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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

#401
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.…

Let's not forget about the idea that ISPs would distribute a /56 range to residential users. You could split it in /64 ranges according to your requirements and everything would work fine. There is only one "minor" issue: all major ISPs in my country ( Brazil ) only provide a single /64. You can't get another /64 unless you upgrade to a very expensive business plan. That makes IPv6 not only useless but also a huge se…

> There is only one "minor" issue: all major ISPs in my country ( Brazil ) only provide a single /64. You can't get another /64 unless you upgrade to a very expensive business plan.

I'm curious why you need multiple subnets at home; I at one point had separate subnets because I was using a wifi client as a ip level router, but was wondering what your use-case is.

> Although IPV4 + NAT had some issues, it ( accidentally? ) created a safe/sane default config for non-technical users. In order to open a port and expose a device, you have to explicitly add a rule on the firewall.

> IPv6 is the other way around. In practice, all devices and ports are exposed unless you explicitly block it.

I would like to humbly suggest that you don't remember what the internet was around the turn of the century with devices configuring IGD via UPnP so every device you hooked up to your home router automatically setup a port-mapping to put itself on the open internet.

Eventually everyone realized this sucked and UPnP NAT traversal was disabled everywhere. The same will happen (and actually more-or-less has already happened) with default-allow home routers switching to default-block.

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

#402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internal address is optional, it's only useful if you want to have a known address if your uplink is down so you can do maintainance. You only need two addresses: - a global address - a link-local address

Not clear. How do i reach a device in my local network? Via the optional internal address if my uplink is down and via my link-local address if my uplink is up? Is the link-local address any good if i'm on wifi but want to ssh into a wired host in my home? Are you getting my point yet? Edit: actually I won't wait. The point is it's needlessly overcomplicated. It was done by a commitee that didn't even consider people…

I think you are a bit confused.

A global address is an address that is routable over the internet. You can reach it from anywhere as long as your firewall permits so.

A link-local address is never routed. It is only valid on a single network segment. You can use it if your uplink is down and you don't have multiple networks at home. It is usually derived from the MAC address of your NIC.

There are some special link-local multicast groups, ff02::1 is the 'all nodes' address. If you send something there it will be received by all hosts on the link.

ff02::2 is 'all routers' - this will be received by all routers on the link. There are more [0].

If you have multiple internal networks and want to reach hosts without an uplink, you can use the unique local address range fc00::/7

This functions just like 10.0.0.0/8 on IPv4 and is only routed within your site.

[0] https://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv6-multicast-addresses/ip...

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

#403
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A confusing aspect of IPv6 is that it's actually a much simpler protocol than IPv4, you often end up assuming you need to configure a bunch of stuff that you really don't have to. The most common example would be NAT, despite the complexity it adds to IPv4, people often get comfortable with idea of setting up complex subnet hierarchies and feel lost when that all just disappears with IPv6. The key things to remember…

One thing I wish they had done with the much larger address space is make it easy for an individual to get their own block of IPv6 addresses. Letting enthusiasts experiment with their own address space seems like it would help with knowledge / adoption.

Big evil Comcast gives out a /60 to residential customers if you ask for it (via setting a DHCP option). That allows for 16 networks to work with.

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

#404

I have to say I’m super disappointed in the ignorance and negativity in the comments on this thread. Ignorance of both the difficulties inherent in upgrading a fixed size wire protocol designed for a research network fifty years ago, and the widespread adoption of ipv6 for real customer deployments. Heck most of you are probably using ipv6 through your mobile carrier and don’t even know it!

I think you're being unfair to the audience. The main complaints here aren't about the consequences of those legacy problems, they're about the fact that IPv6 is just such a mediocre designed-by-committee protocol. Your point about mobile networks kind of illustrates this. There are all sorts of weird and wonderful protocols used in the mobile world, and it doesn't matter because 99.999% of us never have to deal with…

What parts of ipv6 used in consumer grade equipment are not understandable or “consumer grade”? Ipv6 in some areas is actually simpler than ipv4.

I gave the example of mobile networks because it’s one of the few places consumer facing networks are growing rapidly and in some cases build entirely greenfield networks. And they have overwhelmingly chosen to build using ipv6 to do so.

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

#405

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…

You just need to do what the world did - NAT. IPv6 is more than just address space extension. There’s all sorts of stuff packed in there that complicates the process. All mobile clients are behind CG-NAT. We should have built standards around that instead of worrying about extending IP space to Mars or whatever.

> All mobile clients are behind CG-NAT.

Demonstrably false. T-Mobile US mobile clients are IPv6-only and connect via IPv6 to IPv6 sites:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6oBCYHzrTA

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNMNglk_CvE

NAT is only used to connect to IPv4-only hosts via DNS64 (with or without 464XLAT). As of 2022Q2, T-Mobile US has 110 million customers:

* https://www.statista.com/statistics/219577/total-customers-o...

One-third of the US population is connecting via IPv6-only on a day-to-day, hour-to-hour basis every time their smartphone reaches out over the radio.

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

#406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IPv6 is very similar to IPv4 it's just IPv4 wasn't a consumer grade protocol either. The problem isn't the protocol it's that there is little incentive for the average user to switch to anything else on their own volition when most didn't even really set up what they are switching from (and already working on today) anyways.

Again, this is kind of making my point. IPv4 had an excuse for being a bit crap, because it was designed in the early 1980s. IPv6 should have been much better than it is. Adoption was always going to be slow, but it never needed to be this slow. If the designers had thought a but more about usability and not done stupid stuff like making the address space contain twice as many bits as it actually needs, then we would…

IPv6's introduction is closer to IPv4's introduction that to now. By nearly twice as much.

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

#407
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.…

I always thought to start they should have just allowed each octet two-ish more bits, so you could have 999.999.999.999. I know it’s the hackiest of all hacks, but it sure would have been an easy upgrade from the software perspective. And it would have given about a 256x increase in the number of ips. Which I kinda think actually might have served us for a long time.

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

#408

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 provi…

My experience is quite different from yours:

- my ISP has offered IPv6 /64 delegations for over 5 years now.

- One cloud provider I use gives a discount for VMs with no IPv4 address, the other has ipv6 addresses.

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

#409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IPv6 is very similar to IPv4 it's just IPv4 wasn't a consumer grade protocol either. The problem isn't the protocol it's that there is little incentive for the average user to switch to anything else on their own volition when most didn't even really set up what they are switching from (and already working on today) anyways.

Again, this is kind of making my point. IPv4 had an excuse for being a bit crap, because it was designed in the early 1980s. IPv6 should have been much better than it is. Adoption was always going to be slow, but it never needed to be this slow. If the designers had thought a but more about usability and not done stupid stuff like making the address space contain twice as many bits as it actually needs, then we would…

It should be mentioned that 2^32 was widely considered to be unfathomongly large when ipv4 was developed as well.

However now we are pumping out something like 4 ARM cores per person on the planet, per year. Clearly we will need to plan for those devices to communicate.

Also the effective address space in ipv6 is much smaller than 2^128 as the default subnet prefix is /64. So in a sense, it has already “addressed” your concern? Pun intended.

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

#410
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.…

The IPv4 dotted quad format carries a lot of baggage. You also have to handle forms with two numeric fields with a mixture of 8, 16, and 24-bit numbers and implicit zero octets. Support for the full syntax is sporadic. IPv6 deliberately uses a new text encoding to make a clean break.
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