Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AWS IPv4 Estate Now Worth $4.5B

toonk.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 480 posts

Re: AWS IPv4 Estate Now Worth $4.5B

#361

Post by throw0101c »

rini17 wrote: post #177
growse wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does a host that thinks there are only 4 billion addresses send a packet to a host with an address that falls outside of the 32 bit v4 space? This is a fundamental problem. Backwards compatibility (without introducing translation schemes and middleboxes) is literally impossible .

Extending address is fully possible, and if we drop requirement that the extended part be individually routable, even simple. But no, someone said we must redo whole stack and we need every piece of sand to have public routable address..so now we are stuck between rock (old fossilized IPv4) and hard place (completely incompatible IPv6).

> Extending address is fully possible, and if we drop requirement that the extended part be individually routable, even simple.

No it is not:

* You also have to deploy new DNS code to handle a new record type to handle longer "IPv4+" addresses.

* You also have to deploy new OS and library code with new socket, etc, APIs because all in_addr_t definitions and data structures are 32-bit-only.

If a public service has a "IPv4+" address, how does a not-IPv4+ host, or not-IPv4+ compliant code handle it? If you want >4B addresses you have to tweak all the code that touches address structures. You have to (re)deploy code on all the network elements that touch the packet bits: all the end-user applications (browsers, chat clients, etc), all the end-user operating systems, all the middle-boxes, all the routers. If you have network devices and segments between the public service and the client that are not IPv4+ compliant, you have to configure the clients to send the IPv4+ traffic to translation boxes that are IPv4+ compliant.

Basically all the stuff that is happening with IPv6.

Re: AWS IPv4 Estate Now Worth $4.5B

#362

Post by throw0101c »

welterde wrote: post #95
bradley13 wrote: post #93

Can 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...

You have to go back further in time and hit the designers of IPv4 on the head for not making it forward compatible. IPv6 is as backward compatible as is possible within this constraint. You can embed IPv4 space within IPv6, there is NAT64, tunneling IPv6 over IPv4 and many other transition technologies. It's not possible to design a protocol that is any more backwards-compatible.

> You have to go back further in time and hit the designers of IPv4 on the head for not making it forward compatible.

IPv4 was designed for a handful of research institutions. It is not the fault of the designers that it "escaped" the lab into the 'real world'.

Re: AWS IPv4 Estate Now Worth $4.5B

#363

Post by Qwertious »

kristopolous wrote: post #162
avereveard wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nitpicking, but it looks closer to 1/2: https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html

Also it's increasing at ~5% a year, so in 12 years it'll be at ~104%.

Re: AWS IPv4 Estate Now Worth $4.5B

#365

Post by yyyk »

throw0101c wrote: post #358
Macha wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, the priority order on your OS for address selection, even when it comes to stuff like choosing which DNS results to use is IPv6 global address > IPv4 > ULAs. So on a dual stack network, ULAs with not be used unless the only address is a ULA. And even if you run your internal services with only an AAAA record pointing to the ULA, the client's source address will likely be the global address of the client devi…

> IPv6 global address > IPv4 > ULAs. The problems this caused/s seems to have been an unintended / unforeseen consequence that was more exposed as people gained experience. There's a draft being worked on to officially change the priority: > The behavior of ULA addressing as defined by [RFC6724] is preferred below legacy IPv4 addressing, thus rendering ULA IPv6 deployment functionally unusable in IPv4 / IPv6 dual-sta…

Leaving aside that the draft is badly worded (there are long descriptions of the problem, but no short paragraph saying what must be changed), the long time until this is deployed if ever, the new order will still leave ULA below IPv6 global addresses - which means it doesn't solve stock_toaster's problem at all.

Re: AWS IPv4 Estate Now Worth $4.5B

#366

Post by Qwertious »

speedgoose wrote: post #335
superluserdo wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NAT is the problem that IPv6 fixes. Think about the parent comment >if you are making more than 4B addresses routable then any existing IPv4 device will not be able to route some addresses, so you will have caused a split in the internet This has basically already happened. We've massively extended IPv4 by stuffing extra address bits into the router's port number, and it means that any two devices behind NATs can't d…

NAT has been more successful than IPv6 at fixing the same issue, the shortage of IPv4 adresses, but without breaking compatibility (well at the cost of crazy hacks for weird protocols such as FTP). Not being able to route directly doesn’t seem to be a major issue to me. It for sure require more computing power in routers but also adds some safety and privacy by design.

NAT doesn't fix the issue, it works around it. It means that hosting a home server costs extra money to get a static IP.

Re: AWS IPv4 Estate Now Worth $4.5B

#367

Post by supertrope »

superlupo wrote: post #236
candiodari wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IPv6 is backwards compatible. In multiple ways: Option 1: "6to4" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6to4 Option 2: "nat64" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAT64 + DNS64 Option 2b: "nat46" (which makes a few ipv6 hosts available over ipv4 if yo ulike) Option 3: "Teredo" (also known as "6in4" "tunnel broker" "6over4" "tunneling" ...) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teredo_tunneling Option 4: 6rd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP…

Reading, not even trying to understand that list makes my brain explode.

NAT64+DNS64 is the best transition method as it eliminates the need for dual-stack.

Clients can be IPv6 only and ideally need a CLAT installed to handle the edge case of IPv4 literals in apps that don't use DNS. The ISP's internal network can be IPv6 only. Only this NAT64 translator needs to speak both IPv6 and IPv4, and only for non-IPv6 traffic.

Re: AWS IPv4 Estate Now Worth $4.5B

#368

Post by supertrope »

ta1243 wrote: post #214
candiodari wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IPv6 is backwards compatible. In multiple ways: Option 1: "6to4" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6to4 Option 2: "nat64" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAT64 + DNS64 Option 2b: "nat46" (which makes a few ipv6 hosts available over ipv4 if yo ulike) Option 3: "Teredo" (also known as "6in4" "tunnel broker" "6over4" "tunneling" ...) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teredo_tunneling Option 4: 6rd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP…

The fact there are so many options shows the fundamental design problem.

It's iterating over time to fix real problems. No protocol is perfect in the initial RFC.

Re: AWS IPv4 Estate Now Worth $4.5B

#369

Post by growse »

speedgoose wrote: post #335
superluserdo wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NAT is the problem that IPv6 fixes. Think about the parent comment >if you are making more than 4B addresses routable then any existing IPv4 device will not be able to route some addresses, so you will have caused a split in the internet This has basically already happened. We've massively extended IPv4 by stuffing extra address bits into the router's port number, and it means that any two devices behind NATs can't d…

NAT has been more successful than IPv6 at fixing the same issue, the shortage of IPv4 adresses, but without breaking compatibility (well at the cost of crazy hacks for weird protocols such as FTP). Not being able to route directly doesn’t seem to be a major issue to me. It for sure require more computing power in routers but also adds some safety and privacy by design.

> Not being able to route directly doesn’t seem to be a major issue to me.

Look at the bigger world around you.

I am, right now, involved in a major cloud migration. Having overlapping, constrained RFC1918 space and also having to NAT everything is presenting an enormous set of constraints and risks. It adds literally zero benefit.

Life would be infinitely easier, and we could provide so many more capabilities if everything could just have a routable IP address. Unfortunately, I'm not in charge of our addressing policy.

NAT is an awful, short-sighted hack that causes many more problems than it solves.

Re: AWS IPv4 Estate Now Worth $4.5B

#370

Post by tsimionescu »

welterde wrote: post #197
tsimionescu wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But ever since privacy extensions, that's not how IPv6 is allocated, right? Each individual system is supposed to get a /64. Your household should actually have a /56 or something crazy like that, which few ISPs actually do. SLAAC doesn't even work if it doesn't have it's own /64 per host, I believe.

It is. A typical enterprise might get allocated a /32, which gives them 32-bit to nicely design their network and give 64-bit to each individual network where devices are connected. A typical ISP will get allocated a much larger allocation like a /20, which allows them to allocate a /56 for each of their customers while still having a few bits to play with. But all starting with the same prefix. With IPv4 you will ha…

Your initial claim was that a IPv6 address consists of a 64-bit network address, then a 64-bit device address that could be separated into : as an example.

However, SLAAC demands that each device is given a 64-bit prefix that it then chooses many random 64-bit host addresses from, without any other rhyme or reason. So, if you want to know the IP of a host you want to connect to, you have to remember at least a 64-bit number that changes every day by design. Add to that some extra bits for the particular part of the network you are in.

So your IPv6 is more like ::. Human friendly this is not.

Post reply on HN