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IPv6 is the only way forward

ankshilp.in

31–40 of 350 posts

Re: IPv6 is the only way forward

#31
post #19
post #15

Someone should’ve thought about the UX of IPv6 before declaring it to be “the way”. It’s like having to learn Klingon just to setup your printer. IPvNext could sort that out… maybe it’s time to consider moving on.

People claim this all the time, but every time I push I discover they have no clue how networks work and just handwave away as "easy" or "details" the very reasons people who understand networks say it can't work.

I think you’re making my point - someone decided to surface a very low level concept “as is” (without a suitable abstraction) on a level where people also need it for use cases that don’t justify knowledge of the arcane. Or dealing with gatekeepers for that matter.

Re: IPv6 is the only way forward

#32
post #8

I don’t know how you measure “metric tons of content” but I suspect in general there’s lots of US-available content on IPv4 that the countries like China and India want to access, and not much the other way around. But that should be a perfect playground for an IPv6-only network that has gateways to the IPv4 content; eventually the home-developed content will begin to drive demand elsewhere.

Yes, there's lots of content on IPv4, and there is also a lot of traffic from India...

If India were to turn off IPv4, it would be a great incentive for IPv4-only sites in the US and Europe to add an IPv6 address.

Re: IPv6 is the only way forward

#33
post #4

IPv4 has been "in crisis" for the entire 20 years I've worked in tech and we seem to be managing alright. Not to say things can't be better or we shouldn't try to improve. But I'll be surprised if v4 isn't still the default for most use cases in another 20 years.

That's because the Internet is basically broadcast TV 2.0 so no one cares about having public IPv4's at home as long as they can get to their memes and streaming. Great job, we took something that was meant to be a next frontier in humanity and let anyone connect with anyone else without gatekeepers/intermediaries and turned it 21st century brainrot troughs. Perhaps a society not in slow intellectual decline would ha…

> Great job, we took something that was meant to be a next frontier in humanity and let anyone connect with anyone else without gatekeepers/intermediaries

We already had that, it's called shortwave radio. The internet, especially as it's implemented and as it's used, is a terrible way to achieve this. It's service providers the whole way down.

Re: IPv6 is the only way forward

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IPv6 cannot be backward-compatible with IPv4 in the way UTF-8 is with ASCII. Any argument built on that comparison reflects a misunderstanding of the protocols and leads to flawed conclusions.

Wait, why couldn't it? Just split the address into two 32-bit chunks (call the top word the "pool", bottom word "address") and assign the full IPV4 range to pool 0x00000000. Done.

That doesn't change anything - until everyone adopts the new chunk nobody can use it (even one windows XP machine that you don't personally care about is enough to still kill it today). IPv6 is better because at least it can work side by side by IPv6.

Re: IPv6 is the only way forward

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IPv6 cannot be backward-compatible with IPv4 in the way UTF-8 is with ASCII. Any argument built on that comparison reflects a misunderstanding of the protocols and leads to flawed conclusions.

Wait, why couldn't it? Just split the address into two 32-bit chunks (call the top word the "pool", bottom word "address") and assign the full IPV4 range to pool 0x00000000. Done.

Well for starters, IPv6 has 128 bit addrs.

But then think about what the routing tables would look like, how would an IPv4-only host find an IPv6 host not in pool 0? You'd be reinventing NAT, but in a less-structured context than how NAT works today. There's more issues to it too.

If it was really that simple they would have done exactly that. "Just adding more bits to IPv4" just isn't possible to do backwards-compatibly. IPv6 is the closest you can get to that while also dealing with the complexity that arises with longer addresses.

Re: IPv6 is the only way forward

#36
post #4

IPv4 has been "in crisis" for the entire 20 years I've worked in tech and we seem to be managing alright. Not to say things can't be better or we shouldn't try to improve. But I'll be surprised if v4 isn't still the default for most use cases in another 20 years.

His point is that you're managing alright because you live in a country where your ISP can give you a public IP address. The author lives in a country where that is not possible and accesses the Internet behind layers of NAT.

Re: IPv6 is the only way forward

#37
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You literally missed the most important part: "A transition from IPv4 to IPv6 seems far more easier especially since we already have 77% of people on IPv6." So to the extent they're aware of the "issues" you bring up they're already on top of it.

ISPs providing IPv6 connectivity out of the box does not equal software and internal devices doing the same.

You can route internal IPv4 networks over IPv6. There are several mapping strategies so this can even be transparent at your v6 gateway.

Re: IPv6 is the only way forward

#38
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IPv6 cannot be backward-compatible with IPv4 in the way UTF-8 is with ASCII. Any argument built on that comparison reflects a misunderstanding of the protocols and leads to flawed conclusions.

Why not? Sincere question. As a very superficial idea, if we go back to the drawing board, for example we could decide our new cool concept of address to be an IPv4 + an hex suffix, maybe at the expense of not having a humongous address space. So 10.20.30.40 would be an IPv4 address, and 10.20.30.40:fa:be:4c:9d could be an IPv6 address. With the :00:00:00:00 suffix being equivalent to the IPv4 version. I just made th…

How do you squeeze that in IPv4 packet? Especially in a way that won't get mangled by random ossified devices in between?

Re: IPv6 is the only way forward

#39
post #31
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People claim this all the time, but every time I push I discover they have no clue how networks work and just handwave away as "easy" or "details" the very reasons people who understand networks say it can't work.

I think you’re making my point - someone decided to surface a very low level concept “as is” (without a suitable abstraction) on a level where people also need it for use cases that don’t justify knowledge of the arcane. Or dealing with gatekeepers for that matter.

For most people there is no UX. Most US houses are IPv6 and use it without knowing anything about networking at all (most cable internet is IPv6, as the big cell networks).

The people who have to make networks work need to know how IPv6 works - but there is no getting around that - they know how IPv4 works too.

Re: IPv6 is the only way forward

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because the Internet is basically broadcast TV 2.0 so no one cares about having public IPv4's at home as long as they can get to their memes and streaming. Great job, we took something that was meant to be a next frontier in humanity and let anyone connect with anyone else without gatekeepers/intermediaries and turned it 21st century brainrot troughs. Perhaps a society not in slow intellectual decline would ha…

> Great job, we took something that was meant to be a next frontier in humanity and let anyone connect with anyone else without gatekeepers/intermediaries We already had that, it's called shortwave radio. The internet, especially as it's implemented and as it's used, is a terrible way to achieve this. It's service providers the whole way down.

It would be funny if HAM radio came back because the social filter imposed by the limitations wound up being more important than the technological capability.
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