The IPv6 Transition

I’ve often wondered if going with 64-bit addresses with a dotted quad hex notation would have eased the roll-out. I remember a lot of resistance when IPv6 was first announced along the lines of “I can’t memorize/type in giant addresses and I don’t want to have to use DHCP and DNS everywhere.” It felt like IPv6 never recovered from a bad first impression.

I'm not sure I've ever heard this view expressed by serious, competent network engineers. I have heard it a lot from the home hobbyist though, but I'm not sure how much that demographic matters in the grand scheme of things.

Couldn't anyone in that position use 2xxx:yyyy:zzzz:ww::1, 2xxx:yyyy:zzzz:ww::2, etc. and get the same effect?

The vast majority of ip4 only networks are enterprise, that’s where I hear the complaints from. The people who say autoconf (dhcp etc) is bad and that dns is bad.

Serious, competent network engineers are not created in vacuum from platonic ideals and TCP fragments. They're home hobbyists who grew up hating ipv6, and won't magically learn it overnight when their previous networking guy quits and they get handed the keys to the server cage

I also find it really weird as the killer (only?) app for IPv6 is that home hobbyists can run servers with low overhead!

Additionally, like a sibling comment notes, a home hobbyist has full control over at least half, often more, of their addresses and can easily choose addresses for their network that are as short or shorter and easier to remember and organize vs a v4 network where you have no letters to work with much more strict subnet size rules, etc.

IPv6 is a dream for home hobbyists! The complaining from them about “unmemorable” addresses just makes no sense.

> I also find it really weird as the killer (only?) app for IPv6 is that home hobbyists can run servers with low overhead!

Well, the non-trivial percentage of large orgs that have literally run out of RFC 1918 space would disagree.

But yes, you're right. There's a weird Stockholm syndrome thing some people have with NAT.

These people are neither competent nor serious.

In the real world, people who design and operate large networks are the very same people who staffed the working groups who designed IPv6. It's their design.

Yes, companies run out of RFC 1918 addresses, but no, they will continue to use public ranges for their internal networks.

A key aspect of IPv6 is that the address space is big enough that 'carving it up' for subnets is dramatically simpler even at the largest scales. You don't need to be frugal with network sizes, and you don't need central coordination to avoid conflicts. This is huge!

E.g.: If I want to deploy a cloud VPC (or vNET), then I have to go find "the guy with the spreadsheet" and peel off a tiny(!) private IPv4 address space. If he's away from his desk or on holidays, my 1-minute automation script will now take 1-10 working days until he's back and responding to requests. With IPv6 this just disappears as a bottleneck.

>vs a v4 network where you have no letters to work with

It'd be hard to have so many devices that even in 10.0.0.0/8, you run into a need to have letters as part of the network addresses.

My home network is larger than most and I while I use multiple subnets for fun, I could it all of it into a single /24.

It's not weird. Many ISPs have dynamic prefixes, and even with "just" 56 bits that prefix is long and not very memorable.

Thus ULA is a must on the inside, and DynDNS is still required for anything internet facing.

A more accurate way to describe this is that IPv4 prevents anyone who isn't a hobbyist or professional from running their own server.

"IPv6 is great and easy to use, if you're one of the leading experts who designed it"

This is not the kind of glowing endorsement you think it is, if you're expecting your technology to see widespread adoption

Half the US has already deployed it and 100% of the mobile carriers. I would say the detractors who continue to stomp their feet about not deploying IPv6 are holding a fake title of "Network Engineer". People need to grow up and do their job or get out.