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Enabling IPv6 support for GitHub Pages

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Re: Enabling IPv6 support for GitHub Pages

#21

Post by JoshTriplett »

unethical_ban wrote: post #8
curiousmindz wrote: post #3

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.

That complexity is also part of why the Linux kernel's built-in support for IP autoconfig at boot time for network-based root filesystems (without using a userspace DHCP client) only supports IPv4.

Re: Enabling IPv6 support for GitHub Pages

#22

Post by supertrope »

josephcsible wrote: post #14
unethical_ban wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

DNS is even more crucial with v6.

Re: Enabling IPv6 support for GitHub Pages

#23

Post by zokier »

curiousmindz wrote: post #3

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 think its more of a matter of perception than anything. IPv6 adoption has gone pretty smoothly imho, there hasn't been any major blowbacks or anything; for example the Google IPv6 adoption chart trend is steadily increasing.

Another thing you can see from Google IPv6 charts that before 2011 IPv6 adoption was near zero. This matches pretty well with IPv4 exhaustion; IANA pool was exhausted in 2011, and APNIC followed later that year. Before that anyone could get IPv4 address pretty liberally, so there was very little reason to think about IPv6. Especially in western world (RIPE/ARIN) where consumption was slower than e.g. APNIC; notably ARIN reached exhaustion only in 2015.

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

In summary, I feel that having third of internet become ipv6 in about a decade seems pretty decent result, considering how complex and especially diverse internet is.

Re: Enabling IPv6 support for GitHub Pages

#24

Post by gorgoiler »

unethical_ban wrote: post #8
curiousmindz wrote: post #3

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…

As of a few years ago you don’t need DHCPv6 to announce DNS servers.

Router advertisements can announce a recursive DNS server (RDNSS) which local clients might like to use, eg:

https://github.com/radvd-project/radvd/blob/master/radvd.con...

Bad luck though if you are using, ahem, AIX or Windows Phone:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_IPv6_support_i...

Re: Enabling IPv6 support for GitHub Pages

#25

Post by metalliqaz »

voiper1 wrote: post #15
metalliqaz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

for some use cases. for example, most home users are behind ipv4 NAT because of their wifi routers. nobody really notices a problem.

Re: Enabling IPv6 support for GitHub Pages

#27

Post by unethical_ban »

josephcsible wrote: post #14
unethical_ban wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

So, I was less aware of RDNSS. That makes one of my complaints moot.

DNS is critical. I'm not talking about registering an endpoint into a local DNS server (mydesktop.local), I'm talking about the endpoint knowing who to ask about google.com.

Re: Enabling IPv6 support for GitHub Pages

#28

Post by zokier »

One interesting observation about IPv6 I've made is that in Europe IPv6 and FTTx seem inversely correlated. For example Spain is one of the leaders in FTTx with 87% of homes covered, but have only 3% IPv6 adoption according to Google. Meanwhile Germany has one of the highest IPv6 adoptions in Europe, 52%, and one of the lowest FTTx coverages (16%). Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, and Iceland all have 90% FTTx and 10% IPv6. UK, Finland, Belgium, and Netherlands on the other hand seem to be having better IPv6 adoption than FTTx.

My guess is that ISPs must have needed to choose if to invest to core network or to last mile, and that is visible here. But at the same time it seems bit weird that you'd in 2020s deploy fancy new fiber networks without IPv6.

Re: Enabling IPv6 support for GitHub Pages

#29

Post by throw0101a »

curiousmindz wrote: post #3

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 boggles my mind that IPv6 has such a slow roll out (it's been a thing since the early 2000s = twenty years ago).

IPv4 had just as slow a roll out in some ways. TCP/IP had its flag day in 1983:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_day_(computing)

There was early commercialization of the Internet around ±1990, but it didn't really start taking off until around 1994:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercialization_of_the_Inter...

The Dot-com bubble peaked in 2000:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble

RFC 1918 was published in 1996, and the kludge of NAPT was documented in RFC 2663 in 1999.

Given all of the above, I would say it took IPv4 about 15 years to reach the mainstream.

Re: Enabling IPv6 support for GitHub Pages

#30

Post by mabbo »

curiousmindz wrote: post #3

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 recall being at Amazon some years ago when we were running out of IP addresses internally. A natural answer was "Why don't we all just switch to IPv6?".

The senior principle project manager in charge put it very simply: "The number of routers that don't support IPv6 that we'd need to replace exceeds the world-wide yearly production of IPv6 routers capable of replacing them. At our current rate of growth, we have less than a year until we run out of IPs." (I'm badly quoting a brilliant person many years after the fact, but that's roughly my memory of the talk she gave.)

Major tech companies often have constraints like that which the rest of us wouldn't even imagine.

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