Thursday, June 30, 2011

IPv6 Welcome

IPv4 address pool has depleted on April 15, 2011 and IPv6 is the only available long-term solution to this crisis. IPv6 adoption has been painfully slow, because the protocol is not interoperable with IPv4 and Internet providers and users are forced to make very expensive hardware and software upgrades.

In the coming years, the Internet will likely become more divided and chaotic as various ISPs and corporations ramp up the efforts to deploy IPv6. It is impossible to coordinate all ISPs around the world to make the transition at the same time. If one ISP upgrades to IPv6, stops IPv4 service or reduces to NAT’d IPv4 service, but another ISP is still providing IPv4 only, computers/devices at these two ISPs will lose direct connectivity.

Besides ISPs, businesses and users also need to take part in the transition. Most SMB and home routers in use or selling in store are not IPv6 capable. Windows XP and other legacy OSs still have a significant market share. Many popular software that we rely on daily will cease to function over IPv6. It will be costly and time consuming to fix everything. It could take years or even decades before we can reach the IPv6 utopia.

NeoRouter can connect your computers at various locations into a virtual LAN regardless of their physical connection types. Each computer is assigned a virtual IPv4 address and can connect to other computers in the VLAN. You do not need to worry when the ISPs will upgrade to IPv6, and your existing IPv4 software will continue to function. It is as if NeoRouter provides a shelter for your network and shields you from the storm brewing over the Internet.



If you are a NeoRouter Mesh user, you do not need to perform any additional configuration to enable IPv6 support.

If you are using NeoRouter Pro or Free, please install NeoRouter server on a computer with both IPv4 and IPv6 public addresses. If your ISP does not provide IPv6, you can use a Tunnel Broker like SixXS, gogo6, or Hurrican Electric. No changes are needed on NeoRouter client computers.

NeoRouter supports both IPv6 for underlying client-server connections and peer-to-peer connections. Direct P2P connection can be established between two IPv4 computers or two IPv6 computers. Connection between an IPv4 only computer and an IPv6 only computer is relayed through NeoRouter server.

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4_address_exhaustion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6to4
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_broker

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