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Why IPv6 is so complicated

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21–30 of 519 posts

Re: Why IPv6 is so complicated

#21
post #15

if it was easier to use and less of a PITA, it wouldn't be taking decades.

If anything, IPv6 is extremely easy to use, especially with SLAAC: On any kind of standard network, you turn on IPv6 on your machine, and, given physical connectivity, bam! You're on the internet. It only gets complex if you try to micro-manage it.

So, like ipv4, but you lose the protection and privacy afforded by the NAT?

Re: Why IPv6 is so complicated

#22

This annoys me, especially the last “It takes at least 25 years” rhetoric. It didn’t take 25 years for SSL. SSH. Gzip encoding on HTTP pages. QUIC. Web to replace NNTP. GPRS/HSDPA/3G/4G/5G They all rolled out just fine and were pretty backwards and forwards compatible with each other. The whole SLAAC/DHCPv6/RA thing is a total clusterfuck. I’m sure there’s many reasons that’s the case but my god. What does your ISP s…

how do you encode 128 bits without making a long number? and not using hex?

Far easier to use ipv8, which just has 5 octets instead of 4.

Re: Why IPv6 is so complicated

#23

"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.

It's not like anything has changed, except the running out of IPv4 part.

Edit: or maybe they added 12 more extra configuration protocols to manage, in the name of "ease of use".

Re: Why IPv6 is so complicated

#24

This annoys me, especially the last “It takes at least 25 years” rhetoric. It didn’t take 25 years for SSL. SSH. Gzip encoding on HTTP pages. QUIC. Web to replace NNTP. GPRS/HSDPA/3G/4G/5G They all rolled out just fine and were pretty backwards and forwards compatible with each other. The whole SLAAC/DHCPv6/RA thing is a total clusterfuck. I’m sure there’s many reasons that’s the case but my god. What does your ISP s…

> What does your ISP support?

My ISP is Spectrum. They get a 0/10 on IPv6 support on this test page [1].

[1] https://test-ipv6.com

Re: Why IPv6 is so complicated

#25
post #18
post #7

India 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…

Now compare average income to see how much this matters.

very transparent.

Re: Why IPv6 is so complicated

#26
post #15

if it was easier to use and less of a PITA, it wouldn't be taking decades.

If anything, IPv6 is extremely easy to use, especially with SLAAC: On any kind of standard network, you turn on IPv6 on your machine, and, given physical connectivity, bam! You're on the internet. It only gets complex if you try to micro-manage it.

> especially with SLAAC

Oh no, last time I asked on HN I got 24 to 48 easy steps involving a lot more acronyms than this (please don't repeat them).

IPv6 is easy to use only if you let your one router manage everything and you give up control of your home network.

Edit: again, please don't help. There have been HNers trying to help before, but my home network is non trivial and all the "easy" autoconfiguration actually gets in the way.

Re: Why IPv6 is so complicated

#27
post #21
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything, IPv6 is extremely easy to use, especially with SLAAC: On any kind of standard network, you turn on IPv6 on your machine, and, given physical connectivity, bam! You're on the internet. It only gets complex if you try to micro-manage it.

So, like ipv4, but you lose the protection and privacy afforded by the NAT?

IPv4 requires a DHCP server. It requires assigning a range of addresses that's usually fairly small, and requires manual configuration as soon as you need more than 254 devices on a network. The range must never conflict with any VPN you use. And there's more. Compare to IPv6: Nothing. All of these just go away.

And concerning the NAT: That's just another word for firewall, which you still have in your router, which still needs to forward packages, and still can decide to block some of them.

Re: Why IPv6 is so complicated

#28
I recently had to set up basic IP-based country detection in Nginx for a project. Parsing and handling IPv4 is trivial. The second I had to account for IPv6 string formats and update the Geo databases to match, the complexity just spiked for no good reason. It feels like we traded address exhaustion for parsing nightmares.

Re: Why IPv6 is so complicated

#29
post #27
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, like ipv4, but you lose the protection and privacy afforded by the NAT?

IPv4 requires a DHCP server. It requires assigning a range of addresses that's usually fairly small, and requires manual configuration as soon as you need more than 254 devices on a network. The range must never conflict with any VPN you use. And there's more. Compare to IPv6: Nothing. All of these just go away. And concerning the NAT: That's just another word for firewall, which you still have in your router, which…

[deleted]

Re: Why IPv6 is so complicated

#30
post #27
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, like ipv4, but you lose the protection and privacy afforded by the NAT?

IPv4 requires a DHCP server. It requires assigning a range of addresses that's usually fairly small, and requires manual configuration as soon as you need more than 254 devices on a network. The range must never conflict with any VPN you use. And there's more. Compare to IPv6: Nothing. All of these just go away. And concerning the NAT: That's just another word for firewall, which you still have in your router, which…

The dhcp server is in the router, just like you need a router for slaac.
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