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Enabling IPv6 support for GitHub Pages

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11–20 of 148 posts

Re: Enabling IPv6 support for GitHub Pages

#11

It boggles my mind that IPv6 has such a slow roll out (it's been a thing since the early 2000s = twenty years ago). I would have thought that all the major tech companies supported it years ago on all their infrastructures, websites and apps. But there are still a lot of hold outs. What about IPv6 makes it such a chore to become widespread?

It was, at some point, routing. Not all (inter)continental data highways are/were IPv6-enabled, meaning that IPv6 does/did not have the performance of IPv4 (latency, bandwidth). Global websites with no global distribution of servers thus kept using IPv4-only to prevent significant performance regressions for the early adopter clients. Similarly, IPv6 hardware accelleration was not very common on consumer/prosumer rou…

Years ago, the French ISP `Free`, after much dragging of feet, enabled IPv6 support for their customers.

Performance was abysmal, 2x-10x slower than IPv4.

Turns out many of the routers out there can perform IPv4 table lookups in the data-plane (fast-path), but IPv6 is delegated to the control-plane (slow-path), for much slower performance.

Re: Enabling IPv6 support for GitHub Pages

#12

It boggles my mind that IPv6 has such a slow roll out (it's been a thing since the early 2000s = twenty years ago). I would have thought that all the major tech companies supported it years ago on all their infrastructures, websites and apps. But there are still a lot of hold outs. What about IPv6 makes it such a chore to become widespread?

I dug into IPv6 a few weeks ago. If you learn it from the ground up, as if you were first learning IPv4, it truly is not more complicated than IPv4+ARP. Length of address may be a reason people don't look at it at first, but if you look at it from an engineering perspective, it makes sense. The only thing I don't like about it, is how they created SLAAC (a way for a client to auto-configure its own IP address without…

> Also, damn every ISP and every router company that doesn't 100% support IPv6.

It's extra development and extra testing (in fact it's way more testing due to the combinatorial explosion of IPv4/IPv6 interface schemes).

That comes at a cost.

> ISPs and endpoint network devices are the only reason we don't have IPv6 more prevalent, combined with NAT, CGNAT etc. being good enough to keep the net hobbling along.

ISPs & endpoint devices are the majority of the Internet, as far as complexity is concerned. Upgrading the equipment for HW-acceleration of IPv6 (parity with IPv4) is very costly.

Re: Enabling IPv6 support for GitHub Pages

#13

It boggles my mind that IPv6 has such a slow roll out (it's been a thing since the early 2000s = twenty years ago). I would have thought that all the major tech companies supported it years ago on all their infrastructures, websites and apps. But there are still a lot of hold outs. What about IPv6 makes it such a chore to become widespread?

I dug into IPv6 a few weeks ago. If you learn it from the ground up, as if you were first learning IPv4, it truly is not more complicated than IPv4+ARP. Length of address may be a reason people don't look at it at first, but if you look at it from an engineering perspective, it makes sense. The only thing I don't like about it, is how they created SLAAC (a way for a client to auto-configure its own IP address without…

> The only thing I don't like about it, is how they created SLAAC (a way for a client to auto-configure its own IP address without DHCP) - but didn't enable routers to provide DNS information.

there is RDNSS for router advertisments used with slaac. although it wasnt there initially and support for it might be lacking yet.

Re: Enabling IPv6 support for GitHub Pages

#14

It boggles my mind that IPv6 has such a slow roll out (it's been a thing since the early 2000s = twenty years ago). I would have thought that all the major tech companies supported it years ago on all their infrastructures, websites and apps. But there are still a lot of hold outs. What about IPv6 makes it such a chore to become widespread?

I dug into IPv6 a few weeks ago. If you learn it from the ground up, as if you were first learning IPv4, it truly is not more complicated than IPv4+ARP. Length of address may be a reason people don't look at it at first, but if you look at it from an engineering perspective, it makes sense. The only thing I don't like about it, is how they created SLAAC (a way for a client to auto-configure its own IP address without…

How important is it for networks to provide DNS servers? Couldn't a device usually get away with just using 2606:4700:4700::1111 or 2001:4860:4860::8888 all the time with SLAAC? Also, what about RDNSS?

Re: Enabling IPv6 support for GitHub Pages

#15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t really understand the benefits, would you mind explaining them to me ?

the Internet is almost out of IPv4 addresses, and the ones that are left are becoming expensive to obtain. Rather than hide whole blocks of users behind NAT, they can just use IPv6.

>Rather than hide whole blocks of users behind NAT,

... which creates all sorts of routing issues.

If you don't have your own publicly accessible IP address it creates all sorts of connection issues.

Re: Enabling IPv6 support for GitHub Pages

#16
post #5

It boggles my mind that IPv6 has such a slow roll out (it's been a thing since the early 2000s = twenty years ago). I would have thought that all the major tech companies supported it years ago on all their infrastructures, websites and apps. But there are still a lot of hold outs. What about IPv6 makes it such a chore to become widespread?

Why change something that works?

Because we're running out of IPv4 addresses, and in a lot of cases, NAT doesn't work.

Re: Enabling IPv6 support for GitHub Pages

#17
post #5

It boggles my mind that IPv6 has such a slow roll out (it's been a thing since the early 2000s = twenty years ago). I would have thought that all the major tech companies supported it years ago on all their infrastructures, websites and apps. But there are still a lot of hold outs. What about IPv6 makes it such a chore to become widespread?

Why change something that works?

Video chat. File transfers without a third party host. Cell phones almost always only offer a public address over v6. Internet gaming. VPNs without address conflicts. Not being banned from Wikipedia because someone else with the same CGNAT ISP got banned.

Re: Enabling IPv6 support for GitHub Pages

#18
post #5

It boggles my mind that IPv6 has such a slow roll out (it's been a thing since the early 2000s = twenty years ago). I would have thought that all the major tech companies supported it years ago on all their infrastructures, websites and apps. But there are still a lot of hold outs. What about IPv6 makes it such a chore to become widespread?

Why change something that works?

Because you want to use something better?

Re: Enabling IPv6 support for GitHub Pages

#20

It boggles my mind that IPv6 has such a slow roll out (it's been a thing since the early 2000s = twenty years ago). I would have thought that all the major tech companies supported it years ago on all their infrastructures, websites and apps. But there are still a lot of hold outs. What about IPv6 makes it such a chore to become widespread?

Give it another 20 years...

https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html

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