number. Chris, Well, you you
Speaker 1: provide a better solution. Here we go three hundred forty death, sillion,
Speaker 1: two hundred eighty two, non nillion, three hundred sixty six, octillion,
Speaker 1: nine hundred twenty septillion, nine hundred thirty eight, sex tillion,
Speaker 1: four hundred sixty three, quintillion, three hundred seventy four, quadrillion,
Speaker 1: six hundred seven trillion, four hundred thirty one billion, seven
Speaker 1: sixty eight million, two hundred eleven thousand, four hundred fifty six.
Speaker 1: Or if you want to really just make that simple,
Speaker 1: you can write down three four zero and then at
Speaker 1: thirty six zeros behind it. That's that's a that's rounding
Speaker 1: down how many addresses there will be under there are
Speaker 1: under I p V six. I shouldn't say will be,
Speaker 1: because I p V six is implemented right now, it's
Speaker 1: just not widely deployed. I'm sorry. While you were doing that,
Speaker 1: I got you a sandwich. I hope it's awesome. So,
Speaker 1: um yeah, there, that's that's you might wonder it's spicy
Speaker 1: must now, um you might. Well, let's let's before we
Speaker 1: go into adoption. Well, Yeah. One of the things that's
Speaker 1: kind of neat about this UM is it's it's much
Speaker 1: the address is here much longer now, as I was
Speaker 1: saying before, UM, with some exceptions, the minimum value you
Speaker 1: have you have four sets of numbers and an IPv
Speaker 1: four address, four sets of eight bit number, dot number,
Speaker 1: dot number, dot number, and the number can be between
Speaker 1: zero and two five five there. You can't add any
Speaker 1: more numbers on top of that. That's as far as
Speaker 1: it goes, and that's how you create these these addresses.
Speaker 1: But for my research, the the addresses are physically longer
Speaker 1: as well, because in yes, in addition to and in
Speaker 1: addition to numbers, you can also include letters address. It's
Speaker 1: because it's uh an IPv six address, you can write
Speaker 1: that out as an it's a series of well, it's
Speaker 1: eight sixteen bit values. So instead of four eight bit values,
Speaker 1: which is the thirty two bit address of I p
Speaker 1: V four, it's eight sixteen bit values. And you can
Speaker 1: use hexadecimal format, and instead of periods between the numbers,
Speaker 1: which is what how we see an IPv for address,
Speaker 1: use Colon's so UM. I got this from ours Technica.
Speaker 1: Ours Technica has a great article about I p V
Speaker 1: six um, and so I would I'm just gonna read
Speaker 1: off the sample address that they used in their article,
Speaker 1: which was to zero zero one, colon d b eight,
Speaker 1: colon three one, colon one, colon two zero A, colon
Speaker 1: nine five f f colon f e F five, colon
Speaker 1: two four six E. Now, when you can see formats
Speaker 1: like that, you can imagine, Yeah, there's gonna be a
Speaker 1: huge variety, which was pretty clear from my my my
Speaker 1: recitation of the number, and that certainly solves the problem
Speaker 1: of how many devices can connect to the Internet at
Speaker 1: a at a time, each with its own address. In fact,
Speaker 1: according to the ARS Technica article, uh, essentially our son
Speaker 1: will wither and die before we run out of addresses,
Speaker 1: even plotting the same or increased population growth that we're
Speaker 1: experiencing right now on and then assuming that the number
Speaker 1: of devices each person has increases as well. It's just
Speaker 1: it's such an enormous number that there's no conceivable way
Speaker 1: we could run out within the span of time that
Speaker 1: we the human race would be around. Another cool feature
Speaker 1: of the address, I'm just I'm trying to get my
Speaker 1: head around that, and I figured I should just move on.
Speaker 1: Another cool feature of I P. B. Six addresses is
Speaker 1: that if you have a section that has all zeros
Speaker 1: in it, you can skip it. Yeah, any any sequence
Speaker 1: as long as you can skip it once. So if
Speaker 1: you have if you had two sequences of zeros, like
Speaker 1: if you had a sequence of zeros and then a
Speaker 1: number and then another sequence of zeros, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: you can skip both of them. I believe you. Well, Okay,
Speaker 1: According to a paper I found from the University Hawaii
Speaker 1: by A. Wilson Chan, Um, you can, oh, okay, if
Speaker 1: there are no if there are no other characters in
Speaker 1: there besides zeros, you can. And you do this with
Speaker 1: a double colon. Yeah, so if you had if you
Speaker 1: had a section on your address, actually you could technically
Speaker 1: have zero colon, zero colon, zero colon, zero colon, zero
Speaker 1: colon all the way down to one and you could
Speaker 1: just change that to colon colon one. I don't know
Speaker 1: if that works, according to ours Technica does well, okay,
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, I mean multiple, multiple sections of zeros
Speaker 1: can be replaced with that double colon. So that's really
Speaker 1: cool too that you can use that as shorthand. Now, um,
Speaker 1: you were right though, Although people have been taking up
Speaker 1: i p v six. They're not not. Everybody is in
Speaker 1: a in a great big hurry to do this. Why
Speaker 1: because I would guess because it involves labor, and people
Speaker 1: are saying, well, the IPv for addresses are working just
Speaker 1: fine until I have to. I'm not gonna be exactly
Speaker 1: if it ain't broke, don't fix it now here. Here's
Speaker 1: the thing. In order to switch over to i p
Speaker 1: v six, you have to have support on multiple fronts.
Speaker 1: You have to have software support from the operating system front,
Speaker 1: which most I would say that. I think all modern
Speaker 1: operating systems, like all the most current operating systems support
Speaker 1: I p v six and I know that that uh
Speaker 1: Windows and the macOS, and I'm pretty darn sure that
Speaker 1: Lennox for a while now. They all have for several iterations.
Speaker 1: Window Vista was the first one to support it, and
Speaker 1: even Windows XP. I think there was a way where
Speaker 1: you could you could do it. It just wasn't doing
Speaker 1: It wasn't native to Windows XP. But Windows Vista and
Speaker 1: Windows seven both support it natively. Mac Os does as well,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure Lenox doesn't. I can't imagine considering and
Speaker 1: considering Google's role in advocating for I p v six.
Speaker 1: I bet chromos is as well. I would be. I
Speaker 1: would be surprised to find otherwise I would I would
Speaker 1: be about as shocked as I possibly could be. So
Speaker 1: you've got that. You have to have the support on
Speaker 1: the operating system and for the so that your computer
Speaker 1: can actually send information across I p v six protocols
Speaker 1: and then through the Internet. Okay, I got that. Well.
Speaker 1: Now you also have to make sure that all the
Speaker 1: other devices on the Internet are working on the I
Speaker 1: p v six protocols. So in some cases, with things
Speaker 1: like routers and nodes, you may have to have a
Speaker 1: firmware or software update so that you can either. Um,
Speaker 1: it's almost like teaching these machines how to handle a
Speaker 1: different format of information. Now, in some cases, you're gonna
Speaker 1: have devices that are truly physically incapable of transmitting I
Speaker 1: p v six UH data. They just they won't be
Speaker 1: because they're limited to I p v four. And in
Speaker 1: those cases, what would be required that you would have
Speaker 1: to go in and replace them. You would actually have
Speaker 1: to physically replace those machines with machines capable of running
Speaker 1: I p v six protocols. Okay, I'll be right back,
Speaker 1: let me go do that. Yeah, that that might take
Speaker 1: you a while. Uh, but but that's that's a worst
Speaker 1: case scenario. Most I would I don't even know if
Speaker 1: I can say most many of the devices that are
Speaker 1: currently connected to the Internet are capable of handling IPv
Speaker 1: six with a software or firmware update. Then, uh, you've
Speaker 1: got to essentially run a an Internet that's kind of
Speaker 1: parallel to the one that every that most people are
Speaker 1: using today. Because I p v six and I p
Speaker 1: v four are not native lee compatible. Right, you can
Speaker 1: force some compatibility with something that's called tunneling, but it's
Speaker 1: not the same thing. So, for example, let's say I'm
Speaker 1: on an I'm using an IPv for machine of some
Speaker 1: sort or that the information I am sending is going
Speaker 1: to have to pass through an I p v four
Speaker 1: device before it moves on to an I p v
Speaker 1: six destination. What it would need, what I would need
Speaker 1: to do, or actually what the devices would need to do,
Speaker 1: is to encapsulate my I p v six address within
Speaker 1: an I p v four address. It's almost like you
Speaker 1: are uh, it's it's like a pill, like you've slipped
Speaker 1: this this thing into a different form factor so that
Speaker 1: it can travel across the network. When it gets to
Speaker 1: the destination, you pop the pill open and then you
Speaker 1: get the I p v six. And by the way,
Speaker 1: yes it does make those noises. Do not contradict me.
Speaker 1: That goes for all of you. I pointed at Chris,
Speaker 1: but that point goes to you Internet and all of
Speaker 1: your I p Goodness, Wow, that sounds awful, doesn't it. Anyway,
Speaker 1: So tunneling is is an inelegant solution. It's not really
Speaker 1: it's not really a solution. It's just kind of a
Speaker 1: stop gap. Well, we have various systems convert over to
Speaker 1: I p v six and there's nothing. You know, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of initiatives that are suggesting that companies
Speaker 1: and especially like Internet service providers s which make the
Speaker 1: switch happen. But it's not necessarily uh mandated, right, it's
Speaker 1: not like legally mandated. It's funny you should mention that
Speaker 1: because I was reading on Network World. There's an I
Speaker 1: p v six tutorial that Carolin Duffie Marsan wrote and
Speaker 1: said that the government set The United States government set
Speaker 1: a mandate of June of two thousand eight for agencies
Speaker 1: to be able to say that their equipment could handle
Speaker 1: i PP six. Now they're not. That doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: they had to switch over. But um, people are are
Speaker 1: saying that by two thousand twelve, Um, provided you know,
Speaker 1: the world doesn't end in one of the many uh apocalypse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pop apocalyptic theories that are going on right now. Is
Speaker 1: the plural for apocalypse apocalypse? I'm pretty sure Buffy the
Speaker 1: Vampire Slayer asked that same question in between deaths. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but basically by um, they're saying that that network managers
Speaker 1: in the United States, because we do have a disproportionate
Speaker 1: share of uh, the world's Internet traffic. Um. But basically
Speaker 1: web born here, so it makes sense. Well it's true,
Speaker 1: but it has spread nicely to other parts of the world. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, they're they're saying that if if websites aren't
Speaker 1: starting to use i p V six, then the network,
Speaker 1: then networks and the Internet are going to slow substantially,
Speaker 1: and it's it's going to start to create uh try
Speaker 1: aphic bottlenecks and problems. So um, it's not a mandate mandate,
Speaker 1: but it's a you know, hey, you have a business,
Speaker 1: it's running on the internet. If you don't upgrade this
Speaker 1: by next year, people are going, your customers are going
Speaker 1: to and you know what that is going to It's
Speaker 1: going there is a mandate that's going to come close
Speaker 1: to it. Yeah, it's a fiscal mandate as opposed to
Speaker 1: a legal one. But but the government has has dipped
Speaker 1: a toe into that water and said, you know, look,
Speaker 1: you have to be compatible. And I think that's probably
Speaker 1: she just said agencies in her article, but I think
Speaker 1: she probably means the federal government should be um ready
Speaker 1: to go. And I think I think the there might
Speaker 1: be a concern for some people out there who are
Speaker 1: using older machines that may be using antiquated operating systems
Speaker 1: that will not be able to handle I p V six. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of making me think of the digital
Speaker 1: uh transfer. Remember back when uh we went from analog
Speaker 1: to digital for television transmission. I do remember that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh and there was a fear that it was
Speaker 1: going to leave some customers completely without television service, which
Speaker 1: you know, really TV serves a lot of purposes and
Speaker 1: not just entertainment. So I could make a snarky comment
Speaker 1: of oh no, I'll be without my more can mindy,
Speaker 1: But let's be honest. TV has served a crucial role
Speaker 1: in spreading information, particularly information that's very timely. Like there
Speaker 1: is a tornado bearing down on you. Take cover, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that has been in the news quite a bit,
Speaker 1: yes lately, and just go out to all the people
Speaker 1: affected by that because we Chris and I both live
Speaker 1: in an area that has been uh devastated by tornadoes
Speaker 1: in the past, and so we are also familiar with
Speaker 1: that situation. So yeah, I mean you need to know
Speaker 1: these things, and that's how a lot of people get
Speaker 1: their information exactly. So yeah, that I I think, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, clearly the same sort of expectation comes with
Speaker 1: people who are using the internet. The Internet is becoming
Speaker 1: that kind of important outlet to the world, to getting
Speaker 1: information and to really taking part in what it means
Speaker 1: to be a citizen of the world today. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean I started using the internet, uh and at
Speaker 1: that point I was enraptured with it. I loved using it.
Speaker 1: But I couldn't fathom then imagining what people are talking
Speaker 1: about now that the idea that internet access could be
Speaker 1: considered a human right, and the fact that that debate
Speaker 1: in two thousand eleven, just twenty one years later is
Speaker 1: is stirring up and people are really talking about that possibility, um,
Speaker 1: you know, and having access at that level, then we
Speaker 1: have to be able to if if that is true,
Speaker 1: if people really need that access over these networks, then
Speaker 1: you have to make sure that they can get it.
Speaker 1: And I be I p v six is more of
Speaker 1: a necessity than anything else. And so yeah, you've got
Speaker 1: these two two conflicting but equally important necessities. Right. You've
Speaker 1: got the necessity to create a system that's going to
Speaker 1: have the addresses that will allow people to connect to
Speaker 1: the Internet in the first place. And then you have
Speaker 1: the necessity of making sure that people are aware of
Speaker 1: this change so that eventually they can switch over to
Speaker 1: a machine that's capable of interacting interfacing with that system. Um.
Speaker 1: I think most people, I mean, just based upon how
Speaker 1: how people deal with electronics, the majority are going to
Speaker 1: be fine because I think most people out there are
Speaker 1: running a computer with an operating system that's recent enough
Speaker 1: to interface with I p V six. There. I know
Speaker 1: they are exceptions out there, but the majority is what
Speaker 1: we have to look at really, um. And then you know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of interesting. Google did a study back in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight where they wanted to see how
Speaker 1: much of the how much, how much percentage wise of
Speaker 1: Internet traffic was over the I p v six networks,
Speaker 1: and they found that less than one percent of Internet
Speaker 1: traffic in any country was I p v six two
Speaker 1: thousand eight, which is ten years after the p v
Speaker 1: six standard was finalized. So in a decade, less than
Speaker 1: a percent of all traffic was over I p v six. Yep,
Speaker 1: And I mean that was you know, it's only been
Speaker 1: three years since then and we've already handed out the
Speaker 1: last big block of I p v four addresses. So
Speaker 1: hopefully we're going to see some some major movement in
Speaker 1: the next few months to kind of create this parallel network.
Speaker 1: And like we said, it is a parallel network. It's
Speaker 1: not like it's not only the I p v four
Speaker 1: network is necessarily going away overnight, although I would imagine
Speaker 1: over time it would be phased out. But um but
Speaker 1: for the meantime, both systems would be running in parallel,
Speaker 1: and they both be you would have the same experience
Speaker 1: on each It's not like if you're on I p
Speaker 1: v six you would get one version of the website
Speaker 1: that you're going to versus the one on IPv four. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just as a note, UH, you might if if you
Speaker 1: aren't as familiar with UM I P addresses and you say, well,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, you know these when you're talking about
Speaker 1: everybody needing to upgrade their there UH websites addressed to
Speaker 1: an a new I P address. You know, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't get that. I I go to how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com and I don't. I don't see that.
Speaker 1: I go to how stuff works dot com. What is
Speaker 1: this for UM octet number that you're talking about. Well,
Speaker 1: that's the thing. Each address on the Internet, including the
Speaker 1: server wear how stuff works dot Com is UH stored.
Speaker 1: UM has an IP address, a numeric or and you
Speaker 1: know when I p V six comes out alpha numeric
Speaker 1: UH IP address, the thing is UM. You don't necessarily
Speaker 1: see it. And that's because of the domain name servers.
Speaker 1: That's a different system that we could talk about again
Speaker 1: in the future. But yeah, that that basically layers on.
Speaker 1: And when you buy a domain UH for your you know,
Speaker 1: for your own personal website, you basically and that's how
Speaker 1: you can change hosting companies. If you wanted to go
Speaker 1: to you know, my host from you know, green and
Speaker 1: Purple and Orange host, you can you can do that
Speaker 1: because although their servers have different IP addresses, the domain
Speaker 1: name that you have, you know, my website is really cool.
Speaker 1: Dot com can be mapped to a different You basically say, hey,
Speaker 1: don't go when somebody clicks on this name, go to
Speaker 1: this I P address, not that IP address. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that that system is underlying that. I don't know that
Speaker 1: everybody necessarily is that. We didn't really mention it. Well,
Speaker 1: the domain name server is really a separate thing anyway,
Speaker 1: just like you were saying, uh that that's because as people,
Speaker 1: we have trouble remembering um strings of digits in general.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know there are people out there who
Speaker 1: can rattle off pie to you know, a crazy number
Speaker 1: of digits, but hey, what just happened? Hey will happen um,
Speaker 1: but the uh, most of us have trouble with that,
Speaker 1: and so of course the domain domain name server was
Speaker 1: a solution for that, where we created um uh an
Speaker 1: address system for U r l s or earls as
Speaker 1: my buddy calls them um earls, and that we can, uh,
Speaker 1: that's easier for us to remember, you know, how stuff works.
Speaker 1: Dot Com is a lot easier to remember than a
Speaker 1: string of numbers. So yes, same sort of thing that
Speaker 1: the domain name servers will still be mapping, uh, the
Speaker 1: the English or or not even English, but the the
Speaker 1: word form of a website's address to its UM to
Speaker 1: its IP address, whether it's I p V four or
Speaker 1: I p v six, So that should not change. You
Speaker 1: won't be expected to type in a you know, eight
Speaker 1: sixteen bit value number in hexadecimal format in order to
Speaker 1: visit your favorite websites to get your lulls. Yeah, I'm laite,
Speaker 1: you sure are. Let me just say, alright, all right,
Speaker 1: well that was a great discussion on I p V six.
Speaker 1: I hope that that clears some stuff up for you
Speaker 1: guys out there. I know that there are a lot
Speaker 1: of you who have been wondering about this topic and
Speaker 1: just kind of kind of curious about, you know, what's
Speaker 1: the deal with this? Why is it necessary? And it's
Speaker 1: necessary because we all wants our internets. So y'all, if
Speaker 1: you have any other topics you want us to talk about,
Speaker 1: you can let us know on Facebook and Twitter are handled.
Speaker 1: There is tech Stuff h s W or you can
Speaker 1: send us an email and that email address is tech
Speaker 1: stuff at how stuff works dot com. Chris and I
Speaker 1: will talk to you again, really soon. Be sure to
Speaker 1: check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Speaker 1: Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
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