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Why IPv6 is so complicated

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Re: Why IPv6 is so complicated

#441

Post by imoverclocked »

hackeraccount wrote: post #434
imoverclocked wrote: post #371

Despite the article title, IPv6 is not the complication. The problem is that IPv4 is incumbent and IPv6 has to live along side of it. It doesn’t matter how it’s done, the dual stack nature of expanding the addressing system will always exist.

Dual stack isn't a terrible experience it's just usually bad. I wonder if more effort should have been put into making dual stack good instead of making IPv6 good? Would that have been possible? No clue but my instinct is that most design decisions are trade offs and if you can imagine a trade there's someone out there clever enough to make it happen.

IMHO, the worst thing about dual-stack is that you have to do it at all. There are translation mechanisms but that doesn’t help when you have local devices (maybe IoT?) that don’t support IPv6.

Re: Why IPv6 is so complicated

#442

Post by tonymet »

tardedmeme wrote: post #418
tonymet wrote: post #320

> Any address length greater than 32 would create all the coexistence and transition problems we have experienced since 1994 This is the author’s assumption and not a conclusion. Why did the other designers even bother if this was the case?

Because they didn't realize how that was the fundamental problem. There are some designers who knew their system would be incompatible but thought it was interesting enough to design anyway, like RINA. There are other designers who just didn't realize why this was a problem, like ipv8. The ipv8 designer is currently berating the NANOG (north america network operators group) mailing list for not already supporting ipv…

some of the alternatives were simpler and deliberate attempts to reduce the scope of the migration problem. You can’t say “all approaches would have suffered the same migration effort” as if it’s a given. That’s like saying UTF8 and UTF16 had the same migration effort because they both tried to migrate from 1-byte code points. UTF8 was way easier.

Re: Why IPv6 is so complicated

#443

Post by zadikian »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #336

I almost wish NAT had never been invented. It's a kludge that effectively added 16 bits to the IPv4 address space and delayed IPv6 as a result.

If/when everyone is forced to leave ipv4 due to address+port exhaustion, it's possible that ipv6 isn't the replacement.

Re: Why IPv6 is so complicated

#444

Post by zadikian »

hackthemack wrote: post #416
johncolanduoni wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do this quite easily on all the major OSes by opening a single dual-stack socket. On most Linux distributions that is the default, and then mapped addresses will work fine if the machine has a v4 address or a 464XLAT configuration. This has been the case for about 20 years.

Opening a dual stack ipv4 and ipv6 does allow the service to accept both ipv4 and ipv6 connections. But I do not think that is what zadikian is getting at? It does not address the network level identity and reachability. There is no default, globally routable mapping where owning a ipv4 automatically gives you an equivalent identity in ipv6 that others can reach without translation infrastructure. The transition mech…

Yeah we're talking about the same thing. So my v4 is 70.94.201.31. My ISP didn't also give me 2002:70.94.201.31 or whatever.

Re: Why IPv6 is so complicated

#445

Post by vel0city »

djha-skin wrote: post #340
vel0city wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A network engineer would know how to NAT in IPv6, and wouldn't say an untrue statement like "there is no ability to NAT with IPv6".

Are you a network engineer?

I wouldn't advertise my title as "network engineer" but having a strong understanding networking and network design has been a big part of my jobs for the last 20 years or so.

Re: Why IPv6 is so complicated

#446

Post by mixmastamyk »

Ekaros wrote: post #420
tardedmeme wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I think if they just double the address length the people would still cry about how 111.211.234.231.189.243.253.100 too hard to write and remember... There is no helping with people.

On extra byte shoved in a reserved field would have created 256 internets. That's two more for big countries and another for each small country and other planets. Then write in hex so addresses are shorter, require dhcp/sec etc, solved. My proposal for IPv7. ;-)

Re: Why IPv6 is so complicated

#447

Post by mixmastamyk »

globular-toast wrote: post #396
everdrive wrote: post #372

This is the only topic that tempts me to create a throwaway account. (I have not given in) None of the IPv6 proponents are willing to acknowledge that IPv6 is a pain. All of them seem to have gone to some secret seminar somewhere where they receive their talking points: - Everyone who dislikes IPv6 doesn't know how NAT works and thinks it's the same as a firewall. - There's absolutely no downside whatsoever to being…

This comment would make more sense if you said why IPv6 is a pain. It just works for me.

Works but addresses are unreadable. Ensuring security on a small network is more difficult than it needs to be when addresses are gibberish. Still not sure mine is on IPv6.

Re: Why IPv6 is so complicated

#448

Post by bborud »

tardedmeme wrote: post #406
bborud wrote: post #382

Why are we, in 2026, still talking about ipv6? It is time to give it up and start over. Yes, it is unlikely we can agree on an ipv4 successor. But at this point we should be able to agree ipv6 is not going to be it.

What do you think should be done instead? If ipv4 but with longer addresses (which is called ipv6) is not to your satisfaction, what would be? You want to completely overhaul the internet like in ipv8 and you think ipv8 doesn't have the exact same problems and thousands more just because it's never been deployed and nobody's encountered them yet?

You appear to not understand my argument.

IPv6 is over 30 years old. The world has not embraced it. It isn’t going to. It is time to call it and try to figure out something that will work.

You do understand that one need not have a better idea to make that observation? The observation is self-evident and can exist in the world regardless of what we think about IPv6 or the feasibility of figuring out something people will want to use.

Getting defensive and playing “then you come up with something better”-games is not getting us anywhere. It is just part of the problem. It is unproductive.

30 years. Let’s not waste more time.

Re: Why IPv6 is so complicated

#450

Post by tardedmeme »

zadikian wrote: post #440
Ekaros wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not doing that was one of the key points of starting fresh with IPv6. Doing that would mean that you could end up with billions of routes to consider. One reason for large address space is that those with networks could be placed sparsely and left room to grow. Thus allowing less routes in general.

Indeed doing it this way would keep the fragmentation, or at least delay fixing it. That's what these articles always overlook, the goal of ipv6 wasn't to just add more bits, it was also to defrag the routes. I think instead of 1.1.1.1::, you could do 4:1.1.1.1::, wait for v4 to be gone, then start building new topologies in the other /8s. Not sure how hard that is, but it seems easier than what they're trying to do…

Would it help at all? You can't just send IPv6 packets down the equivalent IPv4 path because that bext-hop router probably xoesn't understand IPv6 packets. In fact there could be no IPv6 path at all between you and the destination, so knowing where they are still wouldn't help you forward packets. If it understood them, it would have given you an IPv6 route anyway. Updating BGP to support IPv6 routes wasn't an actual problem.
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