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

apenwarr.ca

241–250 of 318 posts

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

#241

Anyone else mostly fine with IPv6 like it is? Biggest complaint here is that I wish I had a way to correlate SLAAC addresses with hostnames somewhere other than the host. But I don't so when it matters I run a DDNS client on the host, which is probably the "more correct" answer anyway because the host always keeps DNS updated with its current address.

I'm fine with IPv6.

The more correct answer to your complaint is to dump the router's ND cache. I'm pretty sure this is part of SNMP.

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

#242
post #96

I have several times cited it as a key article, more insightful than almost anything else I've ever read about IPv6, but I concede it is overlong and unclear and needs more illustrations. (Which, as a technical writer myself, I generally regard as a crutch.) I think the core argument can be summarised as this: 1. IPv6 is flawed because it has 2 main layers, but it needed 3. 2. It understands physical addresses, and i…

I pulled out this as the most salient point in the article: IPV6 designers assumed that IPV4 would be phased out completely in a short period of time, for some definition of a short period of time, and IPV6 would completely replace internet networking.

I think it was protocol design hubris: we are fixing SO MUCH STUFF that people will flock to this irresistible shining trophy of protocol design.

And now it's been ... almost ... 30 years.

Which means what is really necessary is a new IP protocol that will somehow, SOMEHOW (don't ask me how, I don't effing know) speak seamlessly to IPV4 and IPV6, and be so irresistible that people will want to migrate off of both.

I almost wonder if what is necessary isn't a formally predesigned protocol. What is needed is someone, somewhere, to come up with an approach that becomes a grassroots, and the industry rushes towards it. I don't even know if such a thing is possible anymore, IPV4 land may at this point be complexity theory/mathematically impossible to make a N+1 umbrella protocol of any real "elegance".

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

#243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't `ping ::ffff:192.168.0.1` and have it ping my router. How would that even work in theory? How would a ('legacy'?) host that only understands the 32-bit data structure of IPv4 addresses talk to a >32-bit data structure IPv6 addressed host?

If it truly encapsulated IPv4, then there wouldn't be two stacks. It would be one stack and legacy devices could snip the xtra bits (or have it done for them via a router).

[deleted]

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

#244
post #96

I have several times cited it as a key article, more insightful than almost anything else I've ever read about IPv6, but I concede it is overlong and unclear and needs more illustrations. (Which, as a technical writer myself, I generally regard as a crutch.) I think the core argument can be summarised as this: 1. IPv6 is flawed because it has 2 main layers, but it needed 3. 2. It understands physical addresses, and i…

> As such it is not better enough than IPv4 That's the crux of it. Sometimes I think we'd be better off forgetting about IPv6, and starting afresh with an IPv7 - something that provides a meaningful incentive to upgrade.

I think what is first necessary is to force compliance of upgrading of IPV4 stacks to accept some information in the options section of the IP packet. According to wikipedia, many/most routers ignore or block packets that have anything specified there.

You know what? That sounds like the RFC isn't being followed, but if it's a large enough pattern, then the RFC doesn't matter. It is the standard.

I would say:

1) gather all the engineers from the major switches and networking companies, the Linux network stack, and apple and microsoft, and sure the mobiles. And ask them the easiest way to change the code to support a vast expansion of addresses in the general format of the IPV4 header: options section? Magic IPV4 address that triggers a IPV4r2 packet?

2) as a carrot, maybe you make some way that NATs / VPNs / bridging / whatever works BETTER in the IPV4r2 packet? If the packets had more information in them about the mapping/bridging so external polling was easier and numerous other use cases, then that would spur the vendors to change.

3) accept that NATs, Bridges, etc exist and will continue to. They are now established as a way to think about networking, and there are likely millions of people that think about networking in these ways, even if they are superfluous / unnecessary in the utopia of IPv6 universal adoption. So put them in the protocol. If universal addressing with firewalls eliminates everything, then they will wither on the vine over the course of a couple decades.

So, what's wrong with this? It's obviously naive.

Also, NO SLASHES NO COLONS in the notation. And ... can we increase the number of ports to 32 bits or more?

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

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't `ping ::ffff:192.168.0.1` and have it ping my router. How would that even work in theory? How would a ('legacy'?) host that only understands the 32-bit data structure of IPv4 addresses talk to a >32-bit data structure IPv6 addressed host?

If it truly encapsulated IPv4, then there wouldn't be two stacks. It would be one stack and legacy devices could snip the xtra bits (or have it done for them via a router).

I'm skeptical. How would the legacy device V4 understand the "extra bits"? How would this work on the same subnet (no router)?

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

#246

I've always seen "The Internet" as a network of networks. I interpreted the article as inferring that "every device should only speak internet, and we shouldn't have non-internet hacks to allow devices to connect to the internet." But, if we interpret the internet as a network built on top of other networks, it negates the thesis (as I interpret it) of the article. It also locks us into networking, as understood in t…

> I'd even argue that NAT is a good thing (security feature,)

Any router that I’ve come across already blocks incoming IPv6 traffic by default, so I’d have to disagree. NAT was designed for a very specific purpose and keeping it in a new implementation makes no sense if it’s not necessary, which it’s not if the hardware requires you to open incoming ports.

No NAT would make it a lot easier to understand what’s happening too, since the process would be “allow traffic from the internet to this device” rather than creating a translation for an internal address, possibly having to set up a MAC reservation to ensure the DHCP lease doesn’t expire etc.

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

#247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We may wish to skip that one as well. [1][2] [1] - https://www.noction.com/blog/ipv10 [2] - https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-omar-ipv10/10/

OK, so let's just crank it all the way to 11, since 11 is 1 more than 10. I think smarter people than me can handle all the technical underlayment, but when it gets to the point of where the techs and sysadmins are using it, it should have an 8 digit hex key at the start and then an IPv4 "alike" address at the end, and 0000:0000:-whatever should encapsulate the current network schema for backwards compatibility. Then…

What, something like this?

  $ ping 64:ff9b::8.8.8.8
  PING 64:ff9b::8.8.8.8(64:ff9b::808:808) 56 data bytes
  64 bytes from 64:ff9b::808:808: icmp_seq=1 ttl=113 time=8.75 ms
Seems like we already have something very much like that.

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

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IPv7 was used for the "TP/IX: The Next Internet" proposal from 1993: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1475 The next available version is IPv10

We may wish to skip that one as well. [1][2] [1] - https://www.noction.com/blog/ipv10 [2] - https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-omar-ipv10/10/

IPv12 is twice as good as IPv6, right?

Note: This post is a joke and not expected to be a normative RFC and not under any sort of conformance with Internet Drafts under the IETF.

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

#249
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 byt…

* Until the transition is complete, I and everyone else is gonna have to use an ISP which provides a v4 address, whether they're end users or a server operators. Fair enough though that ISPs may have some incentive to making more people have v4+v6 (not that they seem to have realized...) * I really don't think NAT could possibly make a noticeable difference in the time to first byte. My guess about what's "barely not…

I did a small experiment with 2 websites: federalreserve.gov and one of the Google's server located in Delhi. I'm in India in a city around 250 kms from Delhi on ISP: Reliance Jio Fiber. I see around 8ms benefit when using IPv6 for Google, and 20 ms when using federalreserve.gov Hardly noticable

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

#250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We may wish to skip that one as well. [1][2] [1] - https://www.noction.com/blog/ipv10 [2] - https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-omar-ipv10/10/

IPv12 is twice as good as IPv6, right? Note: This post is a joke and not expected to be a normative RFC and not under any sort of conformance with Internet Drafts under the IETF.

Note: This post is a joke and not expected to be a normative RFC

Totally. I only suggested as a means to avoid conflating a real RFC with a joke RFC. And I only did that because half of the things I have joked about resulted in having to say "No, wait, I was kidding, what are you doing?!?" and thus I learned to minimize joking about things.

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