ELI5, why are IPv4 addresses so precious?
The main reason is they "just work" and they're now a scarce resource.
Having something that's addressable on the internet is trivial when you have a public IPv4 address.
AWS IPv4 Estate Now Worth $4.5B
161–170 of 480 posts
Re: AWS IPv4 Estate Now Worth $4.5B
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
you've /never/ heard anyone call ipv6 long, confusing, and complicated? I've basically /only/ heard people say that. This is probably because the idealized world of "only network engineers" is leaky. Programmers, sysadmins, people trying to get their network printer to work, non-specialists have to interface with network addresses constantly. Saying they shouldn't is not a description of reality. Not everyone who nee…
I've almost never heard anyone in the general population use ip addresses, with the notable exception of gamers, but that's fading away too now that all major games come with friends, parties and deep linking support I don't really understand the use case for typing up addresses either, copy pasting is going to be more precise, and if one can't read 8 quartet of letters one shouldn't be near networking equipment eith…
right, but this isn't theoretical. ipv6 was finalized 25 years ago and global adoption is around 1/3. There's something seriously wrong and it's not that 2/3s of the world are using Windows Me and 20+ year old devices that don't support it.
It's human and behavior driven and addressing that is a matter of packaging, process, promotion, product, presentation... all those marketing ps.
Re: AWS IPv4 Estate Now Worth $4.5B
#163can I buy one ipv4 for myself somehow. not lease or rent, buy ?
No, the minimum allocation is a /24 (for v4) or a /32 (for v6)
Re: AWS IPv4 Estate Now Worth $4.5B
#164can I buy one ipv4 for myself somehow. not lease or rent, buy ?
Last I checked, the smallest blocks for sale are class C.
I also don't think there are many places willing to announce your ultra specific route because it's not great for routing tables.
Re: AWS IPv4 Estate Now Worth $4.5B
#165Re: AWS IPv4 Estate Now Worth $4.5B
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't run IPv6 on my home network. I try it about once a year, enabling it at the router (it's already enabled on my laptop). And then random stuff just doesn't work. Various websites hang, various widgets just don't load, etc. Then I turn it off and everything gets better again. I'be been too lazy to diagnose why exactly it doesn't work, I just figure it's easier to run with it off. At some point a website I reall…
> And then random stuff just doesn't work. Various websites hang, various widgets just don't load, etc. Then I turn it off and everything gets better again. Before I switched ISPs a few weeks ago to one without IPv6, I was with an ISP with IPv6 (dual-stack) for about five years and had zero problems. In fact it worked 'too well' initially: when I was still IPv4-only I had put a bunch of Facebook domains in my iMac's…
One of the security issues with dual stack. Your attack surface is twice the size, and human error means you are more vulnerable.
Still unsure of the benefit of dual stack, but there are numerous costs.
Re: AWS IPv4 Estate Now Worth $4.5B
#167Can we go back in time and hit the designers of IPv6 upside the head? The decision not to make IPv6 backwards compatible, the belief that a beautiful new standard could magically replace something already so widespread... "Naive" is an inadequate word. We are still futzing with the transition 3 decades later, with no end in sight. Grrr, grumble...
These arguments always boil down to these two:
"Please just try to fit more than 4 billion numbers into 4 bytes" -- this is mathematically impossible.
"Just extend the address size" -- this is an entirely new protocol by the definition of IPv4, which uses fixed-size addresses.
The reason for the slow IPv6 adoption is that there was no financial or business pressure. While IPv4 is ubiquitous, nobody individually feels a need to migrate to IPv6.
E.g.: How many customers would you gain by supporting IPv6? Generally zero. That doesn't sell well internally when the network team is asking for a budget.
The IPv6 transition will be like a bankruptcy: very slowly, slowly, then all of a sudden.
The sudden bit will happen when IPv4 address will cost $1K to $10K annually. At that point, customers will be reaching those IPv4 endpoints via three layers of proxies or NAT gateways, and IPv6 will be noticeably faster, more reliable, and free.
Re: AWS IPv4 Estate Now Worth $4.5B
#168Can we go back in time and hit the designers of IPv6 upside the head? The decision not to make IPv6 backwards compatible, the belief that a beautiful new standard could magically replace something already so widespread... "Naive" is an inadequate word. We are still futzing with the transition 3 decades later, with no end in sight. Grrr, grumble...
These arguments always boil down to these two: "Please just try to fit more than 4 billion numbers into 4 bytes" -- this is mathematically impossible. "Just extend the address size" -- this is an entirely new protocol by the definition of IPv4, which uses fixed-size addresses. The reason for the slow IPv6 adoption is that there was no financial or business pressure. While IPv4 is ubiquitous, nobody individually feels…
Fitting more than 4B numbers into 4 bytes is mathematically impossible, but building a backwards compatible and easier to integrate standard may not be.
Take USB for example. The capabilities of USB 3.1, 3.0, 2.0 is impossible to achieve for USB 1.0. So is high-speed charging.
However, the end-user experience is generally pleasant, nitpicks around some of USB-IF's specific choices aside.
Re: AWS IPv4 Estate Now Worth $4.5B
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
EU have enough influence to do to IPV6 what it did to USB in iPhones.
It's harder to prove consumer harm with something as abstract as IP addresses, and there's a bunch of other pieces that make this much less unlikely, such as the fact that USBs already become obsolete and need to be replaced, so you're just shifting the replacement cycle.
With all those addresses locked up at the hyperscalers IPv4 has become anticompetitive. So yes, the EU can prove consumer harm.
Re: AWS IPv4 Estate Now Worth $4.5B
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only network engineers should see or care about IP addresses. The fact IPv6 addresses use colons is why people don't use IPv6 is the worst take I've ever heard.
I host a few video game servers for my friends and love the fact that I can say my easy to remember IPv4 address aloud whenever they forgot it. I have an IPv6 address but haven't bothered memorizing it or giving it out because it would just be more hassle.
This is even better:
game.latticeanimal.net. 3600 IN A 1.2.3.4