IPv6 and Win98

[JorgeA]

Hello,

I just read this article in PC World.

What implications (if any) does the impending move to IPv6 have for those of us who are using Windows 98 and hardware from that era? The following paragraph from this article sounds especially ominous:

"If you keep a piece of IPv4-only equipment, someday it won't be able to talk to the rest of the network because two different addressing schemes are at play--kind of like trying to use a telephone number to send a piece of paper mail."

Here are some questions to ponder:

1. Is this true, or just so much hype?
   
2. Will the browsers on our Win98 boxes one day give us a "the page cannot be displayed" error that cannot be fixed?
   
3. What (if anything) can we do to our machines to make them ready for IPv6?
   
4. Finally, what might this mean for home networks -- will Win98 boxes networked behind a router still be able to talk to each other within the network, even if they can no longer access the Internet? (I think so, but am asking to make sure.)
   

Tell me that I'm worrying too much.

--JorgeA

[dencorso]

Tell me that I'm worrying too much.

You're worrying too much!!!

The simplest solution is to use a router to translate IPv6 to IPv4. It just works!

BTW, search before you post... Can Windows 9x support IPv6

[artemus]

The simplest solution is to use a router to translate IPv6 to IPv4. It just works!

Unless you happen to live in an area where broadband isn't available, and your only choice is dial-up.

"Survey: 40 percent in U.S. have no broadband"

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10454133-94.html

Quote: "...many of those in rural areas reported that broadband is simply not available."

[Queue]

If you're on dial-up the dial-up ISP could probably do the IPv6/IPv4 translation. Alternatively, a gateway that does the actual dial-up connection and understands IPv6 could do the translation for IPv4 machines connected to it.

Queue

Edited August 17, 2010 by Queue

[JorgeA]

dencorso,

Whew, what a relief!

Will a current (from the last 2-3 years) router work, or would I go out and get a new one? (Not that that's an obstacle, just that it'll be useful to know for when the time comes). Maybe a better way to frame the question is to ask how one can determine if the current router can handle IPv6.

Umm, I did search and find that same thread. But it was several months old, and (more importantly) it didn't seem to end on a very hopeful-sounding note, so I wanted to see if things had changed since then.

--JorgeA

Edited August 17, 2010 by JorgeA

[Guest wsxedcrfv]

I would think that the vast majority of people that are home or SOHO internet users will have (or be given) new DSL or cable modems by their ISP's that are IPv6 aware (on the WAN side) and perform NAT translation to IPv4 IP address's on their LAN side. So any equipment on the LAN side theoretically wouldn't need to know anything about IPv6 - unless ...

Unless a machine tries to perform a DNS lookup on a domain or website and an IPv6 address is returned as the result (does this happen now?).

Are there any DNS queries right now that will return an IPv6 result?

What happens when a client with an IPv6 IP address tries to access a web-site where the server is not IPv6-aware? Does the client get an error (404 - website not available) ? How would the server log the transaction (what IP address would the server end up recording) ?

[bristols]

Tell me that I'm worrying too much.

You're worrying too much!!!

The simplest solution is to use a router to translate IPv6 to IPv4. It just works!

While that would a solution, I guess it's likely to be the only one. It would be a pity, I think, that to all intents and purposes our 9x systems would be tethered to one location (our routers with IPv6 to v4 translation). No more public Wi-Fi, for instance. More hardware to buy and contend with.

Am I underestimating here how widespread IPv6 to v4 translation will be in routers? Does anyone know whether or not that translation automatically occurs to clients that do not present themselves as IPv6-capable?

Edited August 17, 2010 by bristols

[Guest wsxedcrfv]

It would be a pity, I think, that to all intents and purposes our 9x systems would be tethered to one location (our routers with IPv6 to v4 translation). No more public Wi-Fi, for instance.

I don't know about you, but I've never seen a portable PC (laptop, netbook, etc) that had win-98 drivers for it's built-in wifi radio. The closest I ever came to such a laptop was a Dell Inspiron 600m that I bought in late 2005 (or was it late 2004?) that I was able to get fully working running win-98se (video, audio, etc) except for the Intel WiFi radio (this was the "Centrino" chipset).

So for me, the idea of a portable win-98 system (with wifi connectivity) was never a reality to begin with.

Edited August 17, 2010 by wsxedcrfv

[cyberformer]

Hello JorgeA, and everyone else addressing this issue: the likes of which I am still,

Very, Very, Very, worried about!

No matter what anyone has said so far in seeking to alleviate the stress of us worry-worts concerning our increasing stress,

I will not be at all my usual happy relaxed self, until one of the greatly knowledgeable,

folk (to whom we 9x users should be forever great-fully indebted to) comes up with an "Actual patch"

that once implemented---gives us the only and true antidote to our prevailing worry-wort condition.

I still believe, dare I make prophesy---that this Sword of Damocles has yet to be stayed;

that it looms as the greatest challenge the 9x user will face, in our vehement resolve to use the OS we Will to use!

[bristols]

It would be a pity, I think, that to all intents and purposes our 9x systems would be tethered to one location (our routers with IPv6 to v4 translation). No more public Wi-Fi, for instance.

I don't know about you, but I've never seen a portable PC (laptop, netbook, etc) that had win-98 drivers for it's built-in wifi radio.

Wouldn't know. I use a Cardbus Wi-Fi card. It has a 98 SE driver.

[JorgeA]

cyberformer,

Very eloquently stated, bravo!!

For the time being (and until such time as one of the truly amazing wizards who walks this forum figures out how to make Win98 work with IPv6), I will be banking on dencorso's router approach. (See his post near the top.)

Hopefully, we won't have to actually confront this issue for a while yet. But it will, sooner or later, and as the warnings seem to be getting more urgent, I guess it's time to start figuring out how to deal with the situation when it comes up.

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

I would think that the vast majority of people that are home or SOHO internet users will have (or be given) new DSL or cable modems by their ISP's that are IPv6 aware (on the WAN side) and perform NAT translation to IPv4 IP address's on their LAN side. So any equipment on the LAN side theoretically wouldn't need to know anything about IPv6 - unless ...

Unless a machine tries to perform a DNS lookup on a domain or website and an IPv6 address is returned as the result (does this happen now?).

Are there any DNS queries right now that will return an IPv6 result?

What happens when a client with an IPv6 IP address tries to access a web-site where the server is not IPv6-aware? Does the client get an error (404 - website not available) ? How would the server log the transaction (what IP address would the server end up recording) ?

wsxedcrfv,

Excellent questions all; I wish I knew enough to provide an answer, even a speculative one.

Hopefully your questions won't be overlooked, and someone who knows (or can know) will address them.

--JorgeA

[Mijzelf]

Tell me that I'm worrying too much.

You're worrying too much!!! The simplest solution is to use a router to translate IPv6 to IPv4. It just works!

dencorso, do you have actually seen a router work which does ipv6 on wan and ipv4 on lan? I think it's very difficult, maybe impossible, to implement. The problem is the size of the routing table, and the number of available ipv4 addresses. When a big hosting server changes to ipv6, it doesn't have to use virtual servers anymore. Instead it can assign all it's domains a unique ip address.

Which means, worst case, that the router has to map an ipv4 address on each domain visited, and remember this mapping virtually forever, but at least for a few hours, because it doesn't know if it's cached somewhere in the lan.

So the mapping table can grow *very* big, and it can even hit the limit of available ip4 mappings, because there are more ipv6 addresses outside than mappable ipv4 addresses inside.

This could solved by running a http proxy server on the router, but this works only for http.

[Queue]

So the mapping table can grow *very* big, and it can even hit the limit of available ip4 mappings, because there are more ipv6 addresses outside than mappable ipv4 addresses inside.

The IPv4 address space can handle 4,294,967,296 addresses. Do you really think a single desktop computer will ever connect to that many unique addresses in its lifetime, let alone within the period of time such addresses would need to be cached?

Queue

[Mijzelf]

...

The IPv4 address space can handle 4,294,967,296 addresses. Do you really think a single desktop computer will ever connect to that many unique addresses in its lifetime, let alone within the period of time such addresses would need to be cached?

Depending on the implementation of the mapping table there are 'only' 16 million IPv4 adresses to burn. When transparantly implementing the ipv4-in-ipv6 encapsulation, you can only use a (or all) private range, because the other addresses can still be used, outside.

Of course it's possible to just map the outside ipv4 address to another ipv4 address inside, (which will not give the full address space, you cannot use the reserved ranges), but it will break software which uses hardcoded ipv4 outside addresses. (Or softcoded, like manually configured DNS servers).

Can a single desktop computer burn 16 million IPv4 addresses in a few hours? I don't know. When you search the forums you will find a lot of people suffering from instable internet because their router cannot handle the hundreds of connections generated by p2p networking. Further you can read about plans to distribute (hired) movies via p2p, and maybe even stream via p2p.

Nobody could have predicted that a normal consumer now can have several hundreds of connections at a given moment. I wouldn't be surprised if in the near future the same costumer will be burning 16 million addresses in a few hours.