(Repost of <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38570370>)
(Repost of <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38570370>)
IPv6 was released in 1998. It had been 21 (!) years since the release of IPv6 and still what you're describing had not been implemented when Tailscale was released in 2019. Who was stopping anyone from doing it then, and who is stopping anyone from doing it now?
It's easy to paint companies as bad actors, especially since they often are, but Google, Cloudflare and Tailscale all became what they are for a reason: they solved a real problem, so people gave them money, or whatever is money-equivalent, like personal data.
If your argument is inverted, it's a kind of inverse accelerationism (decelerationism?) whereby only in making the Internet worse for everyone, the really good solutions can see the light. I don't buy it.
Tailscale is not the reason we're not seeing what you're describing, the immense work involved in creating it is why, and it's only when that immense amount of work becomes slightly less immense that any solution at all emerges. Tailscale for example would probably not exist if they had to invent Wireguard, and the fact that Tailscale now exists has led to Headscale existing, creating yet another springboard in a line of springboards to create "something" like what you describe -- for those willing to put in the time.
The folks who either (a) got in early on the IPv4 address land rush (especially the Western developed countries), or (b) with buckets of money who buy addresses.
If you're India, there probably weren't enough IPv4 address in the first place to handle your population, so you're doing IPv6:
* https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=per-...
Or even if you're in the West, if you're poor (a community Native American ISP):
> We learned a very expensive lesson. 71% of the IPv4 traffic we were supporting was from ROKU devices. 9% coming from DishNetwork & DirectTV satellite tuners, 11% from HomeSecurity cameras and systems, and remaining 9% we replaced extremely outdated Point of Sale(POS) equipment. So we cut ROKU some slack three years ago by spending a little over $300k just to support their devices.
* https://community.roku.com/t5/Features-settings-updates/It-s...
* Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35047624
IPv4 'wasn't a problem' because the megacorps who generally run things where I'm guessing you're from (the West) were able to solve it in other means… until they can't. T-Mobile US has 120M and a few years ago it turns out that money couldn't solve IPv4-only anymore so they went to IPv6:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGbxCKAqNUE
IPv6 is not taking off because IPv4 (and NAT/STUN/TURN) is 'better', but rather because (a) inertial, and (b) it 'works' (with enough kludges thrown at it).
I always bring this up and it’s always dismissed because tech people continue to dismiss usability concerns.
Even “small” usability differences can have a huge effect on adoption.
The solution for IPv6 addresses is the same for Ethernet addresses; don’t use them directly. Leave it to the name resolution system, and use host names.