6 ms·

What's up with IPv6, anyways?

by nothis 8y ago

OedipusRex 8y ago
Enough address space for every atom on the surface of the earth.
- dijit 8y ago
  Yet as far as I can tell no cloud provider is taking it seriously. GCP only supports it on the edge for their load balancers for instance.
  - rsync 8y ago
    All rsync.net locations[1] have ipv6 addresses. [1] Cali., Denver, Zurich, Hong Kong
    - cbm-vic-20 8y ago
      Been a customer of yours for ten years. No BS. Just works.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - w8rbt 8y ago
    IPv6 works fine in AWS. I have several v6 only resources there now... no problems. No SSH scans, no elastic IP fees, no log noise from all the IPv4 idiots. It's heaven.
- diegoperini 8y ago
  So abundant, has no value.
  - Zrdr 8y ago
    I would say "no cost". On the hosting service I use, you can rent an IPv6 only host and you pay less. Why would you pay for an IPv4 address if you don't need it ?
    - asdkhadsj 8y ago
      I'd love to use it, but honestly it's fairly complex to even understand if I can use it. From my home ISP to my compute provider(s), I've not even done enough research to know if I can use it. Last I recall (years ago) my buddy was running some type of VPN through Comcast just to be able to use IPv6 properly. That's when I decided it was still too new for me. Clearly I don't know anything on the subject, and I'm not claiming to. These are one of the areas where I don't know, don't desire to know, and want it to "just work". I am however interested in making my applications compliant asap, but until I can reliably use it, I've not even attempted. So with that big pile of ignorance, are we "there yet"? Ie, could I build applications and run them on a IPv6 compatible host, with hit it with my home ISP with a reasonable expectation that everything will work? (assuming my code works, of course). I feel like I need a "caniuseIPv6.com" site, similar to https://caniuse.com https://caniuse.com. From the outside, IPv6 implementation and support seems bizarrely cryptic.
      - CaliforniaKarl 8y ago
        I'm a current Comcast customer. I own my own (non-Comcast-purchased) router (an RT-AC68U) and cable modem (a Motorola Surfboard). On the modem side, nothing needed to be done for IPv6. Any firmware updates or configuration needed is done by Comcast. On the router side, there is a dedicated IPv6 configuration page. Settings are: • Connection Type: Native • All other available settings: Set to either 'Enable' or 'Stateless'. That was it. My Mac has IPv6 configuration set to configure 'Automatically', and I get an IP. If I go to plain Google and ask it "what's my ip" I get a IPv6 IP back. On my iPhone, on wifi, if I do the same "what's my ip" Google search, I get an IPv6 back. My carrier is Ting GSM; if I turn off wifi and do the same Google search, I get a different IPv6 IP back. At work, IPv6 is rolling out _very_ slowly, but I was able to get a fixed IPv6 address. That has been programmed into the configuration for my laptop's USB-Ethernet adapter, so I have IPv6 at my desk at work. Although most work services are not IPv6-enabled, DNS is. And at home, IPv6 is enabled and is in active use, both on desktop and on mobile. As for testing, I suggest https://test-ipv6.com https://test-ipv6.com and https://ipv6test.google.com https://ipv6test.google.com
- AndrewDucker 8y ago
  Not quite https://xkcd.com/865 https://xkcd.com/865
  - johnp_ 8y ago
    ~~No, really. He's talking about the earths surface, the xkcd is about the earths volume.~~ Ok, the xkcd is about nanobots with a volume of "a few cubic microns"[1], whereas atoms are much smaller. [1] https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/865:_Nanobots https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/865:_Nanobots
- noselasd 8y ago
  And I have a /64 from my ISP giving me about eighteen quintillion addresses, but no sane/supported/easy way to further subnet that locally. IPv6/rfc7421 is great ...
forgot-my-pw 8y ago
Adoption rate varies from country to country: https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html
- ConceptJunkie 8y ago
  It's interesting to note there's a definite variation on a 24-hour cycle... because there's a correlation between longitude and IPv6 adoption...?
  - tialaramex 8y ago
    Corporates. At work your network is IPv4 only, it passes through a badly made "anti-exfiltration" appliance, a "policy enforcement" appliance and half a dozen more, you have that six year old laptop that's missing some crucial patches because they were incompatible with the Java applet used to order coffee in the board room, and so on. At home you've been using IPv6 passively for 18 months, it works and you never noticed. Hence the big up spike on weekends and major holidays.
  - 4bpp 8y ago
    It's on a weekly cycle, with peaks presumably on the weekends. Maybe more home internet connections than workspace internet connections are IPv6, so there is an uptick in registered IPv6 connections when people are at home. (Note how the trough between Dec 24th and 31st is also significantly more shallow than the usual one.)
zzzcpan 8y ago
IPv6 adoption is approaching a big wall. Maybe the industry will finally start reconsidering it and doing honest research into something that can actually get wide spread adoption.
- throwaway2048 8y ago
  There is no magical ipv4 compatible protocol that is possible at scale that is simply being denied to the masses by the Ivory Tower IETF. IPv6 is the future of IP connectivity, that is not going to change.
  - zzzcpan 8y ago
    How so? There is unlimited amount of compatible protocols that can be made to run on top of IPv4.
    - wmf 8y ago
      And they all suck in various (usually non-obvious) ways.
      - zzzcpan 8y ago
        That's the thing. Any idea done in software on top of existing ones sucks infinitely less, than any incompatible idea backed by hardware.
        vertex-four 8y ago
        Here’s the thing - all the hardware supports it now. Has done for the last couple of decades. Your home router almost definitely does, your carrier’s switches and routers almost definitely do, there’s ipv6 support all the way to Google and Amazon and Netflix and whoever else you want to connect to. It’s a pile of people refusing to implement software (mostly proprietary software - again, open-source systems have supported IPv6 for a very long time) and administrative support for it that’s the issue. If you want an IPv6 address over your existing IPv4 connectivity, you can get one in a number of ways - that’s an overlay network that is already supported by a massive amount of hardware and free software.
AtlasBarfed 8y ago
Every time I deal with IPv6 it just strikes me how little the designers cared about migration from IPv4. No clear prescriptions for legacy v4 <-> v6 translations, religious hate of NAT, unfortunate separator character (the colon) that is used for domain:port separation. Separate stack prescriptions. I honestly think it would have been easier to do a rolling upgrade of the internet to support bigger numbers in the four coordinates of IP addresses and increase the number of ports. I'm obviously not a deep networking expert, but as I've been exposed to IPv6 test conversions it's been painful.
- akvadrako 8y ago
  IPv6 is a total mess; it was intended to be a clean break from IPv4 and do things more correctly. Turns out that they didn't really think it though; besides more bits anything from IPv6 was either easy to add to v4 or turned out to be a bad idea (like SLAAC). It should never have been adopted in the first place but now it's the only practical option for moving forward.

What's up with IPv6, anyways?

by nothis 8y ago

What's up with IPv6, anyways?

OedipusRex 8y ago

Enough address space for every atom on the surface of the earth.

dijit 8y ago
Yet as far as I can tell no cloud provider is taking it seriously. GCP only supports it on the edge for their load balancers for instance.
- rsync 8y ago
  All rsync.net locations[1] have ipv6 addresses. [1] Cali., Denver, Zurich, Hong Kong
  - cbm-vic-20 8y ago
    Been a customer of yours for ten years. No BS. Just works.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- w8rbt 8y ago
  IPv6 works fine in AWS. I have several v6 only resources there now... no problems. No SSH scans, no elastic IP fees, no log noise from all the IPv4 idiots. It's heaven.
diegoperini 8y ago
So abundant, has no value.
- Zrdr 8y ago
  I would say "no cost". On the hosting service I use, you can rent an IPv6 only host and you pay less. Why would you pay for an IPv4 address if you don't need it ?
  - asdkhadsj 8y ago
    I'd love to use it, but honestly it's fairly complex to even understand if I can use it. From my home ISP to my compute provider(s), I've not even done enough research to know if I can use it. Last I recall (years ago) my buddy was running some type of VPN through Comcast just to be able to use IPv6 properly. That's when I decided it was still too new for me. Clearly I don't know anything on the subject, and I'm not claiming to. These are one of the areas where I don't know, don't desire to know, and want it to "just work". I am however interested in making my applications compliant asap, but until I can reliably use it, I've not even attempted. So with that big pile of ignorance, are we "there yet"? Ie, could I build applications and run them on a IPv6 compatible host, with hit it with my home ISP with a reasonable expectation that everything will work? (assuming my code works, of course). I feel like I need a "caniuseIPv6.com" site, similar to https://caniuse.com https://caniuse.com. From the outside, IPv6 implementation and support seems bizarrely cryptic.
    - CaliforniaKarl 8y ago
      I'm a current Comcast customer. I own my own (non-Comcast-purchased) router (an RT-AC68U) and cable modem (a Motorola Surfboard). On the modem side, nothing needed to be done for IPv6. Any firmware updates or configuration needed is done by Comcast. On the router side, there is a dedicated IPv6 configuration page. Settings are: • Connection Type: Native • All other available settings: Set to either 'Enable' or 'Stateless'. That was it. My Mac has IPv6 configuration set to configure 'Automatically', and I get an IP. If I go to plain Google and ask it "what's my ip" I get a IPv6 IP back. On my iPhone, on wifi, if I do the same "what's my ip" Google search, I get an IPv6 back. My carrier is Ting GSM; if I turn off wifi and do the same Google search, I get a different IPv6 IP back. At work, IPv6 is rolling out _very_ slowly, but I was able to get a fixed IPv6 address. That has been programmed into the configuration for my laptop's USB-Ethernet adapter, so I have IPv6 at my desk at work. Although most work services are not IPv6-enabled, DNS is. And at home, IPv6 is enabled and is in active use, both on desktop and on mobile. As for testing, I suggest https://test-ipv6.com https://test-ipv6.com and https://ipv6test.google.com https://ipv6test.google.com
AndrewDucker 8y ago
Not quite https://xkcd.com/865 https://xkcd.com/865
- johnp_ 8y ago
  ~~No, really. He's talking about the earths surface, the xkcd is about the earths volume.~~ Ok, the xkcd is about nanobots with a volume of "a few cubic microns"[1], whereas atoms are much smaller. [1] https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/865:_Nanobots https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/865:_Nanobots
noselasd 8y ago
And I have a /64 from my ISP giving me about eighteen quintillion addresses, but no sane/supported/easy way to further subnet that locally. IPv6/rfc7421 is great ...

forgot-my-pw 8y ago

Adoption rate varies from country to country: https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html

ConceptJunkie 8y ago
It's interesting to note there's a definite variation on a 24-hour cycle... because there's a correlation between longitude and IPv6 adoption...?
- tialaramex 8y ago
  Corporates. At work your network is IPv4 only, it passes through a badly made "anti-exfiltration" appliance, a "policy enforcement" appliance and half a dozen more, you have that six year old laptop that's missing some crucial patches because they were incompatible with the Java applet used to order coffee in the board room, and so on. At home you've been using IPv6 passively for 18 months, it works and you never noticed. Hence the big up spike on weekends and major holidays.
- 4bpp 8y ago
  It's on a weekly cycle, with peaks presumably on the weekends. Maybe more home internet connections than workspace internet connections are IPv6, so there is an uptick in registered IPv6 connections when people are at home. (Note how the trough between Dec 24th and 31st is also significantly more shallow than the usual one.)

zzzcpan 8y ago

IPv6 adoption is approaching a big wall. Maybe the industry will finally start reconsidering it and doing honest research into something that can actually get wide spread adoption.

throwaway2048 8y ago
There is no magical ipv4 compatible protocol that is possible at scale that is simply being denied to the masses by the Ivory Tower IETF. IPv6 is the future of IP connectivity, that is not going to change.
- zzzcpan 8y ago
  How so? There is unlimited amount of compatible protocols that can be made to run on top of IPv4.
  - wmf 8y ago
    And they all suck in various (usually non-obvious) ways.
    - zzzcpan 8y ago
      That's the thing. Any idea done in software on top of existing ones sucks infinitely less, than any incompatible idea backed by hardware.
      - vertex-four 8y ago
        Here’s the thing - all the hardware supports it now. Has done for the last couple of decades. Your home router almost definitely does, your carrier’s switches and routers almost definitely do, there’s ipv6 support all the way to Google and Amazon and Netflix and whoever else you want to connect to. It’s a pile of people refusing to implement software (mostly proprietary software - again, open-source systems have supported IPv6 for a very long time) and administrative support for it that’s the issue. If you want an IPv6 address over your existing IPv4 connectivity, you can get one in a number of ways - that’s an overlay network that is already supported by a massive amount of hardware and free software.

AtlasBarfed 8y ago

Every time I deal with IPv6 it just strikes me how little the designers cared about migration from IPv4. No clear prescriptions for legacy v4 <-> v6 translations, religious hate of NAT, unfortunate separator character (the colon) that is used for domain:port separation. Separate stack prescriptions. I honestly think it would have been easier to do a rolling upgrade of the internet to support bigger numbers in the four coordinates of IP addresses and increase the number of ports. I'm obviously not a deep networking expert, but as I've been exposed to IPv6 test conversions it's been painful.

akvadrako 8y ago
IPv6 is a total mess; it was intended to be a clean break from IPv4 and do things more correctly. Turns out that they didn't really think it though; besides more bits anything from IPv6 was either easy to add to v4 or turned out to be a bad idea (like SLAAC). It should never have been adopted in the first place but now it's the only practical option for moving forward.