Folding Forum

Hello everybody,

As the advantages and drawbacks as well as the need for IPv6 has been already discussed on thousands of websites, I will not list them here.

I just wanted to know if it was currently possible to download and upload WU using IPv6.

I don't think it is, since all the listed server addresses are IPv4 addresses. But maybe IPv6 addresses exist and are not displayed.

So, can anybody tell me:
* If IPv6 is currently available, how do I have my client use it?
* If it is not, is its support planned?

Thanks in advance.

Have a good day!

I don't think it's currently available ... maybe next client will add support for it ... but I don't know anything about this.

Given that most Internet connections still use IPv4 addressing, it probably won't be for awhile. In the next year or two, the major consumer ISP's will be rolling-out IPv6 service. There will be a great expense to do so and no way to make money solely by selling IPv6. They are only doing it as most will run out of IPv4 addresses in 2012/2013 and possibly as late as 2014. Even when they are out of addresses, people will still have an IPv4 as much of the services on the Internet are still running IPv4. Son, when the IPv4 addresses are exhausted, private IP's will be issued and then they will go through a NAT server so they can access the IPv4 services.

IPv4 will be around for a longtime to come.

It is possible that with the new servers, they could enable IPv6, but the clients would still need an update. So if SMP2 doesn't currently have support, then obviously they are planning on staying with IPv4 for quite sometime.

Peter Potrowl wrote: So, can anybody tell me:
* If IPv6 is currently available, how do I have my client use it?
* If it is not, is its support planned?

I don't think that has anything to do with F@H client itself. Running IPv6 and IPv4 concurently is no more than question of proper configuration. Ask your local administrator. If that's you then learn how. (Should add it to my todo-list (done).)

The biggest advantage is not running out of addresses. The biggest disadvantage is the cost to upgrade the infrastructure. Neither really impact how fah operates.

Regardless of the rest of the benefits or downsides, as lanbrown said, ipv4 will be around for a long time, and supported concurrently. All ipv6 traffic will be translated and/or routed to ipv4, and vice versa. Pande Group has plenty of time to add IPv6 support in to the v7 or v8 fah clients over the next few years.

whynot wrote:I don't think that has anything to do with F@H client itself. Running IPv6 and IPv4 concurently is no more than question of proper configuration. Ask your local administrator. If that's you then learn how. (Should add it to my todo-list (done).)

Actually, I'm asking the question here because IPv6 works quite well here: I can browse IPv6 websites and use IPv6 FTP servers.

I think the only 2 things to do before being able to use IPv6 with F@H are:
* Giving IPv6 addresses to Stanford servers
* Have the clients use those addresses

Of course, there might be other problems, if the ISP or network Stanford is connected to does not support IPv6, but I think it's probable they do.

7im wrote:Pande Group has plenty of time to add IPv6 support in to the v7 or v8 fah clients over the next few years.

Sure. I was just anticipating a little

Thanks for your answers!

Actually, any answer that you might get to this question would have to come from the Stanford campus network people, not from the biochemical scientists that run the FAh project.

It will be interesting to see who first starts using IPv6 on a regular basis... Stanford IT, or Pande Group.

(Stanford already has IPv6 allocations, but Google didn't help me figure out where they are in the roll out process.)

Interestingly enough, Stanford is allocated more IPv4 addresses than all of China.

And we are down to about 10% of the IPv4 addresses not assigned yet. Tick Tock.

The company that hosts my dedicated server just got a new IP allocation from the RIPE : 131 000 more IPs for them

I just thought I'd bump this old thread to mention that I now have systems that are IPv6-only. I'd be happy to use them for F@H, but it appears this is impossible since assign4.stanford.edu and friends are IPv4-only.

How or why is it IPv6 only? Your ISP is v6 only? Please explain.

I thought that the goal of IPV6 was not to REPLACE IPV4, but to EXPAND the range of servers. Any server that's currently reachable by IPV4 should continue to be reachable by IPV4. Do I have my information wrong?

7im wrote:How or why is it IPv6 only? Your ISP is v6 only? Please explain.

I have a limited number of IPv4 addresses available (an additional allocation would result in more monthly costs), and there is no business need for this system to have an IPv4 address, so I choose not to allocate a scarce resource to a system that does not need it. So I've set this system up as v6-only. So far, this has not been a problem except that I can't participate in Folding@home because of the project's lack of IPv6 support.

bruce wrote:I thought that the goal of IPV6 was not to REPLACE IPV4, but to EXPAND the range of servers. Any server that's currently reachable by IPV4 should continue to be reachable by IPV4. Do I have my information wrong?

According to Wikipedia:

IPv6 is intended to replace the older IPv4, which is still employed for the vast majority of Internet traffic as of 2012.

IPv6 is being used by a growing minority of the internet. It's worth supporting.

rcsheets wrote:

bruce wrote:I thought that the goal of IPV6 was not to REPLACE IPV4, but to EXPAND the range of servers. Any server that's currently reachable by IPV4 should continue to be reachable by IPV4. Do I have my information wrong?

According to Wikipedia:

IPv6 is intended to replace the older IPv4, which is still employed for the vast majority of Internet traffic as of 2012.

IPv6 is being used by a growing minority of the internet. It's worth supporting.

Two open tickets on this:
https://fah-web.stanford.edu/projects/F ... ticket/914 (Prefer IPv4 addresses until IPv6 is supported)
https://fah-web.stanford.edu/projects/F ... ticket/505 (IPv6 support)