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Tell HN: IPv6-only still pretty much unusable

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

#371

Post by Dagger2 »

mprovost wrote: post #346
AdamH12113 wrote: post #316

Given how long it's been since IPv6 was released, I'm surprised that there hasn't been a big proposal for an IPv7 that would fix the alleged problems with IPv6. Has anyone worked on anything like that?

It's more the case that the panic around IP space exhaustion turned out to be unfounded - or at least we've been able to work around it for much much longer than expected. Back in 1994 the IETF predicted that the internet would stop working in 3-7 years. Almost 30 years later we're still going. So there's no sense of urgency to invent something better. For the record I also believe that v6 will be abandoned and event…

v6 already is backwards compatible. Pretty much every form of backwards compatibility that is possible with v4 is available in v6.

The problem is that v4 isn't forwards compatible with larger address spaces, and that's a problem that any protocol with >32-bit addresses faces, because it's a problem with the design of v4, not the design of the new protocol. Replacing v6 will not help.

> the lack of NAT is really an anti-feature.

v6 doesn't lack NAT -- what it lacks is any sane reason to use NAT. That's a good thing.

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

#372

Post by tinglymintyfrsh »

lee101 wrote: post #366

I just like to call out Starlink for not supporting ipv6, massive headache as calls to various ipv4 only sites fail in python then you need to set a timeout in your request to trick python into falling back to ipv4, also no public adresses on Starlink made self hosting https://text-generator.io a pain but CloudFlared tunnels helped

Aside about AI text generation: Rule 34 will be tested when it comes to generating adulting text content.

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

#374

Post by anyfoo »

theamk wrote: post #342
throw0101a wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would switch to that "IPv4+" system if it existed.. I am willing to use latest software/standards to future-proof my setup, but duplicating all the work is too much for me. And exactly how would you accomplish this switch to a larger address space? Please explain the steps exactly how they would be done. Because IPv4 has 32 bits of address. Anything after IPv4 needed >32 bits of address. How exactly do you fit in…

OK: Let's use "IPv4+" scheme as described by redox99: we still have dotted-decimal, and IPv4 addresses are guaranteed to be accessible via IPv4+ interface. Right now, most application software need non-trivial rewrite to add ipv6 support: it has to support 2 sockets instead of 1, and ":" in address breaks basically every address parsing function out there. With IPv4+, you do search/replace "sockaddr_in"->"sockaddr_in…

I am not sure why you are downvoted, since you do make some valid points. I myself am not sure whether the very fundamental changes that IPv6 brings did not hamper its adoption than if it was just extended IPv4.

From a network administration perspective, sure, "you need to replace every piece of equipment". But from a software modification perspective (thinking more about the software on network infrastructure equipment than endpoints like applications), you have two very different stacks.

On the other hand, if there was ever a time to make (assumedly so) highly desirable compatibility-breaking changes, that was it.

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

#375

Post by Dagger2 »

ju-st wrote: post #330
nikanj wrote: post #271

I can trivially remember a bunch of ipv4 addressed, and recognize them at a glance (”oh that’s just our office vpn endpoint, that traffic is benign”). No hope of that with ipv6.

If your office has a /48 you could surely memorize the subnet itself and/or give your important endpoint the shortest possible IP address like: 2001:db8:a0b0::1 or even something funny like 2001:db8:a0b0::0ff1:ce

Yeah, just pick ::200 instead of +.200. Forget "no hope", that actually looks easier than the v4 case to me... especially if you have any RFC1918 clashes going on, which many companies do.

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

#376

Post by Klonoar »

Yuyudo_Comiketo wrote: post #328
Klonoar wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide a source for that government claim?

- Comment sections getting closed for anonymous replies almost everywhere over the course of the last 15 years - Undisguised surveillance becoming the new normal - Confinement of all communication to a handful of platforms - Snowden's disclosures - Huge datacenters built by NSA to tap into telecom - Crackdown on p2p sharing - Push for The Cloud - Closure of Lavabit and other independent email providers - Rabid push f…

Sigh, I need to stop engaging with obvious tinfoil hats.

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

#377

Post by jmbwell »

All our internal systems use IPv6. Internal traffic is almost totally IPv6. Traffic to/from the public Internet on our networks is 30-40% IPv6.

We just started treating it like a first class citizen and worked through the learning experiences, and it quit seeming like such a big deal.

IPv6-only, when interfacing with the public internet or the public cloud (which we don't much use), does seem like a challenge, but only due to external factors.

It's no more difficult to get a handle on it than any other technology, at which point it pretty much becomes routine.

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

#378

Post by jlokier »

It's 2022 and I've never yet seen an IPv6-capable internet connection at any home I've lived in, office I've worked at, coffee shop or library whose network I've used. And I've lived in a lot of places

Phones have it. But when I connect my computers via my phone's hotspot, the computers only get IPv4.

My data SIM at home enables IPv6 when used in a phone. But when installed in my 4G router, same contract, same provider, there is no IPv6 despite the router supporting it. That is, supporting in theory. Since I've never seen it enabled, I can't say if it works.

My bare metal servers have IPv6. But my cloud VMs and containers only get IPv4.

The last major network protocol I worked with, a P2P mesh protocol that needs to pass around IP addresses, has IPv6 on the todo list. Last I saw, earlier this year, there was a debate about whether it was worth adding or not. At the moment it's defaulting to no, even though I've seen a few IPv6 addresses attempt to join and be rejected

I can add IPv6 tunnels (VPNs and such) wherever I want, if I want to test software. But I could do that 20 years ago. It feels a bit artifical, not having the real thing.

My current work has a VPN we must use to access work dev servers. Obviously that doesn't use IPv6.

Forget about IPv6-"only", I'm still yet to see much IPv6 at all (except on phones).

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

#379

Post by anyfoo »

zamadatix wrote: post #287
nikanj wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What makes you think that companies would have been willing to make the effort to deploy "IPv4+" any more than IPv6? Way less resistance from tech teams. Ultimately companies are made of people, and ipv6 is partly a failure because working with it requires a wholly new skillset

Maybe it’s different on the software side but coming from a network VAR it’s the same skill set. You still have subnets and routes and netmasks and DHCP or automatic assignments the difference is the size. If you know IPv4 all you need to learn is “the subnets are all /64 in size, addresses are 128 bits, and you don’t need DHCP if you don’t want”.

Yeah, but I have to say, even as someone who wants IPv6 to succeed and supersede IPv4, from the perspective of building that network infrastructure software, I think this "IPv4+" would have been massively simpler to add, extremely so, and that may have aided adoption a lot.

It's really hard to overstate how much simpler tacking on 128bit IP addresses to an otherwise unmodified protocol would have been in the software stack of network infrastructure.

But, as I also said a few times here, the time to make desirable compatibility-breaking changes was exactly then, when every piece of network equipment needed massive alteration or replacement anyway. And I look forward to the day IPv6 hopefully becomes predominant, and the advantages it brings.

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

#380

Post by yesco »

rootusrootus wrote: post #354
cj wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the technical ability to set up a well structured VPC in AWS with private/public subnets, but I wouldn't know where to start if asked to set up an ipv6-only network. Is the general model of public/private subnet still valid? Or are you saying in a ipv6-only world, there's no need for separate subnets? There's something about a server not being assigned an IP address at all that makes me sleep easy at night (in…

> Is the general model of public/private subnet still valid? You're getting replies that are tiptoeing around the truth, saying that the answer to this is basically 'yes' when it sure looks like the answer is firmly 'no.' My home IPv4 network isn't routable, it is a private network. If my IPv6 address is globally unique and addressable by someone across the world, my network is not private in the way that most people…

> My home IPv4 network isn't routable, it is a private network.

An IPv6 network with a firewall configured to disallow incoming traffic isn't routable, it is a private network

> If my IPv6 address is globally unique and addressable by someone across the world, my network is not private in the way that most people have come to understand the term.

In what way? All NAT does is funnel traffic over one address (or more), that address is still exposed to the internet and it's your firewall that prevents that incoming traffic. If your firewall is compromised, then NAT isn't protecting you from anything, your network will absolutely be routable despite what you are suggesting. The assumptions you are making are part of the reason why NAT can be dangerous.

> I'm just part of the public network but with a firewall to stop unwanted packets from reaching my local nodes.

This is an oxymoron, you are either a part of the public network or you are not. The only thing that has changed is the semantics.

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