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Is there hope for IPv6?

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Re: Is there hope for IPv6?

#61

Post by protomyth »

kens wrote: post #36
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #15

I hope (but am skeptical) that folks look at the overall failure of ipv6 from a deployment perspective to understand the root causes of why it failed (some may think "failure" is too strong a word, but I remember v6 being "just around the corner" in 2000, yet in 2019 I'm still connecting to a GCP database with v4). Coming up with a solution that looks like a huge technological advancement, with no real respect for th…

It seems like a lot of technology transitions go smoothly, while others painfully drag on for a decade (ipv6, Python3). Are there any common root causes for the semi-failures? Has anyone written about why some succeed and some don't?

Take a look at COBOL in our daily lives. The switching cost is horrible and lets face facts, developers don't seem to want to develop the next cool version of COBOL. I sometimes wonder about switching costs when you have two or more groups that have different beliefs, practices, and views of the daily grind.

Infrastructure & Software costs money and time to switch with no real personal benefit and requires a change in knowledge. Both your examples require a hard switch and don't have a nice easy transition plan. Add taking away things that are familiar to the people in the field and you have a bad, long transition.

Re: Is there hope for IPv6?

#62

Post by vnw »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #60
vnw wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I see a conversation about IPv6, this argument comes up. Is "it's got a gorillion IP addresses" the only redeemable quality IPv6 has?

It's less a redeeming quality and more the entire reason why we bothered to switch to a new system. So yes, that is the point.

Then, given that CG-NAT solutions have proven to work well and they don't bother most end users, it's no wonder the transition to IPv6 has stopped.

Re: Is there hope for IPv6?

#63

Post by mrweasel »

krylon wrote: post #38

I have been getting native IPv6 from my ISP for nearly six years now. It is not quite as cool as it could be, because I get assigned a new prefix every 24 hours, but still, IPv6 is there, and it "just works". When I connect to machines on my home network in any way involving avahi/zeroconf, the machines talk to each other via IPv6 by default. At work, it's a different story. I have drifted from a sysadmin/helpdesk ro…

>I have been getting native IPv6 from my ISP for nearly six years now.

Meanwhile Danish ISPs refuse to implement IPv6 because: There's no demand.

That completely missing the point and their responsibility in my opinion. There's never going to be any significant IPv6 demand from private users. At work however we have customers that have started to request IPv6 only devices and networks, because there's no need for IPv4 specifically, and in some ways IPv6 is just easier (for example there's no need to do NAT).

For IPv6 to be successful the ISPs need to role it out, regardless of demand. The issue isn't necessarily at the consumer end, but the ISPs are part of the Internet and they need to help develop it, regardless of profitability in the next fiscal year.

Re: Is there hope for IPv6?

#64

Post by grandinj »

geofft wrote: post #14

This article completely fails to mention that IPv6 is not just an extension of the address space but a whole different worldview about how to run a network: - IPv6-to-IPv6 NAT has only been accepted very recently and very begrudgingly. Whatever your views are on NAT, the fact is that lots of people have network designs that rely on it, and if you want them to stop, you're now asking them to couple two major transitio…

This.

I was (as a young engineer) monitoring the mailing lists during the IPV6 proposal discussions and the hubris was palpable.

It was very much a case of "they will have to implement this so we will get to force all of these other improvements on them too "

Re: Is there hope for IPv6?

#65

Post by tambre »

geofft wrote: post #49
magila wrote: post #29

What we really need is a killer app that requires end-to-end connectivity. Users have little reason to care about IPv6 right now because the existing ecosystem of services has evolved around the constraints of NAT. As IPv6 deployment expands hopefully we will reach a point where some great new application becomes economically viable. My biggest fear is such an application not emerging quickly enough. Without an imper…

My ISP (Verizon FiOS in NYC) does not offer IPv6 support at all. Users have asked for years. They've promised it for years. It's still not there. So it's not a matter of users asking. Re switching, I think I have one or maybe two alternatives; I'm not sure if they support IPv6 either, and they have their downsides too. Any potential killer app is going to have to decide whether they want to lose such users, because I…

Verizon started customer IPv6 rollout in select areas this autumn.[0]

[0]: https://www.dslreports.com/forum/r32136440-Networking-IPv6-w...

Re: Is there hope for IPv6?

#66

Post by mrweasel »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #55
joeseeder wrote: post #21

Yup, now you have to go out of your way to not support it. Literary, every modern ISP, hosting or Cloud provides it. Every Operating System, be it server or client or router, supports IPv6.

> Literary, every modern ISP This is either factually incorrect, or else you're using a definition of "modern" that excludes a substantial portion of real world isps.

It in fact excludes most ISPs in many countries.

Re: Is there hope for IPv6?

#67

Post by magila »

geofft wrote: post #49
magila wrote: post #29

What we really need is a killer app that requires end-to-end connectivity. Users have little reason to care about IPv6 right now because the existing ecosystem of services has evolved around the constraints of NAT. As IPv6 deployment expands hopefully we will reach a point where some great new application becomes economically viable. My biggest fear is such an application not emerging quickly enough. Without an imper…

My ISP (Verizon FiOS in NYC) does not offer IPv6 support at all. Users have asked for years. They've promised it for years. It's still not there. So it's not a matter of users asking. Re switching, I think I have one or maybe two alternatives; I'm not sure if they support IPv6 either, and they have their downsides too. Any potential killer app is going to have to decide whether they want to lose such users, because I…

Some users have asked their ISP for IPv6, but they are in the extreme minority. The average user is obviously never going to ask for IPv6 because they don't know what it is. Really the hope is that users would complain killer app x doesn't work with their ISP, and eventually there would be enough pressure to motivate the ISP to deploy IPv6.

Re: Is there hope for IPv6?

#68

Post by geofft »

magila wrote: post #67
geofft wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My ISP (Verizon FiOS in NYC) does not offer IPv6 support at all. Users have asked for years. They've promised it for years. It's still not there. So it's not a matter of users asking. Re switching, I think I have one or maybe two alternatives; I'm not sure if they support IPv6 either, and they have their downsides too. Any potential killer app is going to have to decide whether they want to lose such users, because I…

Some users have asked their ISP for IPv6, but they are in the extreme minority. The average user is obviously never going to ask for IPv6 because they don't know what it is. Really the hope is that users would complain killer app x doesn't work with their ISP, and eventually there would be enough pressure to motivate the ISP to deploy IPv6.

How would the app become a killer app in the first place if a huge fraction of users can't use it?

And my estimate is it probably takes years to roll out IPv6 on a network that isn't ready for it - how would the app remain a killer app until then and not be disrupted by someone willing to run a proxy server?

Re: Is there hope for IPv6?

#69

Post by apple4ever »

Someone1234 wrote: post #41
kens wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like a lot of technology transitions go smoothly, while others painfully drag on for a decade (ipv6, Python3). Are there any common root causes for the semi-failures? Has anyone written about why some succeed and some don't?

Backwards compatibility seems to be the largest. Look at the deployment of TLS as a success story. Everyone kept on supporting both old and new, watched the percentages, and then dropped the old when the new had enough penetration. The whole thing is also a bit of a shell game. Nobody wants to invest in it until they feel like they're "behind" if they don't. So you have a big player or two in order to make it feel li…

TLS is a great example of how to do it.

IPv6 is a great example of how not to.

Re: Is there hope for IPv6?

#70

Post by paulddraper »

magila wrote: post #53
geofft wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Loose coupling and no second system effect. IPv6 should have been extended address space and extended address space only, in a manner backwards-compatible with IPv4. You think ARP is broken? Great, implement a fixed version of ARP for both IPv4 and IPv6, meanwhile we'll spec IPv6 to use ARP. Don't design IPv6 to use your new thing called NDP that layers completely differently. You think everyone using NAT is wrong? G…

The thing about NAT that for network operators it is a negative externality. For them it often simplifies their job. They do not feel the searing pain it inflicts on network application developers. It's hard to come up with a carrot to convince operators that NAT is wrong because from their perspective it isn't, even if it harms the internet as a whole.

Okay, NAT hurts network application developers.

But do you really want to stake the adoption of IPv6 on convincing the world of that? Or should that be a separate battle?

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