IPV6 at SCALE 8X!

Submitted by orv on Sun, 02/14/2010 - 02:54

The Southern California Linux Expo has a tradition of trying something new every year. Usually it works well, occasionally not.

As part of its services to its exhibitors, SCALE provides IP address space as a VLAN to each booth. That's not new. What IS new for SCALE 8X is the fact that SCALE will be providing both IPV4 and IPV6 addresses to each booth.

The difference is instructive:

IPV4 Service	IPV6 Service
DNS	DNS
DHCP	Network discovery router advertisement auto-configuration
NAT	Not needed (TONS of address space)
Firewall	Firewall
Booth VLAN Class C (/24): 253 usable addresses	Booth VLAN (/64) 18,447,744,073,709,551,616 addresses

Note the number of IPV6 addresses available to each booth. Eighteen quintillion IP addresses might at first seem a bit excessive for a 10 by 10 foot booth, but consider this: There are eighteen quintillion of those eighteen quintiillion IP address blocks available in Version 6!

To the best of our knowledge, SCALE is the first Open Source show in North America to provide dual-stack IP addresses to its guests. If you know otherwise, please drop us a note.

IPV6 Capable clients:

Linux
Windows 7
Vista*
Windows XP
OS X
the BSDs

*reportedly somewhat broken

SCALE's IPV6 firewall and address space have been graciously provided by ACTUSA's Stu Sheldon. See him for all your IPV6 needs!