←back to thread

The IPv6 Transition

(www.potaroo.net)
226 points todsacerdoti | 5 comments | 20 Oct 24 05:54 UTC | HN request time: 1.309s | source
Show context
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.

replies(21): >>41893541 #>>41893647 #>>41893711 #>>41896275 #>>41898003 #>>41898138 #>>41898700 #>>41898907 #>>41898988 #>>41899569 #>>41900489 #>>41900918 #>>41901253 #>>41901285 #>>41902429 #>>41902453 #>>41902668 #>>41903211 #>>41903638 #>>41903908 #>>41913238 #
BrandoElFollito ◴[20 Oct 24 07:37 UTC] No.41893647[source]▶
I had to reluctantly deploy ipv6 on my home network because of ISP requirements + will to use pihole.

Ipv6 is hard. I had to learn quite a bit to make it work and not only I see no value, but it is significantly more difficult to use dire to the address length.

I think IPv6 is a missed opportunity, it was probably designed by experts that did not take into account the population that will use it (not the one users who do not care, but the layer above them)

replies(4): >>41893708 #>>41897299 #>>41903427 #>>41924036 #
pmarreck ◴[21 Oct 24 12:27 UTC] No.41903427[source]▶
The biggest design failure of IPv6 is that it was not designed to be backwards-compatible with IPv4. Technologies with established user bases need to evolve with backwards compatibility if they want to take advantage of existing network effects.
replies(1): >>41903708 #
growse ◴[21 Oct 24 13:01 UTC] No.41903708[source]▶
This comment shows up like clockwork.

How does a device with a 32-bit-sized addressing scheme construct an IP packet to a device with an address in a 128-bit-sized addressing scheme?

replies(2): >>41904260 #>>41907097 #
GoblinSlayer ◴[21 Oct 24 14:01 UTC] No.41904260[source]▶
It could work like 4 socks requests wrapped in each other like onion. But LAN services wouldn't need to care about long addressing as they don't need to cross network boundary, while letting everything else use new approach, so you could use old stuff without changing anything and there would be no need for new ip6 drivers with new vulnerabilities that are yet to be fixed.
replies(2): >>41907127 #>>41909968 #
1. Dagger2 ◴[22 Oct 24 00:25 UTC] No.41909968[source]▶
But no v4 devices support this "four socks requests wrapped like an onion" thing you're proposing, so how would they work with it?
replies(1): >>41915313 #
2. GoblinSlayer ◴[22 Oct 24 15:33 UTC] No.41915313[source]▶
Socks goes on application layer, hardware sees it as normal tcp/ip4.
replies(1): >>41922119 #
3. Dagger2 ◴[23 Oct 24 05:35 UTC] No.41922119[source]▶
Applications don't support it either, and if the hardware is seeing normal v4 then you're limited to sending to v4 destinations. How is this helping?
replies(1): >>41922954 #
4. GoblinSlayer ◴[23 Oct 24 08:18 UTC] No.41922954{3}[source]▶
It would help everything else, applications are not the only part of the network (and many already support socks), there are middle boxes, DHCP, NAT, firewalls, reverse proxies, LAN services and what not that don't need to be aware of new addressing scheme. Firewalls might benefit from it, but even they would still mostly work, even if with less than perfect precision. And even applications can benefit from simplification due to absence of dual mode sockets and no need for two sockets to listen on 0.0.0.0 and [::].
replies(1): >>41949472 #
5. Dagger2 ◴[25 Oct 24 20:40 UTC] No.41949472{4}[source]▶
Many already support SOCKS, but not this 4-layer thing you're suggesting. How can a device, application, whatever that doesn't have support for this use it to handle longer addresses? How can it communicate with a remote node that doesn't have support? How can that remote node communicate back?

If you just want to transport v6 over an existing v4 network there are already approaches to do that in v6.