Idle IPv6

[tabacco]

In honor of World IPv6 Launch Day tomorrow and also because I just remembered to do it, Thumbs should now be accessible over IPv6. Let me know if you run into any weirdness accessing the site.

http://ipv6.idlethumbs.net exists if you'd like to find out quickly whether your ISP supports IPv6 or not (for most people, the link will probably be broken).

[MrHoatzin]

Fun times.

The future is now.

[brkl]

Seems faster for me. Dunno why, could be a fluke.

[gregbrown]

It turns out that I'm not amongst the 1% of Comcast customers with IPv6. :

[tabacco]

Seems faster for me. Dunno why, could be a fluke.

Unlikely related to ipv6, but good news anyway

[subbes]

It's as high as 1%?

[gregbrown]

It's as high as 1%?

Yep, and they had a big fanfare about even hitting that number a week or two back.

http://www.comcast6.net/

Of course, on the PR blog post they instead describe it as "hundreds of thousands" to sound better.

[tabacco]

1% of Comcast's user base is an enormous number of actual users, so I don't think I'd be that quick to sneer at them. Rolling out a change like IPv6 to that large a customer base is no small task, and a sample size of a few hundred thousand users as a test base is a pretty good starting point.

[subbes]

Meanwhile, Comcast sent us many scary "YOU MUST GET AN XFINITY®© CABLE BOX TO WATCH CABLE BY MAY 25 OR YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO WATCH CABLE THIS IS SERIOUS" letters.

As of June 6th we can still watch cable without a cable box just fine.

[Orv]

Meanwhile, Comcast sent us many scary "YOU MUST GET AN XFINITY™®© CABLE BOX TO WATCH CABLE BY MAY 25 OR YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO WATCH CABLE THIS IS SERIOUS" letters.

As of June 6th we can still watch cable without a cable box just fine.

I remember the commercial where Obama came on and said "Oh by the way, Cable TV Y2K happening in 2012, get a new cable box or diiiiiiiie." Still watching cable, thanks though.

Or maybe I'm misremembering and it wasn't Obama. Whichever.

[tabacco]

I don't believe there's any legal mandate toward digital cable. There was one about OTA broadcast going digital, though, and that transition happened a couple of years ago.

It's in cable companies' interests to move to digital because a digital channel consumes less bandwidth (in the RF sense) than an analog one, freeing up spectrum on their network for other content.

[gregbrown]

1% of Comcast's user base is an enormous number of actual users, so I don't think I'd be that quick to sneer at them. Rolling out a change like IPv6 to that large a customer base is no small task, and a sample size of a few hundred thousand users as a test base is a pretty good starting point.

Hah, didn't mean to be so negative. It's just that I found 1% is a way more useful figure that, like you said, accurately communicates that this is a huge task ahead of us. So much old hardware out there; I bet we'd be shocked at the number of 802.11b routers out there still plugging along.

[Chris]

I remember the commercial where Obama came on and said "Oh by the way, Cable TV Y2K happening in 2012, get a new cable box or diiiiiiiie." Still watching cable, thanks though.

Or maybe I'm misremembering and it wasn't Obama. Whichever.

I believe you're thinking of the switchover that occurred in broadcast, not cable. If you already had cable that changeover didn't affect you.

[subbes]

The switchover in 2011 was for over the air broadcasts, i.e. the "bunny ears aerial" signals.

Comcast, or your local cable provider, insists you will always need a set-top box to receive their digital cable. They are generally wrong, or, if you want to be mean, lying.

In many markets, the local cable provider sends out unencrypted QAM channels; usually just local channels and PBS, which corresponds to the lowest tier of service ("Limited Basic," a tier you have to explicitly ask for because they don't list it as an option).

If you subscribe to cable and have a TV with a QAM tuner, you can plug it into the coax and get those digital channels without needing a cable box. And that's how come we watch NBC in HD without using a set-top-box and yet another remote control.

(NOBODY CARES.)