Interview with Eric Vyncke
No more IPv4: Impact on applications and measuring IPv6 deployment
Q: Could you briefly introduce yourself?
My name is Eric Vyncke and I graduated years ago with a Master in Computer Science Engineering at University of Liège and when I write ‘years ago’ this translates into learning about computers with FORTRAN and punched cards ;-) Then I worked at the University as a researcher in networking, then at a system integrator (touching for the first time Unix), then at Siemens and for 17 years at Cisco mainly in security. Recently my focus has been on IPv6 security, I wrote a book on the topic, also wrote the first IPv6 code of the ex-Linksys residential router, …
Q: What will your talk be about, exactly? Why this topic?
A lot of people, including IT experts, are unaware of the big change on the Internet caused by the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses and the introduction of IPv6. The discussion is mainly restricted to the networking people but it has impact on security and applications as well. So, my talk will briefly introduce the technical reason why we need to add IPv6 to the Internet and what IPv6 is, but will cover in more details the gory details of how IPv4 Internet is degrading with NAT everywhere and how an application can add IPv6 support.
Q: What do you hope to accomplish by giving this talk? What do you expect?
My main expectation is to set the focus of application people to this change, it is more than just plumbing or changing from Ethernet to WiFi.
Q: What impact does IPv4 address exhaustion on applications? And how can application developers prevent problems?
In order to learn about this, then you should come to my talk on Sunday :-) More seriously, it is about loosing the mapping between an IPv4 address and one user as addresses are shared or keep changing when a pool of shared addresses is used. This has impact on security and audit-trail. It also impacts NAT-traversal techniques as a flow traverses now multiple NAT devices.
Q: The major operating systems have been ready for IPv6 for years, but domestic ISPs have been reluctant to support it. Do we have any numbers about how many IPv6 systems there are at the moment? And how fast is IPv6 adoption growing?
The deployment will also be part of my talk. And, while popular websites (FOSDEM ;-), but also Google, Yahoo, Facebook, …) have been IPv6-ready for more years now, the blocking factor was usually the ISP. This keeps changing a lot with nearly 3% of the worldwide Internet users having access to IPv6. Leading countries are notably the US but also Europe (with Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, …). The adoption rate is almost doubling every 9 months now.
Q: Have you enjoyed previous FOSDEM editions?
Until this year, I was always abroad for business during the FOSDEM weekend, so I do look forward to being there this year!
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