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The mistakes and missed opportunities in the design of IPv6

ipv6.hanazo.no

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Re: The mistakes and missed opportunities in the design of IPv6

#21

Post by sph »

magicalhippo wrote: post #14
blueflow wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because every node that is supposed to be able to route these packages need to be patched to understand the new package format. So its is equally difficult.

It's not equally difficult, because they decided to change a lot of other things, including some key details. Not saying all those changes were bad, but at least for me it also makes thinking about IPv6 when using it much more foreign than if it had been just a larger address space.

IPv6 isn't difficult to implement, and complexity is not the reason we're still stuck in IPv4 land.

We are stuck here because the Internet runs on devices no one cares enough/has enough budget to update.

Re: The mistakes and missed opportunities in the design of IPv6

#22

Post by blueflow »

sherburt3 wrote: post #19
blueflow wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could add 12 bytes to the address, such an protocol already exists and is in widespread use.

I just don't think IPv6 addresses are human readable compared to IPv4 addresses. I know DNS makes that a non issue for the majority of users but I still think it's an important quality for people in charge of maintaining networks and stuff.

I like IPv6 addresses more because they force you to use copy-paste, which removes the risk of typing errors. And nobody would try to dictate me an IPv6 address via phone.

Re: The mistakes and missed opportunities in the design of IPv6

#23

Post by adrian_b »

flowerthoughts wrote: post #7
jonstewart wrote: post #3

The world had -just- gotten its parents and aunts and uncles and maybe some grandparents trained up on what an IP address is and looks like, and THEN the IETF approved this idiotic standard that said “forget all that, now it’s a bunch of hexadecimal digits with these confusing rules about colons to be ‘user-friendly.’ Also, be sure not to confuse your IPv6 address with the MAC address that’s printed on your devices.”…

The syntax of the address? MAC addresses seem to thrive, both in Ethernet and Bluetooth. Sure, it's only 48 bits, but it's a bunch of hexadecimal digits with colons. IPv6 failed because (1) it demanded too much of the networking hardware, (2) was a stupidly complex beast compared to IPv4 and (3) had the catch-22 of requiring both producers and consumers to upgrade at the same time to even make it usable, let alone wi…

I don't think that it can be argued that IPv6 was complex and demanded more from the networking hardware.

On the contrary, the IPv6 headers have been explicitly simplified a lot in comparison with IPv4.

The increased complexity for the networking hardware has come only from the requirement of supporting both IPv4 and IPv6, instead of only one of them.

In my opinion, the most significant mistake of IPv6 has been that the IPv4 address space has not been considered a subset of the IPv6 address space.

Had this been done, it would have been relatively easy to mix arbitrarily in a network ancient IPv4 equipment that has never been updated with equipment implementing IPv6 and the gradual transition between the two protocols would have been very easy.

Re: The mistakes and missed opportunities in the design of IPv6

#24

Post by Borg3 »

I kinda agree with the arcticle. Here is my ideal IPv6:

http://borg.uu3.net/~borg/?ipv6

It basically means, you grab IPv4 implementation, extend address space to 64bit, call it IPv6, vioala. Problem solved.

IPv4 was battle proven for years. It mistakes were sorted out (CIDR addressing, ARP poisoning, DHCP/BOOTP, etc). It was widely understood. NAT is okey, CGNAT is not. The only problem was the address space. And they failed it...

Re: The mistakes and missed opportunities in the design of IPv6

#25

Post by rcxdude »

sph wrote: post #21
magicalhippo wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not equally difficult, because they decided to change a lot of other things, including some key details. Not saying all those changes were bad, but at least for me it also makes thinking about IPv6 when using it much more foreign than if it had been just a larger address space.

IPv6 isn't difficult to implement, and complexity is not the reason we're still stuck in IPv4 land. We are stuck here because the Internet runs on devices no one cares enough/has enough budget to update.

At this point it's not so much the basic devices, it's very rare to have hardware still around that doesn't support ipv6, it's more the configuration of the networks themselves, as any given network needs to have its own set of decisions made on address allocation, etc to actuallly support it. And, since it's used by fewer people and there always needs to be a fallback to ipv4, for most networks the if ipv6 is broken it's not an emergency like ipv4 being broken, heck it might not even be noticed. Which is a self-perpetuating cycle as people will stay away from ipv6, especially committing 100% to it, while there's still frequent breakages.

(This does point to the fact that maybe ipv6 and the associated implementations should have been designed with a view to a dual-stack mode which is basically "flip a switch and it'll mirror your ipv4 setup so you don't have to think about it until you locally need more address space", but I don't know if that's something that would have actually been feasible. But a lot of the complaining about ipv6 is because it was designed to operate fairly differently from ipv4 in a few keys ways which are not necessarily always better and add friction to the migration process)

Re: The mistakes and missed opportunities in the design of IPv6

#26

Post by jampekka »

sph wrote: post #20
sherburt3 wrote: post #9

Why couldn't we have just added another byte to IPv4 addresses and called it a day? Hell add two bytes.

For every problem there is a solution which is simple, easy and wrong.

Also a complex, difficult and wrong.

Re: The mistakes and missed opportunities in the design of IPv6

#27

Post by everfrustrated »

The story of the IPv6 transition is the story of the hubris of engineers thinking technical merit alone will drive change.

Nobody wants IPv6. It's been 30 years now and we're what 60% complete? By any metric this is a massive failure.

Until IPv6 can enable some societal benefit the transition will continue to just limp along.

People buy products not technology.

Re: The mistakes and missed opportunities in the design of IPv6

#28

Post by Hikikomori »

blueflow wrote: post #16
sherburt3 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yeah it would obviously constitute a new protocol and hardware/software would need to be upgraded, but beyond that everything that worked in IPv4 would continue to work in this theoretical protocol.

You could add 12 bytes to the address, such an protocol already exists and is in widespread use.

It's the change that is problematic, 1 bytes, 12 bytes, ipv6, they all have the same problem.

Re: The mistakes and missed opportunities in the design of IPv6

#29

Post by oftenwrong »

I recommend reading The world in which IPv6 was a good design by apenwarr:

https://apenwarr.ca/log/20170810

It has been submitted many times here:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

You will find at the end that it has received an update of sorts here:

https://tailscale.com/blog/two-internets-both-flakey

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