Why IPv6 is so complicated
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Why IPv6 is so complicated
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Re: Why IPv6 is so complicated
#2"The IPv6 mess" by DJB
Re: Why IPv6 is so complicated
#3What I don’t understand is why coexistence was so important. TFA notes a lot of protocols were in use back then.
Also what’s with all the problems? I’ve had RA packets leak across VLANs via firewall misconfigurations, some my fault and some not. I get that people designing internet protocols had a lot to think about, but why am I fighting stuff like this?
Re: Why IPv6 is so complicated
#4"The IPv6 mess" by DJB https://cr.yp.to/djbdns/ipv6mess.html
How I wish that djb time stamped his articles, as I feel like this article is over a decade old but I can’t tell with certainty.
Re: Why IPv6 is so complicated
#5> The main reason for IPv6, and its only real reason for existence, was bigger addresses.
Which also allowed for better route aggregation in the core BGP tables.
Better node mobility support. Better multicast support. Genuine link local addresses.
IPv4 had a lot of unfortunate edge cases. I think IPv6's greatest strength and also responsible for it's slow rollout was it's insistence on solving several of these problems at once, along with IPSec as the article notes, and hammering them into the hard requirements for the core stack.
Re: Why IPv6 is so complicated
#6What I don’t understand is why coexistence was so important. TFA notes a lot of protocols were in use back then. Also what’s with all the problems? I’ve had RA packets leak across VLANs via firewall misconfigurations, some my fault and some not. I get that people designing internet protocols had a lot to think about, but why am I fighting stuff like this?
The whole world can't migrate all of their hardware on a whim. There was a period of time when it was a very common quip to say that Amazon would have to buy every new IPv6 compatible router in the world for a year if they wanted to upgrade their infra. I don't know if the urban legend is true or not, but the fact that it sounded plausible is a good enough of an example.
Re: Why IPv6 is so complicated
#7India on around 80% in the apnic labs active measurement of end users.
https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6/in
They report nearly a billion users, predominantly in mobile.
So, "only" 750 to 800 million users. Think about that: 3x the population of the USA using it most of the time, in one economy.
Here's the rankings:
https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6/XA?o=cINw30x1r1
This is a different measure to Google's. They measure different things,
Re: Why IPv6 is so complicated
#8"The IPv6 mess" by DJB https://cr.yp.to/djbdns/ipv6mess.html
How I wish that djb time stamped his articles, as I feel like this article is over a decade old but I can’t tell with certainty.
Re: Why IPv6 is so complicated
#9> The main reason for IPv6, and its only real reason for existence, was bigger addresses. Which also allowed for better route aggregation in the core BGP tables. Better node mobility support. Better multicast support. Genuine link local addresses. IPv4 had a lot of unfortunate edge cases. I think IPv6's greatest strength and also responsible for it's slow rollout was it's insistence on solving several of these proble…
And that's what you should do, since you're forcing the protocol update you should take the opportunity that might not come later
Re: Why IPv6 is so complicated
#10What I don’t understand is why coexistence was so important. TFA notes a lot of protocols were in use back then. Also what’s with all the problems? I’ve had RA packets leak across VLANs via firewall misconfigurations, some my fault and some not. I get that people designing internet protocols had a lot to think about, but why am I fighting stuff like this?
> What I don’t understand is why coexistence was so important.
Military, corporate, tech... it isn't. (If your people like flag day migrations. It's… "a choice".) But if you have to explain to an end user why some things work and some don't, you're just f'd.
And note "coexistence" here means that an end host can implement IPv4 and IPv6 at the same time, without them interacting at all. Imagine if you had to choose between IPv4 and IPv6 on your devices, maybe something like "you need a 2nd network card". Can you imagine anyone switching to the less popular protocol?