Want to be able to access your machine anytime, anywhere? Can’t be bothered purchasing a domain name and configuring Dynamic DNS? Microsoft has a solution: the ‘Windows Internet Computer Name’ – a unique domain name for your computer. There is one small catch though: you have to be using the next-generation networking protocol IPv6 which, although thoroughly integrated into Windows Vista, isn’t supported by most home routers yet.
Why would they make it so complicated? There’s nothing like firing up cmd.exe to actually use something…
Well, people have been saying MS are copying OSX and linux DEs feature for feature
I’m not sure I like how it works though – how does the registration work? What’s to stop someone using my email address for a PC “domain name”?
I’m not sure I like how it works though – how does the registration work? What’s to stop someone using my email address for a PC “domain name”?
It appears to be like screen names; the first PC to claim a particular name gets it. Because of this, people should probably not use email addresses as the basis for their computer names, because there is no guarantee of a 1:1 mapping.
Seems like a way to steal another bit of privacy and obtain more “control” over people’s PC.
What’s with the speech marks around that word?!
In what way?
“What’s that? Will it hurt?”
I don’t care if every CEO and his dog is ponying up to MS over the Novell announcement – there’s just no way I’m gonna be fool enough to install even a free, pirated copy of Vista on any computer I have control over, never mind throw good money after bad.
there’s just no way I’m gonna be fool enough to install even a free, pirated copy of Vista on any computer I have control over…
And yet, the vast majority of people in Asia/Russia will pay a few dollars for a pirated copy of Windows than install a “free” copy of Linux.
Which is why their are so few Linux users online.
Home routers nothing, it isn’t supported by almost any ISP in North America at this point, and damn few elsewhere. In fact, IPv6 will likely take 20 years to become commonplace because of the IPv4 infrastructure that has already been deployed.
“IPv6 will likely take 20 years to become commonplace because of the IPv4 infrastructure that has already been deployed.”
You are confusing U.S.A with the world. Ipv6 is seeing wide and increasing deployment in both Europe and Asia (China and Japan in particular).
While it wont have worldwide deployment tomorrow it certianly won’t be 20 years.
You are confusing U.S.A with the world. Ipv6 is seeing wide and increasing deployment in both Europe and Asia (China and Japan in particular).
While it wont have worldwide deployment tomorrow it certianly won’t be 20 years.
You do realise that in the US of A, people are still haven’t figured out metric, and are running about measuring things with various body parts? 😉
Worldwide means everywhere in the world, including America (and third world countries). 20 years might be optimistic.
Tell me a single ISP in China, Japan or Europe that offers IPv6 for home users.
Because I don’t know of any, but I will change to it if there’s one 😉
IPv6 Networking is backwards compatible, in that IPv4 Addresses can be translated into IPv6 addresses.
The question is wether the ISPs hardware will support IPv6 protocols or not? Or wether IPv6 will run over IPv4 Networks.
I can translate my IPv4 address into an IPv6 one, but will the ISP route respose packets to that back to me? Or are you talking about 2002::/3 addresses? I tried those, it has huge egress latency and is therefore unusable for browsing for example.
Edited 2006-11-07 18:17
What I was talking about was: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4_mapped_address
of the form:
::ffff:192.0.2.128
However it seems that I was using old information and this practice has been condemned as insecure.
Well, you have
Nerim
« http://www.nerim.net/connectiviteenipv6.php »
and i think Orange does it to, but I couldn’t find it on their website.
( http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6#Acc.C3.A8s_.C3.A0_IPv6 )
you also have Sunet (www.sunet.se) which is the swedish university computer network.
Not really available for the average home user, but it is available for most students that live in student appartments.
I think they qualify as home users..
I’m sure there are other ISP’s that have it aswell..
http://www.ipv6style.jp/en/statistics/services/index.shtml
Twenty years? The name ‘internet’ is barely older than that. In fact, I only used a graphical browser for the very first time just about 10 years ago. An awful lot can happen in the internet era in a short time.
I’ve always considered IPV6 a nuisance, but it’s needed and I predict it will be real common real soon.
IPv6 is only needed on the peer. Tunneling is used (when necessary) for communication over the Internet or other v4 networks.
Sweeet, so we have a feature that the majority of the world can’t use, because their routers don’t support IPV6, let alone everyone else that uses it.
And the people who do want something like that, probably already know about DynDNS
Sweeet, so we have a feature that the majority of the world can’t use, because their routers don’t support IPV6, let alone everyone else that uses it.
It’s got to start some where. (not to say that this is only the start) Later on, when ISPs and routers begin supporting IPV6, it will already be in most people’s OS. Maybe this will even push the change forward a bit, as people begin seeing more use for IPV6.
This uses Teredo tunneling which tunnels IPv6 inside UDP inside IPv4, so the router needs not to support IPv6.
Otherwise I also think it’s totally useless. And Teredo also feels slooow.
Things will accelerate when there are sufficient financial incentives to move over to the new protocol. For now, there simply aren’t enough advantages to justify the cost.
Now I don’t have to get peoples IP address to hack them! Man I love Microsoft! LOL!
Just think, your domain name will always be the same even if your Dynamic IP changes. That means if I know your domain name I can find your PC any place on earth that it is broadcasting from!
Man! Make the work EASY for me. 🙂
IPV6 COME ON baby!
“Now I don’t have to get peoples IP address to hack them! Man I love Microsoft! LOL!”
Good thing you cant hack people without their IP address. Oh wait, you can. Mapping a name to an ip address does in itself not make “hacking” anyones computer easier. Individual computers arent targets, IP addresses, regardless of connected computer, are.
“Just think, your domain name will always be the same even if your Dynamic IP changes. That means if I know your domain name I can find your PC any place on earth that it is broadcasting from!”
Uh, do you have ANY clue about how this works? How the Internet works? I’m wagering not.
“IPV6 COME ON baby!”
This has nothing todo with IPv6. IPv6 is awesome and the more people that uses it the better.
Ummmmm, yes you can by IP duh! But people whos IPs change can sometimes get out of your “grasp” because you can no longer find the machine. Now with a domain name just like a website you will be able to find the machine by the domain name no matter the IP.
“This has nothing todo with IPv6. IPv6 is awesome and the more people that uses it the better.”
Please read first before you comment! The system in Vista for this only work on IPV6 networks. So it has a lot to do with IPV6!
“So it has a lot to do with IPV6!”
Only in that IPv6 happens to be the transport, flaws and shortcomings in PNRP has nothing to do with IPv6.
Sigh.
They don’t know much about networks, do you?
– Gilboa
And what is it I don’t know about networks. Please enlighten me.
Please tell me how if home users use this I won’t be able to get to them. Also please tell that to all the hackers who do this on a regular now.
For starts, why does a hacker need your domain name to hack you?
(As I said down below, the protocol itself has severe security implication, but I doubt that your post had anything to do with that…)
– Gilboa
If you read my post you will know why a hacker would need a domain name. It makes it more easy to keep track of machines with dynamic IP’s. The IP will change but not the domain name.
Ughhh… OK. I get your point.
Side note, if you would have -started- by saying: “Microsoft is helping hackers keep track of their pray” instead of starting with “Good thing you cant hack people without their IP address”.
– Gilboa
Side note if you READ before comment then you would not make up what I said. If you look at my original post you will see I said:
“Now I don’t have to get peoples IP address to hack them! Man I love Microsoft! LOL!”
Not your made up statement of: “Good thing you cant hack people without their IP address”.
Say this to yourself several times over ” Read, then comment, Read, then comment, Read, then comment!”
Thank you..
Sigh.
I -did- read your comments.
Maybe it’s because English is not my first language, but your post was incoherent.
If one read didn’t understand your post, he was an idiot.
If two, you’re the …. well, you get my point.
– Gilboa
And what prevents any “hacker” from simply installing a dynamic-dns service on your computer?
Or let your computer contact some other computer to say what ip-number it has currently?
Why bother keeping a large database of “hacked” computers directly on the “hackers” machine?
If you’re into that kind of business and rely on that kind of techniques, you’re nothing but a moron.
No one said you were prevented from doing anything. No one said anything about databases of machines or anything?? What are you talking about.
My point was that I may be after one machine, their IP address may change before I can install Dynamic DNS software etc. Who knows.
Now I don’t have to do any of that!
“My point was that I may be after one machine”
Being after a particular machine that doesnt have a DNS entry is not the typical case. Also note that it is possible to change the address of a machine.
Another example of Microsoft misusing a standard protocol. As if Microsoft’s smb isn’t chatty enough clogging and spewing on our networks, now we’ll have this nonsense to deal with. A billion Vista boxes broadcasting (read puking) in an attempt to find one another…”I’m here!”
Fact is the people that find those boxes might not be so kind. I’m sure IPV6 has been thoroughly tested on Vista like the rest of the rewritten network stack.
Don’t worry… very obviously it is meant to be a kind of DNS service like DynDNS, so no puking involved which wouldn’t work on the internet anyway.
So don’t worry, there will be enough bandwith for your porn left.
Except I don’t understand how they hope to make this work. If there’s no central authority to guarantee name-to-ip association (ie. DNS server) than anyone can pretend to have a certain name. What’s to stop several computers shouting “I’m Spartacus”? Who arbitrates such conflicts? Isn’t this just like someone taking your IP on the LAN? All it does is deny both machines a connection. Except they slapped a so called “peer to peer DNS” on top of it to make it seem more clever.
Actually I think celt has a point. Even though the protocol might be relatively quiet, think about how many more people will be using it to connect to things like SMB shares. Most people don’t have remote access to their home PC’s now because they don’t know how to set it up. If this makes it so much easier, then people will no doubt be mapping their My Documents from work or wherever else they want to all the time.
DNS and key ip protocols need to be completely open and run by an independent supra-national organization, imho. Otherwise there will always be trouble because corporations will never be able to resist moving in with their patents, pwnage and royalty schemes.
So thanks but no thanks. If this was to happen, I’d prefer a system that offered a connector but to a DNS system independent of Microsoft or anyone else.
Comcast’s rules (and probably most other high speed ISP’s rules) say you cannot host a website from your home. It’s true that the slow upload data rate makes impractical to run a published website, but there are plenty of people who could benefit from running a small legitimate website for friends or organization members.
This development will shine a spotlight on that rule, which I believe is very wrong and should be outlawed.
Assuming that other ISPs move to IPv6, Comcast will probably no other choice but change the rule. But, in all likelihood, they will probably introduce a new schedule for bandwidth costs to ensure that we don’t start pigging out on their network.
The article itself is pretty thin on technical details, AFAICS, Microsoft decided to reinvent the wheel, and as always, found new ways to lock in (or should I say screw) its clients.
First, why on -earth- would I want to let DNS-like P2P traffic eat away my precious uplink bandwidth on an already bandwidth starved DSL/cable line? (let alone that fact the my ISP might object to me being used as a local DNS-like server…)
Second, did they event consider the security implications of giving Internet-wide access to a local service running on a non-DMZ desktop/server?
Last and not least, why on earth should I bother when I can simply use FreeDNS (afraid.org) / NoIP, DynDNS for free?
– Gilboa
Edited 2006-11-07 13:41
Yep.
I’ve been looking more into that Novell deal, too, and it seems like it’s all about locking non-Novell OO.org out of .doc and/or “Open”XML, and non-Novell Linux programmers out of .Net/Mono.
And they say Microsoft is now more Care Bear than Brown Bear. Bwhahahah.
Fortunately, as someone else alluded to in the comments, presently you need to use a command line to enable it – which, as Windows fanboys keep reminding us, should keep it out of the reach of most users! 😉 I wonder if THAT little detail was Microsoft’s “concession” to antitrust rulings.
Microsoft is a repeat offender. Its recidivism rate is high, and isn’t going down any time soon.
Yes, until they don’t make it enabled by default. Oh, why would they do that ? Well, well, this reminds me of an old joke: Hey, fella, how old are you ? – 23. – Well, and you stil believe in fairytales ? Meaning that MS has again created a monster on top of a standard that, if widespread, would lockin everyone. How unsurprising.
PRNP is patented by MS. There, it’s the end of the story, especially knowing MS behaviour (look at the mail antispam issue).
No router will include this technology.
MS still has not understood what standards are, they still haven’t learned the lesson from 15 years before, when they said Internet was just a fad.
DNS is already better just for being standard and free to use to all.
Dynamic DNS is completely irrelevant here, as we’re talking IPv6, where Dynamic DNS just isn’t needed at all.
So I find it disturbing that the article says it’s useful, as your protocol won’t even pass through the first IPv6 router or firewall.
Or is PRNP free for all to use ? I have high doubts about that.
they still haven’t learned the lesson
Oh yes, they do learn. They just don’t give up. They try and try until one day…
PRNP is patented by MS. There, it’s the end of the story, especially knowing MS behaviour (look at the mail antispam issue).
No router will include this technology.
Router doesn’t need to implement PRNP, router needs to route IPv6 or at least support IPv6 tunneling (many home routers don’t).
IMHO such service from Microsoft can really push IPv6 forward.
What kind on router you’ll buy – with or without PRNP support? What kind of ISP you’ll choose – with or without IPv6 support? Once router makers and ISP smell that IPv6 may grow their sales – IPv6 support will included.
So you tell me routers don’t need to implement PRNP, and the article says the contrary : who is right ?
A patented service won’t ever push anything.
An unreliable service (for an enterprise) mainly made for gamers that want to do LAN parties won’t push any IPv6. At least try to find some valid reason why it would push IPv6.
I’ll never buy a router with PRNP support, that makes no sense, as this protocol makes no sense to me (especially since I have only Linux machines, and my main router is a n old Linux laptop). When my ISP get IPv6 support, I’ll switch, I surely won’t switch to another because it has IPv6 before, that makes no sense either.
IPv6 won’t grow any ISP sells. IPv6 is far more complicated than IPv4, which most home users just don’t get at all already.
Case in point, this tutorial for PRNP furiously mimics a Linux howto with lots of command line. Ask the Windows zealots what they think of command line …
So much for pushing IPv6.
No really, I would not complain if it wasn’t for the stupid patent on this. The MS some so-called smart people said could adapt actually can’t : they didn’t change their way one bit since the start of the internet era for everyone (1996 I think), where they tried to impose their protocols nearly the same way.
Dynamic DNS is completely irrelevant here, as we’re talking IPv6, where Dynamic DNS just isn’t needed at all.
Why does IPv6 remove the need for dynamic DNS? Having a lot more IP addresses out there doesn’t remove the need to translate a human-readable name into a long string of numbers… unless I’m missing something?
Edited 2006-11-07 21:24
OMG !!!!
The problem is not the DNS part of “Dynamic DNS”, the problem is the “Dynamic” part.
Let me give you the minimum clues to continue this discussion (let’s think right) :
1st question : what is Dynamic DNS for ? It’s for people who can’t be sure they’ll get the same IP address the next time their machine is connected to the internet, so that you can get to them anyway.
Why is it so that some people don’t get the same IP address every time ? That’s because there is not enough IP address reserved by lots of ISP, so they can’t assign one unique IP address to everybody (which also means they can’t have everybody connected at once).
One of the benefits of IPv6, is that there are so much IP address available, that EVERY single people on earth will be able to have not only one IP address, but an entire subnetwork of IPs just for him alone (and there will still have plenty available after that).
So Dynamic DNS will disappear, as it won’t have any purpose anymore. That’s also perhaps why most free DynDNS services also allows you to have some free static DNS service (but it’s in their domain, so you’re better off with a .info which is very cheap, 1 € / year in France).
Hmm, good point Ookaze… hadn’t thought of the fact that with IPv6 every device can have a static address.
However… is it certain that that’s going to be how it works? For example, how will home routers handle DHCP? Surely home users won’t be expected to set a static IP on every device…?
“that EVERY single people on earth will be able to have not only one IP address, but an entire subnetwork of IPs just for him alone (and there will still have plenty available after that).”
Everyone will not have their own subnet. In fact, Ipv6 does not even have a notion of subnets in the way ipv4 does.
“So Dynamic DNS will disappear, as it won’t have any purpose anymore.”
No it won’t . What is easier to remember: fd20:d91b:fb3:0:202:b3ff:fe99:e370 or mymachine.dyndns.com?
Souldbender, don’t confuse “Dynamic DNS” with “DNS”.
“Souldbender, don’t confuse “Dynamic DNS” with “DNS”.”
Im not confusing them.
Everyone will not have their own subnet. In fact, Ipv6 does not even have a notion of subnets in the way ipv4 does
Whatever. You want us to be even more technical when you don’t even understand the difference between the purpose of DNS and Dynamic DNS ?
No it won’t . What is easier to remember: fd20:d91b:fb3:0:202:b3ff:fe99:e370 or mymachine.dyndns.com?
mymachine.dyndns.com is easier, which will use DNS and not Dynamic DNS.
I have dyndns domain, but I sure enough doesn’t use their Dynamic DNS service, but the static one, which is plain DNS. Which is exactly what I said earlier.
Which just shows you don’t have any clue of what you’re talking about.
“You want us to be even more technical when you don’t even understand the difference between the purpose of DNS and Dynamic DNS ?”.
I understand perfectly well the difference, thank you.
“mymachine.dyndns.com is easier, which will use DNS and not Dynamic DNS”
Really? Any particular reason mymachine.dyndns.com (wich is an EXAMPLE) can not be dynamic?
It’s pretty obvious that you’re the one who doesn’t understand how DNS works.
“No router will include this technology.”
Routers dont need to implement it.
“Dynamic DNS is completely irrelevant here, as we’re talking IPv6, where Dynamic DNS just isn’t needed at all.”
IPv6 doesn’t magically give every machine a resolvable name so Dynamic DNS has just a much use with v6 as with v4.
“So I find it disturbing that the article says it’s useful, as your protocol won’t even pass through the first IPv6 router or firewall.”
It will pass thru any ipv6 router and any ipv6 firewalll that doesnt block PNRP.
Really, isn’t this basically just taking what most people would really want (a computer that is invisible to the rest of the Internet) and forcing people to show their face, so to speak?
Microsoft really just doesn’t ‘get it’ do they?
Tell me if I’m wrong here, but for the most part, the only people who would want this, would be corporations, which will have a domain name registered anyhow. Not to mention someone who is smart enough to know what they’d want to access from their home PC would be smart enough to know how to find their IP address and access it that way.
Edited 2006-11-07 13:58
I actually thought that they’d got over this whole ‘Windows naming’ thing when it was made abundantly clear that no one was going to use WINS over DNS as a naming service for the internet, and Microsoft actually started moving everything to a DNS architecture. No one wants your idiotic, proprietary and patented naming schemes, OK?
Looks like things really do never change at that company. They just step back, rinse and then repeat at a later date.
Yeah, and their fanboys keep modding the truth down, too.
The modding system looks totally moot to me. I tried to mod down some nonsense, but it tells me I should only mod down attacks. Yet others seem to mod down something they simply do not agree with.
How come you don’t have the average comment modding beside your name?
I’m not sure what you mean – the number in brackets? Well you don’t have it besides yours now, but you did when I saw your comment at first. I think it “disappears” when you reply to someone’s comment; it should come back again when you hit “submit” and reread the comment.
EDIT: disappeared again. Very odd. Anyway you can find out by clicking on a posters name, what their rating is.
Edited 2006-11-07 17:39
Article states that there are two kind of addressess: 1) classic ones looking like domain names; 2) “secure” kind, beeing 128bit hash values.
First, second type is not secure, but obfuscated only. Security by obscurity don’t work.
Second, why even bother with long domain names, when you can just use IPv6 address? They are 128bit, too.
The unsecure addresses are not unique. Multiple people may have used the same name to refer to their respective machines. Use of unsecured names is recommended only for private networks.
The secure addresses are guaranteed to be unique and to be the machine to which you assigned it. They are signed using a certificate on the machine to which they are assigned.
The addresses are 256 bits. 128-bits are hashed in the case of secured addresses.
I consider it to be a stupid feature. We’d all be better of if Microsoft just launched a dynDns, afraid, no-ip clone with the freaking standard protocols.
But… that IS Microsoft and they HAVE a hell of power (it even smells like sulfur, you know) to push this thing forward to the home user… Man I’m scared to the effects it might have in the internet.
The article talks about cloud, so it makes me think that, despite what another poster said, it WILL be p2p and will have a lot of traffic going up and down our “pipes”…
And above all: We already have a pretty insecure world with the internet and the clients people are used to, buggy software, buggy standard implementations, all lead to easily hackable machines (yeah, stupid users helps a lot too). But in “the good old days” one had to find a machine to hack, it was pretty hard to get to a SPECIFIC machine without trojan stuff or some social engeneering, you had to find out the IP Address of that specific fellow you knew (at the specific time you were trying) if you wanted to mess with anything in his machine. Now you will only have to learn his “domain”… which will probably become public anyways because of the users we have…
Gee… I fear it.
I guess someone at MS doesn’t like the progression of IPv6 so they’re going to try and push it along a bit. Good for them….another useless “feature” of Vista.
Chalk another one up in the “Who Cares?” category.