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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

#611

Post by keiyakins »

bumbledraven wrote: post #488
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.…

djb proposed this back in 2002: https://cr.yp.to/djbdns/ipv6mess.html > How do we teach every client on the Internet to talk to servers on public IPv6 addresses [and vice versa]? > Answer: We go through every place that 4-byte IPv4 addresses appear, and allow 16-byte IPv6 addresses in the same place. > ... > Unfortunately, the straightforward transition plan described above does not work with the current IPv6 specifi…

so somehow 0.0.0.0.8.8.8.8 is an extension of the legacy address 8.8.8.8, and ::ffff:8.8.8.8 isn't?

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

#612

Post by keiyakins »

hotpotamus wrote: post #59
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 generally agree, but I'm pretty sure ::1.2.3.4 is a valid IPv6 address because it does have the idea of v4 compatibility built in.

it's ::ffff:1.2.3.4, so that loopback can be ::1. But yeah same idea.

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

#613

Post by keiyakins »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #588
vlovich123 wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By definition you’re trying to retain back compat. So you have a 4.4 source IP address. You try to establish a TCP connection to a legacy IPv4 website that isn’t 4.4 aware. What address is that website sending the response back to? Even if it is 4.4 aware, how do you guarantee it’s taking a path back through 4.4 aware servers? The whole point of adding an option header is to allow unmolested transit through existing…

You're basically doing carrier grade NAT for that, the same thing that is apparently tooootallly acceptable to the ipv6 people for their big success story: mobile. The only success story of ipv6 leads us to the solution: backbone-level CGNAT and other hacks, then impose the economic cost on IPV4-only carriers and endusers.

Indeed, your system would require NAT4.44 as a transition mechanism, just like NAT64 is needed now. It gets no benefit over IPv6, and none of the other benefits like SLAAC.

So, what's the point? It's no easier to migrate to, and once we're migrated is worse.

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

#614

Post by keiyakins »

logic_probe wrote: post #509
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.…

An even better idea: Right now, the biggest address is 255.255.255.255. Why not just make it go up to 999.999.999.999? Problem solved!

Because on the wire it's encoded as four bytes. If you can make eight binary digits count up to 999, you can do a lot more than just make IPv4 last longer.

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

#615

Post by keiyakins »

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #601
Dagger2 wrote: post #594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It causes no end of problems, not just for ISPs and mobile networks but also for people running server networks and for end users like us. I suppose it can be hard to see that when you grew up with the problems and have never used a network where you didn't need to deal with them though. The world can mostly function without NAT. It's mainly only used to work around address shortages, which aren't an issue on v6, so…

No, NAT is not for network address shortages. NAT is a cruicial privacy and security feature. "No need to use NAT" is, of course, a horrible anti-feature, not a benefit of IPv6. (And, of course, in the real world the vast majority of IPv6 is rolled out with NAT anyways.)

NAT is neither a privacy nor security feature, what are you talking about? Have you actually tested what your CPE does when it gets packets addressed to internal IPs from the WAN port? Almost every time, the answer is just pass it on to the target host. Thinking NAT is a security feature makes your network MUCH less secure.

As for privacy - you can fingerprint individual devices pretty trivially, and with privacy extensions for SLAAC you can only tell what /64 network it's coming from, which is no more information than IPv4 (unless you're behind CGNAT, but frankly being behind a 4-to-4 CGNAT shouldn't count as internet access because you literally can't get incoming connections.)

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

#616

Post by keiyakins »

magicalhippo wrote: post #532
unquietwiki wrote: post #459

Hey all... unquietwiki from r/ipv6; been lead-mod there for a while now (though the rest of the folks are really amazing on the mod-side). IPv6 has saved my bacon more times in the past 15 years, than IPv4 has fought with me. No clashing of IPv4 ranges. No fighting with NAT. Ability to easily have concurrent networks, for different purposes. Ability to assign multiple network addresses. Internally, it "just works" on…

> And lastly... a lot of IT guys still don't care for IPv6 The issue I have with IPv6 is that it's so complex compared to the IPv4 I know, and still has lacking support in routers and similar. For example, I want to be sure my local devices uses my local NTP server. With IPv4 it's trivial, I just add an option to the DHCP server. With IPv6 I can't do that with RA, I have to use DHCPv6. But Android doesn't support DHC…

Why are you using IP addresses directly? That's what DNS is for. There's even mDNS for in simple home networks.

(The DHCP thing is valid but that's one single android dev being an ass who can't read deciding that it imposes limitations it doesn't and ruining it for the rest of us)

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

#617

Post by keiyakins »

gnfargbl wrote: post #356
zamadatix wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IPv6 is very similar to IPv4 it's just IPv4 wasn't a consumer grade protocol either. The problem isn't the protocol it's that there is little incentive for the average user to switch to anything else on their own volition when most didn't even really set up what they are switching from (and already working on today) anyways.

Again, this is kind of making my point. IPv4 had an excuse for being a bit crap, because it was designed in the early 1980s. IPv6 should have been much better than it is. Adoption was always going to be slow, but it never needed to be this slow. If the designers had thought a but more about usability and not done stupid stuff like making the address space contain twice as many bits as it actually needs, then we would…

IPv6 was designed in the late 80s/early 90s, before home users had internet access. At the time there was serious debate over switching to the OSI stack instead. You're showing your lack of history knowledge more than anything.

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

#618

Post by keiyakins »

FateOfNations wrote: post #398
rekoil wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it enabled by default on customer equipment?

On their leased hardware, it is enabled from what I've seen. And if you are running your own modem and router, you will get IPv6 if you configure your setup to request it (via DHCP). They will even give you a /60 if your DHCP client asks for it.

Even? /60 should be the minimum, even home users usually have a couple subnets (guest networks for example, sometimes one for the router's WAN link) and you want the boundary to be on a nybble boundary

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

#619

Post by keiyakins »

tjoff wrote: post #199
noipv6 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ipv6-only web sites are borderline nonexistant, because no one who needs to maintain a profit dares to cut off a revenue stream from legacy ip only users (yet). the most exhaustive list thus far is https://sites.ip-update.net/ afaik

I'm not asking for ipv6-only, but ipv4-only. Those are the ones blocking adoption for me, as an end user.

How are they blocking? You're just behind a NAT64, which is no worse than NAT44, with the bonus of having actual connectivity on the IPv6 side.

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

#620

Post by dqh »

vlovich123 wrote: post #496
dqh wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a network engineer, but for about 20 years I have wondered why we didn't 'just' do something like: 1. Include an extra 32-bits of address information as an IP options header. Call it an IP4.4 packet. 2. (I think?) IP4.4 packets would therefore happily travel over existing IP4 infrastructure. 3. Each existing IP4 address becomes a potential IP4.4 network with 32-bits of address space behind it. IP4.4 aware ro…

What happens when your 4.4 packet hits a router box somewhere out there that doesn’t understand 4.4? Where’s it going to send that packet? To the wrong address (or potentially even create an infinite loop). Now what?

It routes it as an IP4 packet, because it still is a valid IP4 address. Think of it as a way to let a stateless IP4.4 aware NAT router at the edge join two 32-bit networks together. An IP4.4 client could send a packet to a destination in that network by putting the address of the IP4.4 router in the usual IP4 destination, and the 'internal' IP address in the IP options header. No 'entire Internet update' necessary
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