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Tell HN: IPv6-only still pretty much unusable

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Re: Tell HN: IPv6-only still pretty much unusable

#381

Post by Dagger2 »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #363
CountSessine wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory this could be handled by stuffing the extra 96 bits in an IP extension header. But this solves nothing because then any switch that isn’t IPv4+ aware will route packets incorrectly. Literally every single switch on the internet needs to be updated/replaced before you could start generating IPv4+ traffic otherwise the one outlier will send your IPv4+ packets off to Uzbekistan. OR Maybe you don’t use those 96…

Couple things: 1) Instead of stuffing the extra 96 bits in an extension, you stuff all 128 in the extension and use a reserved unrouted address in the v4 header field. Devices with no clue will just drop those packets. 2) Pedantically, switches are layer 2 devices. Some some of them act as routers also, but only routing is relevant.

Even better, instead of using a reserved unrouted address, use the "IP version" header field, which literally exists for this exact purpose.

I'm struggling to see how this would improve anything over what v6 did though.

Re: Tell HN: IPv6-only still pretty much unusable

#382

Post by rekoil »

babypuncher wrote: post #256
tjoff wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a very one-sided view of adoption. It ties directly with the rise of mobile and internet in areas that wasn't able to grab IPv4 addresses in time. Such as India. Not sure what France is doing though, maybe something right. So, from my perspective (which obviously is tied to my location) is that all computers have IPv4 (haven't heard (and I've asked) of a single consumer ISP that offers IPv6) but all mobile ph…

All the big cable and fiber internet providers I've worked with in the US support IPv6, even evil nasty ones like Comcast have supported it for a decade now.

Is it enabled by default on customer equipment?

Re: Tell HN: IPv6-only still pretty much unusable

#383

Post by MrRadar »

noipv6 wrote: post #139
tjoff wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a very one-sided view of adoption. It ties directly with the rise of mobile and internet in areas that wasn't able to grab IPv4 addresses in time. Such as India. Not sure what France is doing though, maybe something right. So, from my perspective (which obviously is tied to my location) is that all computers have IPv4 (haven't heard (and I've asked) of a single consumer ISP that offers IPv6) but all mobile ph…

okay - how about a few other angles? https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6/ - per-country, and within a country, per-asn eyeball statistics, collected from online ads - not just mobile! https://www.facebook.com/ipv6/?tab=ipv6_country - per-country, albeit with a mobile-heavier bias (as you hint) https://www.akamai.com/internet-station/cyber-attacks/state-... - collected from their content delivery network - tends to show…

Ugh, Centurylink. Their networks, both DSL and Fiber, support IPv6 but you need to go into the router config and explicitly enable it which is why they show up as 0.5% IPv6 supported in that first link despite every other top-10 US ISP having at least 50%. I've enabled v6 on my home connections with them on both DSL and fiber and I've had absolutely no problems with it. I wish they would enable it by default with their consumer network equipment.

Re: Tell HN: IPv6-only still pretty much unusable

#384

Post by Arnavion »

justin_oaks wrote: post #237
yesco wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A confusing aspect of IPv6 is that it's actually a much simpler protocol than IPv4, you often end up assuming you need to configure a bunch of stuff that you really don't have to. The most common example would be NAT, despite the complexity it adds to IPv4, people often get comfortable with idea of setting up complex subnet hierarchies and feel lost when that all just disappears with IPv6. The key things to remember…

Thanks, that helps a lot. This got me reading about IPv6 again. I'm trying to figure out how we'd set up an IPv6 network in the case where we have 1) Two upstream ISPs, mostly for failover, but could be loadbalanced too. 2) Internal servers with assigned DNS My initial thoughts were that for each of the two ISPs, each host (e.g. personal desktop or laptop) would use the IPv6 prefix and end up with two addresses. But…

If you want failover-independent IPs you can keep using NAT, ie NPTv6, at the gateway level and not bother with giving public IPs to your LAN machines.

Re: Tell HN: IPv6-only still pretty much unusable

#385

Post by [deleted] »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #363
CountSessine wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory this could be handled by stuffing the extra 96 bits in an IP extension header. But this solves nothing because then any switch that isn’t IPv4+ aware will route packets incorrectly. Literally every single switch on the internet needs to be updated/replaced before you could start generating IPv4+ traffic otherwise the one outlier will send your IPv4+ packets off to Uzbekistan. OR Maybe you don’t use those 96…

Couple things: 1) Instead of stuffing the extra 96 bits in an extension, you stuff all 128 in the extension and use a reserved unrouted address in the v4 header field. Devices with no clue will just drop those packets. 2) Pedantically, switches are layer 2 devices. Some some of them act as routers also, but only routing is relevant.

[deleted]

Re: Tell HN: IPv6-only still pretty much unusable

#386

Post by mcguire »

If the question is, "Why isn't IPv6 the most prominent protocol and v4 a legacy thing?" the answer is NAT and RFC1918 addresses. And NATs within NATs within NATs. The only "real" v4 address you need is for your publicly facing servers.

There has been no incentive to go to v6.

Re: Tell HN: IPv6-only still pretty much unusable

#387

Post by andix »

redox99 wrote: post #32

IPv6 has been one of the biggest failures in the last couple of decades. And I don't mean adoption, I mean the standard itself. If IPv6 were IPv4 with more octets, then we would all have been using it for like a decade. Yes, I understand it would still require some breaking changes, but it would have been a million times easier to upgrade, as it would be a kind of superset of IPv4 (1.2.3.4 can be referred as 0.0.0.0.…

I think the big problem of ipv6 is, that it’s not backwards compatible. You can’t just switch to ipv6 only and have a some network box rewrite ip addresses for example 1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8 to 10.6.7.8 or simple kernel module that translates it.

Just imagine if ipv6 stacks could just completely replace ipv4 stacks on every system, with full access to all ipv4 resources, as long as the first 12 bytes are all 0.

Re: Tell HN: IPv6-only still pretty much unusable

#388

Post by icedchai »

Dagger2 wrote: post #355
icedchai wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IPv4 will never disappear, it will just fade into obscurity. (We'll probably be dead and buried long before that time.)

Just like IPX. It's still necessary and in use for some things -- so it hasn't reached its end of life -- but when was the last time you ever thought about it? By this metric, we still haven't finished migrating to v4.

True. I could see a world where IPv4 is only for legacy, internal systems and it is not routed externally, but that feels like decades away. There would need to be a coordinated effort of major ISPs to turn it off, but why would that happen if people are willing to pay for it?

Re: Tell HN: IPv6-only still pretty much unusable

#389

Post by dieulot »

tjoff wrote: post #78
arcade79 wrote: post #31

I was thinking about ipv6 the other day. I concluded in my head that adoption was just around 5-10%. Luckily I went to verify that with statistics. https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html While price of ipv4 addresses are increasing, the world has slowly been adopting ipv6. From the graph above, I'd say we cross over 50% in about 2-3 years time. At some point the "dash" to adopt ipv6 starts, and brave fol…

That is a very one-sided view of adoption. It ties directly with the rise of mobile and internet in areas that wasn't able to grab IPv4 addresses in time. Such as India. Not sure what France is doing though, maybe something right. So, from my perspective (which obviously is tied to my location) is that all computers have IPv4 (haven't heard (and I've asked) of a single consumer ISP that offers IPv6) but all mobile ph…

> Not sure what France is doing though, maybe something right.

The telecom regulator (ARCEP) conditioned 5G bands on rolling out IPv6.

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