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IPv6 Support for EC2 Instances in Virtual Private Clouds

aws.amazon.com

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Re: IPv6 Support for EC2 Instances in Virtual Private Clouds

#41

Post by zbjornson »

Mythanar wrote: post #40
zbjornson wrote: post #34

Pardon my ignorance, but why is this needed? I've seen dozens of "+1s" for ipv6 on both AWS and GCP, but no one says why really. Is there hardware out there on the public internet that cannot communicate over ipv4 already?

Most of it can't, actually. Rather, using the words in the question in their strict meaning, most of the hardware out there is not on the "public internet", it is behind NAT. You can argue that behind NAT there is still IPv4 connectivity with public internet, but it is actually closer to proxying (i.e. having some device talk to internet on your behalf) than to routing (i.e. have some device pass your packets on). Lo…

But if that exists, why should I as someone running on EC2 care if I can use IPv6 natively or have to make use of such proxying/routing?

Re: IPv6 Support for EC2 Instances in Virtual Private Clouds

#42

Post by colechristensen »

zbjornson wrote: post #34

Pardon my ignorance, but why is this needed? I've seen dozens of "+1s" for ipv6 on both AWS and GCP, but no one says why really. Is there hardware out there on the public internet that cannot communicate over ipv4 already?

It would be very bad form to wait until there was a prevalent set of users that couldn't access your service. It's almost the other way around, AWS – because it operates such a huge chunk of Internet sites – will bring the day where it's reasonable to ditch ipv4 much closer by expanding ipv6 support.

Re: IPv6 Support for EC2 Instances in Virtual Private Clouds

#43

Post by noahm »

jsmthrowaway wrote: post #37
harryh wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious but why is IPv6 support such a priority for you that it would be the deciding factor in your choice of hosting provider?

In 2017, one should instead ask why it wouldn't be.

Or, to elaborate a little further, https://www.iab.org/2016/11/07/iab-statement-on-ipv6/

Re: IPv6 Support for EC2 Instances in Virtual Private Clouds

#44

Post by toast0 »

zbjornson wrote: post #41
Mythanar wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of it can't, actually. Rather, using the words in the question in their strict meaning, most of the hardware out there is not on the "public internet", it is behind NAT. You can argue that behind NAT there is still IPv4 connectivity with public internet, but it is actually closer to proxying (i.e. having some device talk to internet on your behalf) than to routing (i.e. have some device pass your packets on). Lo…

But if that exists, why should I as someone running on EC2 care if I can use IPv6 natively or have to make use of such proxying/routing?

I don't know enough AWS to understand the announcement, but if your servers and your clients can speak IPv6 and you can skip al the NAT, you don't have to debug NAT problems.

Re: IPv6 Support for EC2 Instances in Virtual Private Clouds

#45

Post by kinkrtyavimoodh »

djsumdog wrote: post #33
axyjo wrote: post #2

Finally! It's been a major deficiency in AWS. Can't wait to see this roll out to us-west-2.

I'm kinda sick of all the AWS posts on here, but I'm trying to be fair since some of them are really interesting. This is one of those that's more of a "about damn time," features that'd I'd care about if I already didn't go with Digital Ocean/Linode instead just because of IPv6 support.

The reason there are all these posts in the last few days is because AWS's conference re:Invent is going right now in Las Vegas, and a lot of these announcements are therefore being made right now.

Re: IPv6 Support for EC2 Instances in Virtual Private Clouds

#46

Post by Mythanar »

zbjornson wrote: post #41
Mythanar wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of it can't, actually. Rather, using the words in the question in their strict meaning, most of the hardware out there is not on the "public internet", it is behind NAT. You can argue that behind NAT there is still IPv4 connectivity with public internet, but it is actually closer to proxying (i.e. having some device talk to internet on your behalf) than to routing (i.e. have some device pass your packets on). Lo…

But if that exists, why should I as someone running on EC2 care if I can use IPv6 natively or have to make use of such proxying/routing?

The reasons are many. I'll name just a few: * You cannot send UDP packets to your IPv4 customers. * You cannot initiate TCP connections to your IPv4 customers. * You cannot use any application-level protocol that carries information about source or destination IP address. * IPSec more or less goes out the window

Re: IPv6 Support for EC2 Instances in Virtual Private Clouds

#47

Post by jbott »

zbjornson wrote: post #41
Mythanar wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of it can't, actually. Rather, using the words in the question in their strict meaning, most of the hardware out there is not on the "public internet", it is behind NAT. You can argue that behind NAT there is still IPv4 connectivity with public internet, but it is actually closer to proxying (i.e. having some device talk to internet on your behalf) than to routing (i.e. have some device pass your packets on). Lo…

But if that exists, why should I as someone running on EC2 care if I can use IPv6 natively or have to make use of such proxying/routing?

You individually? There really isn't a reason to. *

However, as a whole, the lack of native IPv6 support in EC2 certainly held back the global deployment cycle. It's the chicken and the egg problem: Without support for servers that use IPv6, there is no reason for last mile providers to implement it in households. With this update, a huge swath of sites will get support, hopefully leading to quicker adoption for end users.

* for most applications. This is certainly trivializing a subset of applications where this could be useful.

Re: IPv6 Support for EC2 Instances in Virtual Private Clouds

#49

Post by sigjuice »

toast0 wrote: post #44
zbjornson wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if that exists, why should I as someone running on EC2 care if I can use IPv6 natively or have to make use of such proxying/routing?

I don't know enough AWS to understand the announcement, but if your servers and your clients can speak IPv6 and you can skip al the NAT, you don't have to debug NAT problems.

We probably won't ever be rid of NAT. The likes of Cisco, who thrive on making things enterprisey and needlessly complicated will definitely be peddling IPv6 NAT soon, if they aren't already doing it.

Re: IPv6 Support for EC2 Instances in Virtual Private Clouds

#50

Post by auganov »

openasocket wrote: post #26
fidget wrote: post #10

8 IPs per instance, max :/

Might be a dumb question, but why would you want or need more than one IP address for an instance? It's not like more addresses will let you download/upload things faster. Maybe if you want to run multiple web servers on port 80 and give each one a different IP address, but how often do people do that, especially more than 8 times over?

Quantity changes the quality here. IPv6 address space being so large, we can afford to give everyone a virtually infinite number of addresses. Which in turn enables everything to be globally routable. I never cared about IPv6 much. Once I grasped it I am actually so so excited about it.
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