Tell HN: IPv6-only still pretty much unusable • Hacker News Board

Re: Tell HN: IPv6-only still pretty much unusable

#81

Post by spookthesunset » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 4:55 PM UTC

redox99 wrote: post #32

IPv6 has been one of the biggest failures in the last couple of decades. And I don't mean adoption, I mean the standard itself. If IPv6 were IPv4 with more octets, then we would all have been using it for like a decade. Yes, I understand it would still require some breaking changes, but it would have been a million times easier to upgrade, as it would be a kind of superset of IPv4 (1.2.3.4 can be referred as 0.0.0.0.…

It’s the firewall rules that always creep me out. The nice thing about NAT is open ports on your internal network are hidden to the outside world by default. You have to think about which ports you want the NAT gateway to forward.

With IPv6 the entire network is reachable outside by default. Granted I assume you can probably create a default DENY rule for inbound traffic and selectively open ports up as exceptions. Right?

Re: Tell HN: IPv6-only still pretty much unusable

#82

Post by NelsonMinar » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 4:56 PM UTC

mort96 wrote: post #35

NelsonMinar wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A whole lot of ISPs are doing CGNAT for IPv4 now, mostly in Asia. Starlink does it. It's mostly OK but has a lot of drawbacks, particularly IP-based geolocation. (Starlink does not support IPv6 although they seem to be rolling it out this month.)

Being behind CGNAT has downsides yes, for example being unable to ever host anything; you become relegated to a consumer who's dependent on the big hosting companies to ever have an Internet presence. But geolocation? I don't want everyone to be able to get my location! Breaking IP-based geolocation is a benefit of CGNAT, not a drawback.

It's a huge PITA though. I'm near Sacramento but my IP looks like it's in Los Angeles. It screws up a surprising number of things, particularly local TV streaming services.

IP geolocation is a bad idea for lots of reasons. Unfortunately it's also a reality of how services work.

Re: Tell HN: IPv6-only still pretty much unusable

#83

Post by redox99 » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 4:58 PM UTC

ilyt wrote: post #80

redox99 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's not "Ipv4+" aware, it wouldn't be able. Otherwise it would understand new packet formats.

So exactly like current situation, with content providers forever stuck at providing old version for old clients.

The difference is that this ipv4+ would be easier more gradual and less scary to adopt. I edited my original comment to explain a bit more.

Re: Tell HN: IPv6-only still pretty much unusable

#84

Post by MisterTea » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 5:02 PM UTC

noipv6 wrote: post #21

RijilV wrote: post #9

It's been a quarter of a century since IPv6 launch. There's some really good lessons learned here. IPv6 requires everyone, everywhere, needs to change their configuration to add IPv6 addresses and network connectivity to every node/endpoint. The madness of course is that all the underlying infrastructure software (routers, OS, standard libraries) all support IPv6. It would seem, at a large enough scale, that software…

anyone who thinks "ipv6mess" is still relevant in 2022, doesn't understand the problem space it describes. part 1, interoperability failure/incompatibility: nat64+dns64 has been viable since 2008 part 2, incoherence: dual-stack was the transition plan, & was clearly communicated from the start (to anyone who listened). that turned out to not be so effective since so many ppl ignored the realities of legacy ip depleti…

> part 1, interoperability failure/incompatibility: nat64+dns64 has been viable since 2008

Why are we stuck with nat in 2022 again? Why did we not map the 32 bits of ipv4 to ipv6?

> part 2, incoherence: dual-stack was the transition plan, & was clearly communicated from the start (to anyone who listened).

Perhaps they didn't listen because dual stack means investing in building another incompatible internet on ipv6 in parallel with the ALREADY WORKING ipv4 internet. Reminds me of a great quote: "the most dangerous enemy of a better solution is an existing codebase that is just good enough." - Eric S Raymond

> part 3, distractions: one could argue that rants like "ipv6mess" are the biggest distractions to ipv6 deployment.

Because it is a mess. Stop denying that. If ipv6 was designed to be easily deployed via backwards compatibility then we would be using ipv6 already.

Re: Tell HN: IPv6-only still pretty much unusable

#85

Post by blablabla123 » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 5:03 PM UTC

redox99 wrote: post #32

IPv6 has been one of the biggest failures in the last couple of decades. And I don't mean adoption, I mean the standard itself. If IPv6 were IPv4 with more octets, then we would all have been using it for like a decade. Yes, I understand it would still require some breaking changes, but it would have been a million times easier to upgrade, as it would be a kind of superset of IPv4 (1.2.3.4 can be referred as 0.0.0.0.…

It provides a lot of improvements actually. Stating the obvious, NAT isn't needed anymore. Also with modern Firewalls rules need to be written only once. At this point I'm just surprised why it's not adopted

Re: Tell HN: IPv6-only still pretty much unusable

#86

Post by geraldcombs » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 5:05 PM UTC

Is there an "awesome"-style list of things that are slowing server-side IPv6 adoption? If not, these would be a good start.

Re: Tell HN: IPv6-only still pretty much unusable

#87

Post by delduca » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 5:06 PM UTC

I had to disable IPv6 on my macOS in order to download packages from GitHub that brew uses, it took me days to figure out the problem.

Re: Tell HN: IPv6-only still pretty much unusable

#88

Post by trynewideas » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 5:07 PM UTC

blablabla123 wrote: post #85

redox99 wrote: post #32

IPv6 has been one of the biggest failures in the last couple of decades. And I don't mean adoption, I mean the standard itself. If IPv6 were IPv4 with more octets, then we would all have been using it for like a decade. Yes, I understand it would still require some breaking changes, but it would have been a million times easier to upgrade, as it would be a kind of superset of IPv4 (1.2.3.4 can be referred as 0.0.0.0.…

It provides a lot of improvements actually. Stating the obvious, NAT isn't needed anymore. Also with modern Firewalls rules need to be written only once. At this point I'm just surprised why it's not adopted

Inertia on the part of large services, providers, and infrastructure isn't much of a surprise.

Re: Tell HN: IPv6-only still pretty much unusable

#89

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 5:10 PM UTC

NelsonMinar wrote: post #17

xlmnxp wrote: post #3

Hetzner should provide free CGNAT IPv4 Addresses (IPv4 Gateway) for IPv6-Only VMs

A whole lot of ISPs are doing CGNAT for IPv4 now, mostly in Asia. Starlink does it. It's mostly OK but has a lot of drawbacks, particularly IP-based geolocation. (Starlink does not support IPv6 although they seem to be rolling it out this month.)

[deleted]

Re: Tell HN: IPv6-only still pretty much unusable

#90

Post by Sesse__ » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 5:10 PM UTC

MisterTea wrote: post #84

noipv6 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

anyone who thinks "ipv6mess" is still relevant in 2022, doesn't understand the problem space it describes. part 1, interoperability failure/incompatibility: nat64+dns64 has been viable since 2008 part 2, incoherence: dual-stack was the transition plan, & was clearly communicated from the start (to anyone who listened). that turned out to not be so effective since so many ppl ignored the realities of legacy ip depleti…

> part 1, interoperability failure/incompatibility: nat64+dns64 has been viable since 2008 Why are we stuck with nat in 2022 again? Why did we not map the 32 bits of ipv4 to ipv6? > part 2, incoherence: dual-stack was the transition plan, & was clearly communicated from the start (to anyone who listened). Perhaps they didn't listen because dual stack means investing in building another incompatible internet on ipv6 i…

> Why are we stuck with nat in 2022 again? Why did we not map the 32 bits of ipv4 to ipv6?

Because it does not help. djb's “idea” was to change everybody's setup _first_ and then have a flag day where the entire world were moved from IPv4 to IPv6 in one big change. Good luck with that. (And only after that flag day, we could start actually using a larger address space to try to get rid of NATs.)

The ipv6mess essay is confused because it somehow thinks _getting addresses_ is the hard problem. It does not solve _any_ other configuration or coding part. You still need to upgrade DNS. You still need to have a different wire protocol. You still need every hop on the path from me to you to understand and route IPv6.

At least now with gradual rollout and dual stack, we're at 40% of endpoints and AFAIK a majority of traffic. With djb's plan, we'd still be at zero.