The IPv6 Transition

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.

I recently moved to a 'cheap' ISP because I could get double the speed for half the price. They use CG-NAT and it's been awful.

I don't need to forward any ports but seemingly because I share an IP with a billion people I get Captchas everywhere (Google, Cloudflare etc.). I was even blocked from accessing Reddit without an account at some point.

Starlink uses CGNAT. It's awful, I'm regularly getting CAPTCHAs on random websites.

They now support IPv6 but only with dynamic address allocations so you don't get a lot of advantages from it.

Why do dynamic address allocations matter? Most IPv4 consumer WAN addresses are also dynamic.

I’m asking, because I’m an advocate of having your gateway advertise a separate, stable ULA /64 in conjunction with the globally-routable dynamic /64.

This gives you a stable set of addressable LAN IPs, and you can usually ignore the dynamic globally routable IPs.

Granted this won’t work for everyone, but if dynamic global addresses are an issue, you should be requesting a plan that supports a static delegation from your ISP anyway.

It matters, because when the prefix changes, it changes IP addresses of every single device in your network.

As you wrote, internally, you can use ULA. But you cannot open access from outside, because your firewall rules will become invalid with prefix change. With classic IPv4 NAT, your internal addresses don't change, so your port forwarding works, even if the WAN address changes.

Together, with a single /64 -- which means no subnets for you -- you are getting worse deal than with IPv4. You shouldn't have to contact your ISP for a plan (for a premium, obviously), that allows you to segment your network or open access to specific devices. What's the use of direct connections -- the IPv6 promise -- when you cannot use them anyway?

In short, with limitations like these, you are getting a bad deal.