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The world in which IPv6 was a good design (2017)

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Re: The world in which IPv6 was a good design (2017)

#101

Post by kalleboo »

OccamsMirror wrote: post #95
mort96 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm worried about the long tail. IPv6 won't actually be useful until more or less everything supports v6; as long as there are enough clients which don't support v6 servers need v4, and as long as there are enough servers which don't support v6 clients need v4. And until we can start disabling v4, v6 gives no advantage and only causes significant added complexity. I'm worried that the time when we can start removing…

I think you’ll find the real transition to be a lot quicker than that. All it takes is one of the big companies drawing a line in the sand because they’re unable to buy enough IP addresses, so they finally take a stand. Just like when YouTube nailed the lid into the coffin of ie6.

I doubt a big company would draw the line in the sand. But I could see an upstart (think TikTok) not having up enough IP addresses and just giving a crappy, slow proxied experience over IPv4, but having it be native, zippy and good over IPv6. Suddenly you have teens begging their parents to switch ISPs.

Re: The world in which IPv6 was a good design (2017)

#102

Post by kalleboo »

mkl wrote: post #93
fulafel wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's looking more like a slow victory than a failure: https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html People like to complain a lot about the new features in v6, but they don't make it any worse as a v4 replacement.

It spikes up 3-5 percentage points every weekend. Presumably mobile use goes up and computer use goes down.

Corporate use goes down and Residential use goes up.

Corporate networks were the last to drop XP, the last to drop IE, and will be the last to adopt IPv6.

Re: The world in which IPv6 was a good design (2017)

#103

Post by VoodooJuJu »

jeroenhd wrote: post #66

IPv6's biggest problem remains not that it's badly designed (at least not nowadays, there were problems but they were solved ten years ago) but that millions of network engineers never bothered to look deeper into IPv6 than "I don't get it, this feels off". You can't make a backwards compatible "IPv4 with more bits" like people dream of. L2 routers and middleboxes would still need to be replaced, software would still…

The user/customer is always right.

If the people who would use IPv6 don't like it and don't want it, if they think it's bad, then it's bad.

When forest rangers observe hikers repeatedly deviating from the official trail at certain spots, the ranger understands this to mean the trail is wrong, and he re-designs it to accommodate the hikers. The forest ranger is able to do this because he understands what the trail is for: it's for the hikers, and he empathizes with and adapts to the hiker's needs, not his own needs, not his ego, not his whims. Never does the forest ranger defend a bad trail. The forest ranger takes feedback without ego, and he is able to do so because he does not personally identify with the trail, he identifies with the needs of the hikers.

Engineers would do well to become more like the forest ranger. Many engineers seriously lack empathy for end-users, which results in the engineer creating inadequate products/services that don't meet the user's real needs. Even worse, when the product/service is criticized, when the engineer is given an opportunity to improve the product, the engineer instead blames the user, rather than himself, rather than adapt and recalibrate to the user's needs, he submits to his own ego, his own pride.

It's this lack of empathy and user-blame that yields poor results, results like IPv6.

Re: The world in which IPv6 was a good design (2017)

#105

Post by kalleboo »

runjake wrote: post #57
mike_d wrote: post #20

IPv6 failed because they tried to boil the ocean. It was design by committee, where everyone got their pet feature thrown in to appease and gain consensus. Alternatively IPv4 is a mountain of small hacks, which is its biggest strength. We could have done a lot of good by adopting proposals to extend v4 like 0/8 and class D, but instead the decision was made to collectively drown the babies in the bathwater and insist…

I run a large multi-campus network. At least 75% of our outgoing Internet traffic is IPv6. Looking at home ISPs accessing our services, it’s at least the majority of them coming in on IPv6. My guess is it’s a similar ratio as outgoing. IPv6 has issues but it hasn’t failed.

> At least 75% of our outgoing Internet traffic is IPv6

One question I have about this statistic (and also about Google's IPv6 statistic) is, does traffic mean raw bytes? And in that case, is this just a reflection that like 75% of all internet traffic is just YouTube and Netflix due to video being a bandwidth hog?

(I'm a huge proponent of IPv6 - I just wish we had more useful statistics!)

Re: The world in which IPv6 was a good design (2017)

#106

Post by baq »

exabrial wrote: post #100

One thing I’ve realized lately is that scarcity is actually a benefit of ipv4, much in the way of the maximum amount of bitcoins theoretically increases their value. Ipv4 addresses are being ranked by their reputation. This is a good thing, at least right now, as it makes scammers/spammers/hackers/ddosers lives more expensive to acquire fresh addresses. This can only exist when a shortage exists.

in ipv6 you can (should) grade whole subnets as end customers typically get whole /64s.

Re: The world in which IPv6 was a good design (2017)

#107

Post by baq »

vbezhenar wrote: post #47
mike_d wrote: post #20

IPv6 failed because they tried to boil the ocean. It was design by committee, where everyone got their pet feature thrown in to appease and gain consensus. Alternatively IPv4 is a mountain of small hacks, which is its biggest strength. We could have done a lot of good by adopting proposals to extend v4 like 0/8 and class D, but instead the decision was made to collectively drown the babies in the bathwater and insist…

IPv6 did not fail. It's used by a sizeable chunk of hosts, network owners made investitions in hardware, software and skills. It's not going anywhere, like it or not. Just like IPv4 will not go anywhere. They will coexist. I still don't understand why IPv6 is a thing. End users can use NAT just fine. Servers can use CDNs and reverse proxies, sharing single IPv4 address among any number of hostnames. But it is a thing…

'NAT' and 'fine' do not belong in one sentence.

NAT requires stateful tracking of stateless protocols. It's a hack much larger than anything related to ipv6.

Re: The world in which IPv6 was a good design (2017)

#108

Post by shivam543 »

mort96 wrote: post #89
fulafel wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's looking more like a slow victory than a failure: https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html People like to complain a lot about the new features in v6, but they don't make it any worse as a v4 replacement.

I'm worried about the long tail. IPv6 won't actually be useful until more or less everything supports v6; as long as there are enough clients which don't support v6 servers need v4, and as long as there are enough servers which don't support v6 clients need v4. And until we can start disabling v4, v6 gives no advantage and only causes significant added complexity. I'm worried that the time when we can start removing…

> And until we can start disabling v4, v6 gives no advantage and only causes significant added complexity.

v6 advantages:

* If you're an ISP, you need more complex hardware for CGNAT-v4 if your traffic is huge. If you do support v6, netflix, youtube and majority of your traffic is already on v6, you can get by without upgrading your CGNAT Infra.

* I suspect v6 should have faster initial connection - time to first byte, because of no NAT. I assume NAT is implied in v4 because if you're an ISP say in India where you have 1.2B mobile devices, you cannot buy 1/4th of all IPv4 addresses.

* Because of more IP addresses you can run VMs with public v6 addresses. It's not common to have ISPs give multiple IPv4 to a single customer, but with v6 that's always the case.

Re: The world in which IPv6 was a good design (2017)

#109

Post by justsomehnguy »

exabrial wrote: post #100

One thing I’ve realized lately is that scarcity is actually a benefit of ipv4, much in the way of the maximum amount of bitcoins theoretically increases their value. Ipv4 addresses are being ranked by their reputation. This is a good thing, at least right now, as it makes scammers/spammers/hackers/ddosers lives more expensive to acquire fresh addresses. This can only exist when a shortage exists.

"People are DUI without a driver license, so let's make the driver license cost $$$$ for every Average Joe."

Re: The world in which IPv6 was a good design (2017)

#110

Post by meragrin_ »

exabrial wrote: post #100

One thing I’ve realized lately is that scarcity is actually a benefit of ipv4, much in the way of the maximum amount of bitcoins theoretically increases their value. Ipv4 addresses are being ranked by their reputation. This is a good thing, at least right now, as it makes scammers/spammers/hackers/ddosers lives more expensive to acquire fresh addresses. This can only exist when a shortage exists.

> This is a good thing, at least right now, as it makes scammers/spammers/hackers/ddosers lives more expensive to acquire fresh addresses. This can only exist when a shortage exists.

No it is not. More and more people share addresses so more people would be affected and it would just move the problem elsewhere.

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