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Why IPv6 is so complicated

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Re: Why IPv6 is so complicated

#271

Post by djha-skin »

Article does not address the elephant: there is no ability to NAT with IPv6. Sure, absolutely, you shouldn't have to NAT, but in my datacenter, NAT is a feature, not a bug. The article specifically asks "did the ipv6 designers go mad" and then they list features I've never heard of or use to prove they didn't. Those features are not why I think they went mad. The inability to create a NAT is.

For this reason, at every shop I've ever worked at, the intranet is ipv4, often with ipv6 disabled, with dual stack on the load balancer for ingress traffic. Note, I do not set it up that way: it comes like that when I've arrived.

Re: Why IPv6 is so complicated

#272

Post by josephcsible »

djha-skin wrote: post #271

Article does not address the elephant: there is no ability to NAT with IPv6. Sure, absolutely, you shouldn't have to NAT, but in my datacenter, NAT is a feature, not a bug. The article specifically asks "did the ipv6 designers go mad" and then they list features I've never heard of or use to prove they didn't. Those features are not why I think they went mad. The inability to create a NAT is. For this reason, at ever…

You can do NAT on IPv6. I've personally done so with both ip6tables and pf.

Re: Why IPv6 is so complicated

#273

Post by selectodude »

djha-skin wrote: post #271

Article does not address the elephant: there is no ability to NAT with IPv6. Sure, absolutely, you shouldn't have to NAT, but in my datacenter, NAT is a feature, not a bug. The article specifically asks "did the ipv6 designers go mad" and then they list features I've never heard of or use to prove they didn't. Those features are not why I think they went mad. The inability to create a NAT is. For this reason, at ever…

https://www.juniper.net/documentation/us/en/software/junos/n...

Re: Why IPv6 is so complicated

#274

Post by tryauuum »

evilmonkey19 wrote: post #269

Personally, i feel it is complicated because ISPs are highly afraid of trying it. I understand that such novel technology would be risky to use. But after 20+ years there are still many countries, like Spain, which are barely using it. After that much time has passed, it is already well battle-tested. At this point, you don't want to make the move either because you are too afraid of anything or you have commercial r…

I think they are not afraid, they just see 0 reasons to

without IPv6: everything works already, your customers can access any website

with IPv6: ...what are the benifits to them? they still have to provide IPv4 to customers or do some ipv6 to ipv4 translation to make sure ipv4 websites still work

(I've never worked at an ISP so my opinion might be useless)

Re: Why IPv6 is so complicated

#275

Post by ninkendo »

api wrote: post #268

It’s not. It’s IPv4 with more bits and some changes to Ethernet level lookup. The SLAAC vs DHCPv6 mess is not really a problem with the core V6 spec.

The changes to Ethernet lookup mandate that you have a link-local address in addition to your “real” address, and this starts the ball rolling on the idea that machines have multiple IP addresses in general. Which makes privacy addresses commonplace, ULA+GUA addresses on the same machine, etc.

I think this is the biggest change with IPv6: that a machine’s IP addresses is no longer its identity, and you can’t easily predict what address will be used when connecting somewhere. IP-based access control becomes impossible (not that it was ever a great idea in the first place), reverse DNS lookups become irrelevant, seeing IP’s in logs no longer tells you “what machine connected here”, it’s overall a big change in mental model.

But then you get over it, stop making assumptions that you can rely on IP addresses for knowing things about a host, and the rest of it is fine.

Re: Why IPv6 is so complicated

#276

Post by Galanwe »

djha-skin wrote: post #271

Article does not address the elephant: there is no ability to NAT with IPv6. Sure, absolutely, you shouldn't have to NAT, but in my datacenter, NAT is a feature, not a bug. The article specifically asks "did the ipv6 designers go mad" and then they list features I've never heard of or use to prove they didn't. Those features are not why I think they went mad. The inability to create a NAT is. For this reason, at ever…

Its not just NAT, it's also DHCP. Somehow the nerds creating IPv6 decided to not only add bytes (which is what people wanted), but also "fix" DHCP and NAT, which nobody asked for.

Re: Why IPv6 is so complicated

#277

Post by formerly_proven »

api wrote: post #268

It’s not. It’s IPv4 with more bits and some changes to Ethernet level lookup. The SLAAC vs DHCPv6 mess is not really a problem with the core V6 spec.

If it actually was v4 with more bits and different ARP it wouldn't take 30+ years to be deployed.

Re: Why IPv6 is so complicated

#279

Post by dgoodell »

api wrote: post #268

It’s not. It’s IPv4 with more bits and some changes to Ethernet level lookup. The SLAAC vs DHCPv6 mess is not really a problem with the core V6 spec.

IPv4 + all the other stuff you need to actually make it work in the real world actually seems more complicated than IPv6 to me.

Maybe they’re comparing the minimal implementation on a home network. But even then I’m not sure the claim holds up.

People learned IPv4 when they were younger in a more incremental manner and take it for granted now.

Re: Why IPv6 is so complicated

#280

Post by Spooky23 »

api wrote: post #268

It’s not. It’s IPv4 with more bits and some changes to Ethernet level lookup. The SLAAC vs DHCPv6 mess is not really a problem with the core V6 spec.

When I turned IPv6 on on my spectrum connection i ended up with like 4 different interfaces I didn’t need and broken local DNS.
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