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The IPv6 Transition

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215 points todsacerdoti | 1 comments | 20 Oct 24 05:54 UTC | HN request time: 0.203s | 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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josephg ◴[21 Oct 24 05:19 UTC] No.41900893[source]▶
> IPv4 exhaustion is a real problem, it's just not enough to motivate people much.

Well, its only really a problem if you're poor. Rich people don't care - IPs are still cheap enough when you live in a wealthy country & have a decent job.

The people affected by IP address exhaustion are largely the exact set of people who can't do anything about it.

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nlitened ◴[21 Oct 24 07:51 UTC] No.41901711[source]▶
What country is that where poor people can’t afford an IP address? Is it a real place?
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josephg ◴[21 Oct 24 09:07 UTC] No.41902104[source]▶
From the article, IPv4 only has 3.03 billion unique, routable addresses. The world population is 8.2 billion. So there's only enough IPv4 addresses for 1 unique address per 3 people on the planet. But of course, in reality, huge swathes of the IP address range are held by big companies (like amazon), universities and the US military.

Its very common for whole streets or neighbourhoods to collectively share a single IPv4 address. Its required, as a result of simple math.

You'll even see this in some parts of the US and UK.

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nlitened ◴[21 Oct 24 14:57 UTC] No.41904896[source]▶
What you're saying is similar to "there's limited amount of SWIFT codes", not enough for each person on earth, so each person cannot have their own bank to receive money transfers.

True, but each person does not need to have their own bank to send or receive money, they can have an account within a bank of their preference, and use that extra information to route money transfers precisely.

"But they can't route money directly" — most people will never need to.

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1. josephg ◴[22 Oct 24 00:09 UTC] No.41909878[source]▶
Yeah I hear the argument that CG-NAT is fine for most people. It’s true, but kinda sad. It means most people won’t be able to run home servers, or learn to be the server for a multiplayer video game, or all sorts of other things I took for granted when learning the craft. It kinda locks in, technically, the consumer and producer relationship between computers on the internet. And for no good technical reason - just a quirk of history. CGNAT is usable; but it’s sad.