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IPv6: The New Version of the Internet Protocol

By Steve Deering, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center

Summary by Peter Salus

Thursday morning I tottered from a breakfast meeting to hear Steve Deering on the current state of IPv6.

He did a really fine job of presenting the history in short compass and then getting down to brass tacks.

Though I don't want to go into excessive detail, Deering pointed out:

  • More than 20 vendors and organizations are doing implementations (this may already exceed the 20 years of OSI).

  • A Danish company (Telebit; which is not US Telebit) is already shipping an IPv6 router.

  • The "6Bone" is up and running.

  • There will be wide availability by 1998-1999.

Deering went on to describe the IP address hierarchy at some length, including the "address squeeze," the MTU problem, and its solution, and ended with a list of RFCs, Proposed Standards, and Internet Drafts and one of "Implementations Underway." A fine job with a lot of meat.

Originally published in ;login: Vol. 22, No.2, April 1997.

webster@usenix.org
Last changed: May 28, 1997 pc
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