13 ms·
FFS: MX records didn't take 20 years to get deployed! This is crap. After twenty years, none of the problems with IPv6[1] have resolved, and when you get an IP
by geocar 11y ago
FFS: MX records didn't take 20 years to get deployed!
This is crap. After twenty years, none of the problems with IPv6[1] have resolved, and when you get an IPv6 address from some places (hotels, mostly), much of the Internet turns into a unusable ghetto.
There's also zero IPv6 at BT or Virgin Media, two of the largest Internet providers in the UK. We've been hearing we'll get it "next year" for a while, and I'm frankly tired of dealing with the incompatibility.
If IPv6 offered a single user-visible feature it would sell like hotcakes: Mobile IP? IPSEC? All just as optional as with IPv4. Heck, if they even nailed auto-configuration or let multicast onto the Internet at least they'd have some customers.
Instead, it's sold a twenty-year clusterfuck of doomsday predictions about running out of IPv4 addresses, and the experience has been impossible to learn from because (a) it's spanning three decades now, and (b) everyone disillusioned by IPv6 can't come around without losing face.
I'm tired of IPv6 patting itself on the back; This was the worst deployment ever.
[1]: https://cr.yp.to/djbdns/ipv6mess.html https://cr.yp.to/djbdns/ipv6mess.html
- phicoh 11y agoThe killer feature of IPv6 is that is has more addresses than IPv4. For anything else, for every good feature of IPv6 there are a couple of bad features. So if you look at it, if you want to delay investments as long as possible, you wait for IPv4 addresses to run out before moving to IPv6. And guess what, ARIN ran out only last summer. APNIC ran out almost 5 years. So for any big company that doesn't really grow, why do IPv6, you have enough IPv4 addresses. For any small company, in many cases you now have to buy addresses on the open market. Doable, but not nice. And small companies wanting to become big companies? They are out of luck. Even if they can buy the addresses they need, it will be insanely fragmented. Even Microsoft found out that for their corporate network, they don't really have enough IPv4 addresses and for some reason they also don't want to buy them in large quantaties. So they are trying to move to IPv6 internally. Of course, this creates a very complex network effect. Big companies have no real incentive to offer IPv6, and small companies cannot switch to IPv6 only if big comanies don't support it. Fortunately, some big companies do run out of IPv4 addresses so they do start using IPv6 to offload their carrier grade nat boxes. For some new markets, say vehicle-to-vehicle communication, IPv4 is not an option. So that is likely to be IPv6 from day one.
- massysett 11y agoI bet that legacy desktops and Web servers will be IPv4 for as long as they exist. There will never be an impetus to convert these. If "Internet of Things" takes off, those things will be IPv6. Then you can give an IP address to every thermostat, every light bulb, every fire sprinkler head, every shelf tag price readout (saw some LCD shelf tags at a Whole Foods near Houston), etc. Those things don't care if they can't talk to some legacy Web site. Then, in twenty years, everything on IPv4 is some creaky obsolete thing...sort of like how we have Windows XP things around now that aren't being replaced for various good reasons.
- rjsw 11y agoWindows XP can have IPv6, works fine.
- vollmond 11y agoHe/she's just saying that in 20 years, anything using IPv4 will be creaky and obsolete, similar to how we view WinXP now -- creaky and obsolete. Not that WinXP is stuck on IPv4.
- phicoh 11y agoIf with legacy web server you mean a dedicated server somewhere in a colo that has an IPv4 address, then yes. You can keep that until parts of the internet will no longer have any connection to IPv4 anymore. If you expect to move that server, say to move to a new colo provider, do you get an IPv4 address there? If you have to pay extra each month for IPv4 and get IPv6 for free, do you pay? Legacy desktops, there are these things like youtube, netflix, they eat huge amounts of bandwidth. As an ISP you don't want that through your carrier grade NAT boxes. Better try to get customers to use IPv6. These days many web pages are insanely loaded with ads, trackers, etc. Lots of connections, again really bad for CGN. Big CGN boxes are also really bad for geolocation. IPv6 is better for that. There is also reason to believe that gaming behind carrier grade NAT is going to be pain. Finally, if there was one group of products supporting IPv6 early on, it was operating systems. Even XP can do IPv6. Web browsers support IPv6 for a long time now. So as soon as the network provides IPv6, just about all desktops pick it up and start using it.
- tostitos1979 11y agoAgreed. IPv6 has been a disaster whenever I've experienced it. Here are some shocks I've received: - there is concern when you browse the web with a IPv6 address that you create a target for attackers (by revealing your address). Solution ... shadow IP addresses! When I saw this on my Mac, I was shocked! - IPv6 to IPv4 NAT exists but is stateful. WTF? This significantly increases the cost and lowers the ability to scale. A high performance NAT solution would have been the first thing I would have designed (for interop purposes)
- dspillett 11y ago> (by revealing your address) How is this any different to IPv4? An incoming default deny rule on your firewall offers the same protection as the "accidental" protection that NAT provides, and you can translate/proxy/VPN/whatever-else IPv6 addresses/connections in all the same ways you can with IPv4 in order to disguise the source IPv6 address if you really have a need to. Heck, if you are worried about security having a /64 allocated means that if you aren't providing incoming services you jump around a huge range if you want to so you don't need to be at the same address now as you were an hour ago (unless you have active TCP streams or similar that have been running that long), and even without moving around if you pick your address within the /64 arbitrarily you aren't going to be found by a port scanner in any amount of time that would make scanning a practical option. > IPv6 to IPv4 NAT exists but is stateful. Isn't IPv4 NAT stateful when translating potentially many source addresses? Otherwise how do you reverse the translation when response packets arrive? A one-to-one mapping shouldn't need to be stateful, but where that is useful most people go with being dual-stacked instead.
- dorfsmay 11y agoI think what the OP means here is that by default some stack use to use the numbers from the MAC address for the last part of the ipv6, creating privacy concerns. Most stack these will by default, or can be configured to, get a different random ipv6 address (within your allocated range) every time they get one.
- feld 11y agoTraditional NAT implies state. If you aren't keeping track of state you can't traverse the NAT. The state is the NAT table. Now, there are some "NAT" implementations that don't keep state but they for very specific scenarios. You can't port forward, for example. You can map 1:1 IPv4 to IPv6 though, but why do that when you can give native v6 the whole way?
- Ambroos 11y agoMeanwhile Belgium has nearly 50% dual-stack IPv6 deployed and there haven't really been any issues. It's configured well and works well. The vast majority of users probably hasn't even noticed.
- _yy 11y agoUnitymedia, a huge German ISP, has been running dual stack for a few years now.
- andruby 11y agoYeah, being from Belgium I can say that it is great. Makes it easy for me to test the IPv6 support on my servers. The is one advantage of having an active duopoly [1] in the ISP market. Belgacom (38% market share) started migrating customers to dual stack in 2013. Telenet (40% market share) soon followed in 2014. [1] http://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2015/03/20/telenet-belgacom-strengthen-duopoly-on-belgian-market/ http://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2015/03/20/telenet-belgacom-s...
- anon4 11y agoThis is insane... IPv6 as a completely separate network from IPv4? JUST ADD 12 BYTES TO THE FRONT OF THE ADDRESS YOU ASSTWATS, then the 0::0/96 is all the current IPv4 space and the rest is up for grabs. Yes, there are still interoperability problems with this scheme, but the alternative right now is to give every device two public addresses, be effectively on two completely distinct global networks and hope everything works. It doesn't seem to.
- growse 11y agoYou mean, you want to be able to embed an address on the old scheme into a routable address in the new scheme? Just like IPv6 does? https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6052#section-2.2 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6052#section-2.2
- blfr 11y agoAll my devices at home* are dual-stack and so are some of the servers I run. Never had any issues. Browsers, ssh/sftp, nginx, whatever's behind nginx, Exim... no complications beyond adding another listen line to the configuration where appropriate. * Except Kindles.
- lmm 11y agoIf you don't completely separate the networks what are legacy IPv4-only routers going to route on? The lower 32 bits of the address? Great, now you get unreliable silent failures where your packets sometimes get stuck in routing loops depending on which path they take. That would be an absolute nightmare to debug.
- cornholio 11y agoIf a backwards compatible, "IPv4.1" version would have been deployed, designed to route transparently through the legacy IPv4 infrastructure, then public routes could have been restricted to the legacy field for a number of years by IANA. 32 bits was perfectly adequate for routing for decades and would still be if not for the route explosion caused by exhaustion itself. A similiar problem could still happen inside your mixed IPv4-"IPv4.1" system, but in that case it's your problem to fix and not the fault of the protocol or of some distant sysadmin.
- growse 11y agoIPv6 does offer user-visible features though. My home VOIP line doesn't work on IPv4 without arsing around with NAT, which is something that I'm not inclined to do or troubleshoot. On IPv6, plug it in, configure the firewall and it just works. Also, I found a simple solution to the fact that neither VM or BT offer IPv6 - use a different ISP.
- geocar 11y agoUnfortunately nobody else is the same price (or cheaper) for the same speed (or faster). I don't have any problems running VOIP at home, though.
- growse 11y agoSo you're complaint is that a service with more features costs more than a service with fewer features?
- geocar 11y agoWhy should I pay for services I'm not using? There aren't any websites that are IPv6-only, and until there are, telling me to vote with my wallet is pointless.
- lmm 11y agoIf VOIP is harder to configure under the cheaper service, then it's a question of how much you value your time. Maybe for you the cheaper option is the better choice, but maybe for someone else it wouldn't be. Likewise for gamers. Often IPv6 is lower latency or again easier to configure. For some people that's worth paying money for. Ultimately as IPv4 addresses get more expensive and IPv6 equipment becomes cheaper, the costs will shift, and the benefits will remain.
- cm2187 11y agoCan you really play games using IPv6? You would need all the other players in the same party to use IPv6. That would severely limit who you can play with in the UK.
- sergiosgc 11y agoBernstein's rant shows its age. It kind of proves the reverse of what you are trying to state. The text starts with a question that undermines the whole text: "does every node need direct Internet connection?". Today, with P2P traffic on the uprise, the answer is a striking Yes. If, even with the hurdles of poor performing NATs, there is market pressure for P2P protocols, it's absurdly obvious the Internet must be symmetrical, not server-client. The text then goes on about the impossible transition plan for IPv6. It's now obvious that moving servers to dual-stack, then clients progressively onto IPv6 (through provider address-space exhaustion) is a sound plan. It's happening, and it's approaching the critical point. 2016 starts at 10% IPv6 traffic, will end at 25% IPv6 traffic. No sound company today will launch its services in IPv4 only and eschew 10%-25% of potential traffic.
- sillysaurus3 11y agoIt's happening, and it's approaching the critical point. 2016 starts at 10% IPv6 traffic, will end at 25% IPv6 traffic. No sound company today will launch its services in IPv4 only and eschew 10%-25% of potential traffic. It seems like this is another doomsday prediction. Evidence would make it persuasive.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- lmm 11y agoThe article says growth has been by a factor of 2.5x every year (and is 10% now), and shows a very exponential-looking graph.
- mirashii 11y ago> No sound company today will launch its services in IPv4 only and eschew 10%-25% of potential traffic. The thing is, no sound company has to. No consumers have IPv6 only. Everyone is dual stack. By not deploying on IPv6, you don't lose a potential customer, you just make them use their existing IPv4 connection.
- spacecowboy_lon 11y agoTestify Brother Testify. As some one who used to wok on international standards for British telecom IPv6 is a total F&^%ing disaster and this was obvious back in the late 80's When the original ipv6 group is 19 ivory tower academics and 1 guy from Bell labs what do you expect.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 11y agoWhat specifically do you think is bad about IPv6?
- spacecowboy_lon 11y agoNo thought about how the migration from ipv4 to ipv6 to be handled is the main one.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 11y agoWhere do you get the idea that there were no thoughts about how to handle the migration? (hint: there were, lots of them, it's a hard problem, mostly for psychological reasons, technically, it's mostly trivial.)
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- eterm 11y agoIs that a typo, did you mean late 90's?
- spacecowboy_lon 11y agoNo I used to do OSI based networking for the UK's main x.400 domain - and we knew about the ip4 address exhaustion back then and I looked at some of the initial proposals. By the late 80's it was obvious that the way that ipv6 was proposed was not tenable - it should have been killed 20 years ago.
- ck2 11y agoGood luck trying to stop a bot army that uses IPv6
- danieltillett 11y agoWhat is the best solution here?
- pilif 11y agoblock the prefix just like when you blocked single addresses.
- danieltillett 11y agoWon't this block an enormous range of IPv6 addresses?
- teddyh 11y agoAn IPv6 /64 allocation is the smallest possible allocation, i.e. to a single end user.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 11y agoNo, it's a single network segment, not an end user. There unfortunately is quite a number of providers who seem to think that it should be, but that's braindead, exactly because it allows for only one network segment (if you want to use autoconfiguration), while the address space is intentionally so large as to not restrict people to specific network architectures and also to avoid any administrative overhead for allocation of additional addresses - the original assumption was that every "end site" (that is, a customer of an ISP) gets a /48 by default, unless they show that they do indeed need more (which would be a very rare exception).
- teddyh 11y ago
- dan1234 11y agoThe big UK ISPs don't care because they've all acquired enough IPv4 addresses to satisfy their current demand & growth projections. They all claim to be preparing trials but I wouldn't expect to see any real activity from them until we start seeing IPv6 only sites, which would be unreachable to their subscribers.
- feld 11y agoI use IPv6 every single day. It does solve a lot of problems.
- lmm 11y agoMail doesn't silently fail if some intermediate server is using the A record. A compatible upgrade to IPv6 is simply impossible, because you would have no way to debug the failures.
- Exuma 11y ago"much of the Internet turns into a unusable ghetto" What do you mean by this? I have IPv6 and everything seems to work great.
- sveiss 11y agoSome public wifi providers (like the mentioned hotels) hand out IPv6 addresses but don't actually route v6 traffic. So any connections which use v6 by preference will be broken from those connections.
- X-Istence 11y agoHappy Eyeballs is supposed to make sure that doesn't happen.
- azdle 11y agoI think in this case geocar is implying that you'd only get an IPv6 address. Since vast portions of the internet aren't available over IPv6 it's not a very useful internet.
- darklajid 11y agoOh yes. I'm disabling ipv6 on all my clients here and rather live in the idiotic, crazy and stupid world of ipv4 with CGNAT ('Dual Stack Lite'). That works at least somewhat consistently, if my internal machines are running dual stack instead I run into issues every other minute (usually DNS related and yeah - maybe my ISP is too dumb to run its mandatory native ipv6 line, but I cannot fix that). I used to ask my ISPs "When will you finally provide ipv6". Then i stopped caring. Now I wish they wouldn't have bothered and consider paying a premium to go back to ipv4.
- AlphaSite 11y agoBT, Virgin and Sky are all testing it now, so they're well beyond just empty promises atleast, last I checked sky was at 1million households with IPv6.
- xorcist 11y agoYou can agree with this rant and still want to deploy IPv6. All the arguments are valid but even in the worst case it's better than the status quo. There simply was no technical possibility for backwards compatibility, due to the way IPv4 was designed. So a dual-stack deployment has been pretty much the way to go from the start. It's unfortunate that it takes 20 years, but no better deployment scheme has been proposed during this time, only lots of new tunnel and NAT schemes. The smart phone revolution was really slow, too.
- marcosdumay 11y ago> FFS: MX records didn't take 20 years to get deployed! So what? IPv4 took some 25-30 years to get mass adoption, and didn't have an earlier version of itself competing for mindshare. Except for the several messed-up deployments, IPv6 is progressing well, and even fast. It'll be available as soon as our current crisis becomes undeniable... and judging by your comment, it's still possible to deny it.
- mhandley 11y agoIf you don't believe we need IPv6, read and properly understand the awful mess that is ICE: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5245 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5245 This is what VoIP and other similar peer-to-peer applications do today to get connectivity in our wondeful NATed IPv4 world. Are you really arguing we're in a happy place with IPv4?
- xs 11y agoWe all know we have to move to something new, we just mostly agree that IPv6 is not a very good solution to our problem. It's full of problems, has no killer feature, and has no good transition methods.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 11y agoWhich problems do you see with IPv6?
- yeukhon 11y ago> This is crap. After twenty years, none of the problems with IPv6[1] have resolved, and when you get an IPv6 address from some places (hotels, mostly), much of the Internet turns into a unusable ghetto. I am still able to play games and browse the internet and SSH to machines. What's wrong?
- jsz0 11y agoThe article you cited is about a decade out of date. Some points are still relevant but most are not. Deploying IPv6 in modern times is not difficult or expensive.
- deathanatos 11y ago> If IPv6 offered a single user-visible feature it would sell like hotcakes Being able to connect to my home machine from anywhere. Presently, I have to manually[1] mess around with NAT to accomplish this, and the obvious ways to set up `ssh machine-a.me.com` and `ssh machine-b.me.com` simply don't work. That alone, to me, is a single user-visible feature. Further, I've had tons of scenarios proposed by my parents that would be considerably easier to do with IPv6. "Why can't I just transfer this file between these two computers? Why does it need to go through some third party?" (This was really a bit before Drive, but even with Drive, it's still an extra step that doesn't really need to be.) As an engineer, there's plenty of problems I simply cannot solve while it remains impossible to address a computer that's supposedly on the Internet. > Instead, it's sold a twenty-year clusterfuck of doomsday predictions about running out of IPv4 addresses I can't actually obtain an IPv4 address for a device on my network. There's absolutely nothing I can do. So, from my perspective, those doomsday predictions appear to be correct. (And when I can, it often costs extra for something that ought to cost nothing.) [1]: All the while we have standardize protocols that should allow software to automatically configure NAT in a router, except they're supported by nobody…