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IPv6 Is A Disaster (but we can fix it)

matduggan.com

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Re: IPv6 Is A Disaster (but we can fix it)

#31

Post by WorldMaker »

JohnFen wrote: post #16
Nextgrid wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's fair to blame the technology. The problem is that the computing industry has changed. The things that IPv6 would enable (direct end-to-end connectivity) is now seen as a negative by the industry that has since pivoted on rent-seeking, walled gardens and restricting user's potential. The industry is now even legally making money on many things that would've been considered outright malware just a de…

I think that it's fair to blame the specification. I don't think the problem is that the industry has changed, I think it's that there's a huge amount of friction and headache for shifting to it. I think that's because it was too large of a change all at once, combined with the initial specification having some real problems (that did eventually get mitigated in later specs). I suspect that if IPv6 limited itself to…

"IPv4 with bigger addresses" would never have been backwards compatible and would always have been a compatibility break and would always have a slow rollout.

The proposals that seemed backwards compatible were just aggressive CGNAT consolidating even more power in the hands of IPv4 address owners. That doesn't seem like a sustainable fix in the long run.

Re: IPv6 Is A Disaster (but we can fix it)

#32

Post by JohnFen »

WorldMaker wrote: post #31
JohnFen wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that it's fair to blame the specification. I don't think the problem is that the industry has changed, I think it's that there's a huge amount of friction and headache for shifting to it. I think that's because it was too large of a change all at once, combined with the initial specification having some real problems (that did eventually get mitigated in later specs). I suspect that if IPv6 limited itself to…

"IPv4 with bigger addresses" would never have been backwards compatible and would always have been a compatibility break and would always have a slow rollout. The proposals that seemed backwards compatible were just aggressive CGNAT consolidating even more power in the hands of IPv4 address owners. That doesn't seem like a sustainable fix in the long run.

> "IPv4 with bigger addresses" would never have been backwards compatible and would always have been a compatibility break

True, but it would limit that break to a single thing. That's much easier to deal with than the whole basket of things that IPv6 brings with it.

Re: IPv6 Is A Disaster (but we can fix it)

#33

Post by WorldMaker »

Nextgrid wrote: post #23
AndreasHae wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The industry is now even legally making money on many things that would've been considered outright malware just a decade ago. Sounds a bit over the top. Can you name some examples?

10 years ago if you made software that uses all kinds of lies and dark patterns to get access to a user's contacts list, uploads it to your server and then you did data mining on it, people would be concerned and consider the software malicious. Likewise with analytics - tracking every single action you do in an app (along with generic metadata such as IP addresses - which often leaks your general location and your r…

I remember how often DoubleClick were the villains of tracking and privacy over-reach on early Slashdot, and then Google bought DoubleClick and became worse than DoubleClick ever were as top Slashdot villains and yet Google is still often called the heroes in the adtech space. (Though that sea is somewhat changing again as even more mainstream media catches up to tracking prevention.) It remains such a profound reversal to me.

Re: IPv6 Is A Disaster (but we can fix it)

#34

Post by cramjabsyn »

NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #5

For an IPv6 advocate, this guy sure set up a lot of NAT. And while he claimed he's going IPv6-only, he set up public access via IPv4. That won't convince anyone to switch or upgrade. I understand that he's building a usable service and just trying to git 'er done, but it's a lot of hacks, so I'm glad they're documented in this here blogpost. I hope that he can continually probe the edges to find out when real IPv6 su…

> And while he claimed he's going IPv6-only, he set up public access via IPv4. That won't convince anyone to switch or upgrade.

This is the major flaw. Sites can't go ipv6-only. In reality we will have parallel ipv4/6 networks in place until the wheels fall off

Re: IPv6 Is A Disaster (but we can fix it)

#35

Post by WorldMaker »

garganzol wrote: post #21

It depends on a country. I was at places where IPv4 is the default choice. I also visited countries where IPv6 is a standard practice. As a consumer, you really do not see much difference, IPv6 works surprisingly well if not better than IPv4.

Most US mobile carriers are IPv6-first or IPv6-only with big NAT64 gateways. One of those countries these days is the consumer parts of the US.

Re: IPv6 Is A Disaster (but we can fix it)

#36

Post by JohnFen »

WorldMaker wrote: post #30
bell-cot wrote: post #4

My IPv6 philosophy: If any "new" computer technology has been around even half as long as IPv6 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6_deployment#Major_mileston... ), with even a tenth of the "you gotta start using this!" push from the Big Boys - and yet still is very widely avoided/resisted, and the older-tech alternative commands a price premium due to widespread demand...gosh, that "new" technology must absolutely su…

One way to think about the timescale is the rollout time versus the expected usage amount of time. IPv6 was also a bit of a "science fiction project". I remember a lot of the early hype for IPv6 was that it was "IP for the whole solar system" or even sometimes "galactic IP". The architects of IPv6 were clear that they were hoping for something like a 1000 years or more of addresses and usage, even expecting nearly ev…

> If it is built to last a 1000 years or more, ~25% of internet traffic by the end of the first 30 years isn't a terrible rollout curve.

I don't think that measuring the rollout curve relative to the expected lifetime of the thing is reasonable (or at least, useful), though. In terms of something like this, measuring it relative to when IPv4 is simply no longer feasible is better. And that time is very, very near.

Re: IPv6 Is A Disaster (but we can fix it)

#37

Post by WorldMaker »

JohnFen wrote: post #27
zamadatix wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nice thing about NAT64 is you only NAT when you're talking to a v4 only client, otherwise you still have pure v6. This leaves no hacks to remove for a pure IPv6 experience it just means you can have single stacked IPv6 devices instead of needing to dual stack or wait for the entire rest of the world to also configure IPv6 too. I.e. it allows you to push IPv4 to your internet edge only in a way that doesn't downgr…

When the day comes that I have to shift to IPv6, I think I still want to NAT, though. I could be (and probably am) misunderstanding things, but I don't see how I can eliminate my need for it. What I want it for is so that I can have services exposed through my domain name, but operated on different internal servers.

At that point you just use a much simpler reverse proxy, I think? NATs have to be stateful to operate, but in IPv6 you can do a lot with simpler stateless reverse proxies.

Re: IPv6 Is A Disaster (but we can fix it)

#38

Post by JohnFen »

WorldMaker wrote: post #37
JohnFen wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the day comes that I have to shift to IPv6, I think I still want to NAT, though. I could be (and probably am) misunderstanding things, but I don't see how I can eliminate my need for it. What I want it for is so that I can have services exposed through my domain name, but operated on different internal servers.

At that point you just use a much simpler reverse proxy, I think? NATs have to be stateful to operate, but in IPv6 you can do a lot with simpler stateless reverse proxies.

For several services, you're probably right. But not all of them. I think.

Re: IPv6 Is A Disaster (but we can fix it)

#39

Post by WorldMaker »

NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #12
ClashTheBunny wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you suggest they have done? I feel like excluding IPv4 folks is a large reason why IPv6 continues to fail. I feel like this is a pretty good compromise between pushing IPv6 and not being an IPv6 hermit in the IPv6 desert.

At this point, I feel like the onus should be on IPv4-only clients to adapt to an IPv6 world, by enabling proxies and translators that enable them to access IPv6 sites until their support comes up to speed. This could be done on the ISP/enterprise level, but it is more counterproductive to tell IPv6 adopters and promoters that we need to bend over backwards and hack in NAT and purchase/rent/lease public IPv4 addresse…

This is sort of happening. Consumer "demand" is already showing IPv6-first usage in part because the (non-evil/braindead) consumer ISPs to avoid CGNAT scenarios have been moving to IPv6-first or IPv6-only with NAT64 gateways. This is especially the case in US mobile carriers who are generally some of the largest ISPs at this point by volume of US consumer traffic.

It's mostly the Enterprise level that has failed to get the message and is failing the IPv6 internet. Even just the examples in this article: It makes zero sense that GitHub still has no AAAA records (and is increasingly slow and lethargic on mobile carriers via NAT64 gateways; it is not just that their mobile app is only so-so, it's also their networking is slow). It makes zero sense that Docker put its AAAA records on weird secondary domains instead of their main domains.

Now that all of the major cloud providers are charging for IPv4 address space on a per-hour scale that might see reflection in bottom lines in IT budgets, maybe there will be a fire finally lit under Enterprises to consider using more and better IPv6.

Re: IPv6 Is A Disaster (but we can fix it)

#40

Post by hot_gril »

Since the main problem was address space, they should've just expanded it. Let everyone keep their old v4 addresses (with 0-padding), focus on the protocol upgrade, and give new users longer addresses for cheaper. You wouldn't even need DNS changes initially. Instead, v6 became a whole new thing with additional goals like removing NAT (which I'm not even convinced is a good idea), so of course there'd be way more friction.

Like, I said this elsewhere, Cloudflare public DNS is 1.1.1.1. If I switch to ipv6, I get to use 2606:4700:4700::1111. You telling me that's an upgrade?

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