Live data from Hacker News

IPv6 may already be irrelevant – but so is moving off IPv4

theregister.com

31–40 of 54 posts

Re: IPv6 may already be irrelevant – but so is moving off IPv4

#31
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's only true if you aren't behind CG-NAT. If you are, your firewall can port forward all it wants but it won't matter, the ISP would have to also port forward to you.

Even in this situation, your ISP can port forward to you. While not universal, some ISPs support PCP, where you can ask for a port mapping to your CGNAT-ed IP and port. They might or might not honor the external port (if it is taken, they obviously cannot), but you will get some hole punched.

> your ISP can port forward to you

But will they? Domestic ISPs are pretty hesitant to offer such, or anything at that manner.

Re: IPv6 may already be irrelevant – but so is moving off IPv4

#32

The resistance to switch to ipv6, or the comfort with the ipv4-born address exhaustion remedies, only helps an internet of consumers, not an internet of peers that create and share. If you are behind NAT or CG-NAT, you can only consume, not create. You can't host a server, expose a port. You are at the mercy of the big fish.

And there are different kinds of big fish. You may be in a bad neighborhood, sharing IP with misbehaved actors on the digital or real world. You may get blocked, banned or snooped because there is or was a target, an attacker or someone with bad digital hygiene.

Re: IPv6 may already be irrelevant – but so is moving off IPv4

#33
post #8

I mean its an opinion. The argument is somewhat thin "CDNs use DNS so it doesn't matter what the IP is" I mean yes, that true, but it should have always been true. Dishing out raw IPs is bad anyway, it limits your flexibility (yes yes anycast exists, but if you're big enough to setup any cast, I bet you're using ipv6 internally already) Ipv6 is here, and will slowly grow as time goes on. There will be growing pains,…

> 10.0.0.0/8 runs out pretty quick 16,777,216 containers, wow.

Except it's not 16 million containers. You need addressing for every link in the network. Want 10 racks of 20 servers with redundant switching in each, redundant spines in the network rack? That's 60 physical links, each of which need two addresses, and that's just the fabric underlay network. You haven't created the actual overlay networks yet, which you need multiple of (front end, back end, database, storage...).

Consider that 200 servers is a drop in the bucket at some scales, you can see why data centre is moving to V6 only.

Re: IPv6 may already be irrelevant – but so is moving off IPv4

#34
post #20
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My ISP is IPv4 only and I host plenty of shit and punch plenty of holes. That’s a function of my firewall not how many bits are in my IP address.

Did you miss the part about CG-NAT? Once your ISP runs out of their IP4 addresses and puts you behind a CG-NAT, you can punch all the holes you like; nothing is going to get to you. At least not without doing fancy stuff like using an externally-hosted VPN to shuttle connections to you.

The GP has both versions, not just CGNAT (which would have made their comment less nonsensical):

> If you are behind NAT or CG-NAT

Re: IPv6 may already be irrelevant – but so is moving off IPv4

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is the ISPs, that pretty much killed the IPv6 with their mishandled transition. Where I'm, I can choose 1 out of 1 broadband provider available in the area. With this provider, I can either have a public IPv4 address (or several) with their CPE in bridge mode, or DS-Lite, with IPv4 CGNAT without PCP and /64 for the IPv6 addresses (i.e. no address space for subnets, no prefix distribution) AND having to use their r…

Are you sure about this? It’s in the rfc from like 1998 that ISPs should allow customers to sla for larger prefixes. I don’t know a single US isp that doesn’t allow at least a 56. IPv6 is pointless and still a security risk but I’m guessing you’re misconfiguring something.

Yup, Liberty Global (also known as UPC) in Europe.

Assigning only /64 & no DHCP-PD. There's not much to misconfigure, since in IPv6 you have to use their router and they are pushing the config.

And since you have only /64, you cannot put another router behind theirs.

Re: IPv6 may already be irrelevant – but so is moving off IPv4

#38
post #8

I mean its an opinion. The argument is somewhat thin "CDNs use DNS so it doesn't matter what the IP is" I mean yes, that true, but it should have always been true. Dishing out raw IPs is bad anyway, it limits your flexibility (yes yes anycast exists, but if you're big enough to setup any cast, I bet you're using ipv6 internally already) Ipv6 is here, and will slowly grow as time goes on. There will be growing pains,…

> 10.0.0.0/8 runs out pretty quick 16,777,216 containers, wow.

>> 10.0.0.0/8 runs out pretty quick

> 16,777,216 containers, wow.

Have you ever been involved in a corporate merger? IP conflicts are a huge pain point. Quite often you have to NAT with-in the company itself because the acquirer and acquiree are both using 10/8.

Re: IPv6 may already be irrelevant – but so is moving off IPv4

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in this situation, your ISP can port forward to you. While not universal, some ISPs support PCP, where you can ask for a port mapping to your CGNAT-ed IP and port. They might or might not honor the external port (if it is taken, they obviously cannot), but you will get some hole punched.

> your ISP can port forward to you But will they? Domestic ISPs are pretty hesitant to offer such, or anything at that manner.

Some do. But when they don't, it is not a fault of CGNAT - which does provide the capability -- but a fault of specific ISP, that's not willing to use it.

Re: IPv6 may already be irrelevant – but so is moving off IPv4

#40
Felt like the article went off into lala land towards the end:

“The last couple of decades have seen us stripping out network-centric functionality and replacing this with an undistinguished commodity packet transport medium. It's fast and cheap, but it's up to applications to overlay this common basic service with its own requirements." The result is networks become "simple dumb pipes!"

Given that, Huston wonders if it's time to revisit the definition of the internet as networks that use a common shared transmission fabric, a common suite of protocols and a common protocol address pool.

Rather, he posits "Is today's network more like 'a disparate collection of services that share common referential mechanisms using a common namespace?'"

Post reply on HN