Another oh-my-god-past-six start this morning for an interactive (i.e. we're supposed to talk back) session on 'Which is more important, security or functionality?'
It's a foregone conclusion, of course: both are important - without interesting functionality then no one's going to buy your software, but if it's not secure then no one's going to buy it either. Duh.
But many, the Dutch contingent in particular, get very heated about the whole topic for reasons which aren't entirely clear, least of all to them. Security is a matter, they think anyway, for user education - educate your users and they won't do silly things any more. Erm, hello? Earth to Dutch-land. I don't know what the Dutch for RTFM is, but I doubt very much whether users there are any more capable of doing it than those in any other country…
Then Rafal Lukawiecki talks to us about IPv6. Rafal is very good value and knows his stuff.
IPv6 replaces IPv4. IPv4 is the Internet Protocol version four system which the internet currently runs on. IP addresses are the dotted numerical addresses assigned to every computer connected to the internet - the machine on which these words reside is called 64.246.42.130 for example. In the future - within, say, four or five years - it will be called something like 21DA:00D3:0000:2F3B:02AA:00FF:FE28:9C5A or 21DA:D3:0:2F3B:2AA:FF:FE28:9C5A for short.
Why? Because we're running out of the IPv4 addresses, that's why. Although theoretically there are plenty left, in practice there aren't. Any of the four numbers in an IPv4 address can be anything between 0 and 255, but large ranges of numbers are already allocated - if not used - and can't be re-used. This is partially why, when you connect to the internet your ISP gives you an address from its pool of IP addresses which, when you disconnect, it then gives to someone else.
The system for handing out addresses was originally controlled in the USA which explains why there are universities there that have more numbers than the whole of the continent of Asia. Good grief.
So, IPv6 is a 128 bit addressing space with the capacity to give 6.65 times 10 to the 23rd power addresses for every square metre of the Earth's surface. Which should be enough to be going on with.
256x256x256x256 is also quite a lot of numbers but, as I say, many are spoken for, others won't be given up and, this time, the Rest Of The World is determined to get its fair share, not just what the USA allows us.
IPv6 will be much more automatic than IPv4, too, and will include a 'follow me' capability - so when someone pings on your home server it'll point them to your mobile gadgetry wherever in the world that happens to be. Which is cool and automatic.
For end users the transition will be pretty much invisible - IPv4 addresses are completely backwards-compatible with IPv6 ones and will be for ever. More at:
www.microsoft.com/ipv6
www.ipv6forum.org
www.ip426.com