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The IPv6 Transition

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215 points todsacerdoti | 5 comments | 20 Oct 24 05:54 UTC | HN request time: 0.021s | source
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hairyplanter ◴[20 Oct 24 07:13 UTC] No.41893537[source]▶
I have fully implemented IPv6 in my home network.

I have even implemented an IPv6-Only network. It fully works, including accessing IPv4 only websites like github.com via DNS64 and NAT64 at my router.

The only practically useful thing about my IPv6 enabled network is that I can run globally routable services on my lan, without NAT port mapping. Of course, only if the client is also IPv6.

Other than this one use case, IPv6 does nothing for me.

It doesn't work from most hotels, nor from my work lan, nor many other places because most "managed" networks are IPv4 only. It works better at Cafes because they are "unmanaged" and IPv6 is enabled by the most common ISPs, like ATT and Comcast and their provided routers.

Based on this experience, I think IPv6 is less valuable than us HN audience thinks it is. Private networks, NAT, Carrier Grade NAT are good enough, and internet really doesn't care about being completely peer-to-peer.

I think the adoption rate reflects this--it's a linear growth curve over the last 25 years. It should have been exponential.

I think cost of IPv4 reflects this--it is now below the peak, and has leveled off.

As surprising as it seems, IPv4 exhaustion has not been a serious problem. Internet marches on. IPv6 is still a solution looking for a problem, and IPv4 exhaustion wasn't one of them.

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Dylan16807 ◴[20 Oct 24 07:15 UTC] No.41893541[source]▶
NAT is mostly okay, but carrier grade NAT where you can't forward a port causes real problems.

IPv4 exhaustion is a real problem, it's just not enough to motivate people much.

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kijin ◴[20 Oct 24 07:21 UTC] No.41893584[source]▶
If it was a real problem, market pricing would reflect the increasing severity of that problem.

The truth is that people who care about port forwarding are such a small minority -- especially now that P2P file sharing has lost its hype -- that they don't make a visible dent in the rate of IPv4 exhaustion.

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AStonesThrow ◴[20 Oct 24 07:44 UTC] No.41893682[source]▶
The truth is that major cloud providers such as Amazon AWS have begun to charge [more] for static, routed IPv4 addresses.

Last I checked (a few years ago, I suppose), AWS APIs were incapable of using IPv6 internally, so a VPC still needed to dual-stack it in order to use AWS cloud features. That may have changed by now.

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kijin ◴[20 Oct 24 08:07 UTC] No.41893774[source]▶
IPv4 prices peaked during the Covid pandemic, presumably because of sudden high demand. Amazon took this as an opportunity to increase prices.

Now IPv4 prices are returning to pre-Covid long-term trends. But of course Amazon won't reflect that in their pricing table.

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1. throw0101c ◴[20 Oct 24 20:17 UTC] No.41898189[source]▶
> Amazon took this as an opportunity to increase prices.

IPv4 prices peaked in early 2022; AWS started charging for public IPv4 in 2024 (announced in 2023):

* https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-aws-public-ipv4-address...

If they had increased prices in 2022 (or at least announced in 2022), then I could see some kind of correlation, but give it was 1.5-2 years after, I doubt there is a connection.

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2. bluGill ◴[21 Oct 24 10:33 UTC] No.41902651[source]▶
i would expect aws needs a year or two from when they decide to charge for something new just to work out the details
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3. throw0101c ◴[21 Oct 24 10:55 UTC] No.41902788[source]▶
> i would expect aws needs a year or two from when they decide to charge for something new just to work out the details

The price had already dropped, and was continuing to fall, when they announced the change, so if rising acquisition cost was the primary reason for adding the IPv4 charge, it had already went away.

I think AWS has looked at a utilization graph and sees a time their current pool is get used up at current rates and doesn't want to go through the hassle of acquiring more IPv4 addresses, regardless of cost (even if it is "cheap").

I also think that they have statistic for their www.Amazon.com storefront, and maybe are seeing a good proportion from IPv6 and so figure that there's a 'critical mass' (especially mobile).

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4. bluGill ◴[21 Oct 24 11:33 UTC] No.41903004{3}[source]▶
There is a lot of lag in decisions like this so price falling isn't enough to say anything.
5. ta1243 ◴[21 Oct 24 13:41 UTC] No.41904078[source]▶
AWS is seeing growth rates reduce and needs to pump up their revenue.

They're moving onto the "squeeze" part of the cycle.