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Internet Draft: Let 'localhost' be localhost

tools.ietf.org

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Re: Internet Draft: Let 'localhost' be localhost

#101

Post by splitrocket »

wfunction wrote: post #100
ploxiln wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree about getaddrinfo(). Applications should have specified AF_INET to gethostbyname() and then when updating to getaddrinfo(), handle ipv6 correctly or skip it. The IPv4-mapped IPv6 addresses thing is a terrible idea that ends up turned off everywhere it makes a difference. Like all of these "transition" ideas, it tries to help, but it just hurts by causing admins/ops/devs to just make sure ipv6 is off everywher…

Is it fair to say IPv6 has been generally a failure? Or is it too early for that?

I'd say this growth curve looks healthy and robust to me: https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html

Re: Internet Draft: Let 'localhost' be localhost

#102

Post by _uhtu »

tambourine_man wrote: post #71
jonathonf wrote: post #9

I've had web browsers perform a web search for 'localhost', or even just redirect me to localhost.com. Annoying.

Yeah. The ancients speak of a time when address and search bars where separated. I think it's a legend.

I remember this. Also, if I remember correctly, seamlessly integrating search and address bar was the thing that really made Chrome take off. Sure, it was an all around better product than IE/Safari, but to get people to actually download it over just using the default requires it to be significantly more convenient, and it sure was.

Re: Internet Draft: Let 'localhost' be localhost

#103

Post by wfunction »

splitrocket wrote: post #101
wfunction wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it fair to say IPv6 has been generally a failure? Or is it too early for that?

I'd say this growth curve looks healthy and robust to me: https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html

Yeah you're right, it certainly does. I would be curious if it goes mainstream enough to replace IPv4 in the foreseeable future though, which was its intention.

Re: Internet Draft: Let 'localhost' be localhost

#104

Post by toyg »

wfunction wrote: post #100
ploxiln wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree about getaddrinfo(). Applications should have specified AF_INET to gethostbyname() and then when updating to getaddrinfo(), handle ipv6 correctly or skip it. The IPv4-mapped IPv6 addresses thing is a terrible idea that ends up turned off everywhere it makes a difference. Like all of these "transition" ideas, it tries to help, but it just hurts by causing admins/ops/devs to just make sure ipv6 is off everywher…

Is it fair to say IPv6 has been generally a failure? Or is it too early for that?

It's now embedded in huge chunks of internet so I wouldn't call it a failure. The transition could and should have been handled better, and the specification has its flaws (too machine-oriented) which unfortunately will never be fixed, but it's here to stay.

Re: Internet Draft: Let 'localhost' be localhost

#105

Post by 0x0 »

piscisaureus wrote: post #79
rblatz wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you don't publish that record to the world.

It's already been done: https://git.daplie.com/Daplie/localhost.daplie.me-certificat... Which I find to be a very practical solution for connecting to localhost over https, it frees you from having to install a self-signed certificates/CAs on your machine.

Not a great idea to publish private keys for valid certificates. Anyone could probably submit a certificate revocation request to the CA, as the key would be considered compromised.

Re: Internet Draft: Let 'localhost' be localhost

#106

Post by ccheever »

One time I was debugging a problem for a user of our desktop software (I work on https://expo.io) by sharing his screen and taking over his computer. And it turned out the reason the user was having problems was that in his /etc/hosts file, he had an entry pointing localhost at the IP address of some other computer on his network. Crazy. I have no idea how anything worked on his machine.

Took a while to track that was down. Was both bewildering and sort of satisfying to figure it out in the end.

Re: Internet Draft: Let 'localhost' be localhost

#107

Post by flukus »

_uhtu wrote: post #102
tambourine_man wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. The ancients speak of a time when address and search bars where separated. I think it's a legend.

I remember this. Also, if I remember correctly, seamlessly integrating search and address bar was the thing that really made Chrome take off. Sure, it was an all around better product than IE/Safari, but to get people to actually download it over just using the default requires it to be significantly more convenient, and it sure was.

>Also, if I remember correctly, seamlessly integrating search and address bar was the thing that really made Chrome take off.

That was part of it. What's weird is that the Mozilla suite had the same thing before firefox even existed, in many ways firefox was a step backward. I believe opera did this years earlier too.

Re: Internet Draft: Let 'localhost' be localhost

#108

Post by RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u »

tambourine_man wrote: post #71
jonathonf wrote: post #9

I've had web browsers perform a web search for 'localhost', or even just redirect me to localhost.com. Annoying.

Yeah. The ancients speak of a time when address and search bars where separated. I think it's a legend.

Hey, Firefox's still alive and kicking. It's quite ancient, comparatively speaking. :-)

Old wisemen may refer to it as a fire-breathing reptile, others a bird clad in flames. And despite suffering from declining market share in recent years, prophecy foretold that it will one day rise from the red ashes, stronger and more resilient than ever!

(Apologies for running away with the joke)

Re: Internet Draft: Let 'localhost' be localhost

#109

Post by rnxrx »

wfunction wrote: post #103
splitrocket wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say this growth curve looks healthy and robust to me: https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html

Yeah you're right, it certainly does. I would be curious if it goes mainstream enough to replace IPv4 in the foreseeable future though, which was its intention.

It's been quite mainstream in certain contexts and geographies for a number of years now. As an example - most handsets on modern LTE (and newer) networks have been strong-majority v6 for quite a while. The fact that this hasn't been obvious is an argument in favor of v6's success.

Re: Internet Draft: Let 'localhost' be localhost

#110

Post by wolfgang42 »

cbhl wrote: post #89
feelin_googley wrote: post #87

At least on the OS I use, which is more IPv6 ready than most, /etc/hosts solves this "uncertainty" problem. I have found that failing to include a localhost entry in the HOSTS file can lead to some strange behavior. If there are "computers" out there that have no /etc/hosts or deny the computer's owner access to it, then maybe it might be time for an Internet Draft from Joe User. There should always be a mechanism fo…

I remember in the late 90s running into a "mysterious" problem where www.hotmail.com would fail to load, but hotmail.com (without www.) worked just fine. Spent the better part of a year just remembering to not type "www." until one day they made the domain redirect to the canonical name (breaking both). After asking around a bit, someone showed me where the Windows equivalent of /etc/hosts was, and lo-and-behold, the…

> the Windows equivalent of /etc/hosts

Which is, bizarrely, etc\hosts (somewhere in C:\Windows\). I've always wondered why they felt the need to make an 'etc' folder just to have the hosts file in it.

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