5 ms·

I don't find IPv6 complicated, if anything it's a lot easier to grasp than IPv4 and it basically comes with batteries included. The difficulty in my experience

by simias 7y ago

I don't find IPv6 complicated, if anything it's a lot easier to grasp than IPv4 and it basically comes with batteries included. The difficulty in my experience stems from one thing and one thing only: you can almost never go full IPv6. You always have to dual stack IPv4/IPv6, and of course IPv4 + IPv6 is always strictly more complicated than just IPv4. I've had the opportunity to develop a solution using an IPv6-only environment and it was a pleasure to work with. No need to worry about the size of your subnets or clashing with 3rd party tools using the same address space etc... >Wouldn't it be better if it had just been IPv4 with more address bits? I often hear that but I genuinely don't get it. This change would effectively give you all the problems with IPv6 (i.e. you have to make sure all your hardware and software equipment can deal with the new, backward-incompatible format) without all the niceties that IPv6 provides. It's genuinely the worst of both worlds. NAT is probably the best compromise you can get, using the port number to sort-of extend the address information to identify several computers with the same IP, but it's obviously an ugly hack with many limitations.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 7y ago
> The difficulty in my experience stems from one thing and one thing only: you can almost never go full IPv6. You always have to dual stack IPv4/IPv6, and of course IPv4 + IPv6 is always strictly more complicated than just IPv4. But it isn't? I mean, yes, every machine that requires both v4 and v6 is more complicated than just v4, sure. But potentially, you can get away with not having everything double stacked. You can run all your application and infrastructure servers on IPv6 only, and only have a load balancer speak IPv4, for example--that way, you get most of the benefit of IPv6 with only very little extra effort required for double stacking.
- rstuart4133 7y ago
  > But it isn't? I mean, yes, every machine that requires both v4 and v6 is more complicated than just v4, sure. You don't need to do that. I've set up IPv6 only networks at conferences. If throw in a IPv6->IPv4 NAT (eg, tayga) the only machine that requires a dual stack is the router. We didn't have a single complaint about connectivity issues from over 500 delegates. Modern clients (phones, tablets, Mac's and so on) just slide seamlessly into an IPv6 environment without the user even being aware they are using IPv6.
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 7y ago
    I am pretty sure that if I put all of the servers that I am involved with behind NAT64, the complaints would be instant because tons of stuff would break, from services running on those servers not being reachable via IPv4 to software running on those machines not supporting IPv6.
kortilla 7y ago
IPv6 pretty much requires DNS. There are tons of dead simple networks out there that administrators just memorize IP addresses on trivially.
- PopeDotNinja 7y ago
  0.0.0.0 1.1.1.1 8.8.8.8 192.168.0.1 ^^^ burned into my brain 2001:0db8:0000:0000:0000:ff00:0042:8329 ^^^ say what now?!
  - Dagger2 7y ago
    This is totally an unfair comparison. Why did you complicate the v6 address? That's 2001:db8::ff00:42:8329, which is a fair bit shorter than the version you wrote. But let's go a step further. If you wanted to remember this address, why did you pick 2001:db8::ff00:42:8329 in the first place? Why not 2001:db8::53? If you deliberately pick an address that's longer and more complicated than it needs to be, and you refuse to use the system (DNS) that's designed to handle that for you, then you don't get to complain about how long and complicated the address is.
    - PopeDotNinja 7y ago
      I just cut & paste the IPv6 I found in a Wikipedia. But that does touch on a good point... the formatting for how to express an IPv6 number is more complicated. The fact that 2001:0db8:0000:0000:0000:ff00:0042:8329 can be shorted to 2001:db8::ff00:42:8329 is less simpler to figure out than the good ol' <8bits>.<8bits>.<8bits>.<8bits> IPv4 format (at least that is true for me).
      - Dagger2 7y ago
        It's not that complicated. You can add leading zeros into each field, but that's similar to how 192.168.0.1 can be written as 192.168.000.001 (but if you do that in v4, it turns the field into octal! At least in v6 it's just a superfluous 0.). The only real complication is ::, which just means "insert zeros here". (192.168.0.1 can also be written as 192.168.1, 192.11010049 or 3232235521. Or 192.0xa80001. Or 0xc0.0xa80001. Or 0300.168.1. Or a good number of other ways. That's far worse than anything you can do to a v6 address.)

by simias 7y ago

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 7y ago

> The difficulty in my experience stems from one thing and one thing only: you can almost never go full IPv6. You always have to dual stack IPv4/IPv6, and of course IPv4 + IPv6 is always strictly more complicated than just IPv4. But it isn't? I mean, yes, every machine that requires both v4 and v6 is more complicated than just v4, sure. But potentially, you can get away with not having everything double stacked. You can run all your application and infrastructure servers on IPv6 only, and only have a load balancer speak IPv4, for example--that way, you get most of the benefit of IPv6 with only very little extra effort required for double stacking.

rstuart4133 7y ago
> But it isn't? I mean, yes, every machine that requires both v4 and v6 is more complicated than just v4, sure. You don't need to do that. I've set up IPv6 only networks at conferences. If throw in a IPv6->IPv4 NAT (eg, tayga) the only machine that requires a dual stack is the router. We didn't have a single complaint about connectivity issues from over 500 delegates. Modern clients (phones, tablets, Mac's and so on) just slide seamlessly into an IPv6 environment without the user even being aware they are using IPv6.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 7y ago
  I am pretty sure that if I put all of the servers that I am involved with behind NAT64, the complaints would be instant because tons of stuff would break, from services running on those servers not being reachable via IPv4 to software running on those machines not supporting IPv6.

kortilla 7y ago

IPv6 pretty much requires DNS. There are tons of dead simple networks out there that administrators just memorize IP addresses on trivially.

PopeDotNinja 7y ago
0.0.0.0 1.1.1.1 8.8.8.8 192.168.0.1 ^^^ burned into my brain 2001:0db8:0000:0000:0000:ff00:0042:8329 ^^^ say what now?!
- Dagger2 7y ago
  This is totally an unfair comparison. Why did you complicate the v6 address? That's 2001:db8::ff00:42:8329, which is a fair bit shorter than the version you wrote. But let's go a step further. If you wanted to remember this address, why did you pick 2001:db8::ff00:42:8329 in the first place? Why not 2001:db8::53? If you deliberately pick an address that's longer and more complicated than it needs to be, and you refuse to use the system (DNS) that's designed to handle that for you, then you don't get to complain about how long and complicated the address is.
  - PopeDotNinja 7y ago
    I just cut & paste the IPv6 I found in a Wikipedia. But that does touch on a good point... the formatting for how to express an IPv6 number is more complicated. The fact that 2001:0db8:0000:0000:0000:ff00:0042:8329 can be shorted to 2001:db8::ff00:42:8329 is less simpler to figure out than the good ol' <8bits>.<8bits>.<8bits>.<8bits> IPv4 format (at least that is true for me).
    - Dagger2 7y ago
      It's not that complicated. You can add leading zeros into each field, but that's similar to how 192.168.0.1 can be written as 192.168.000.001 (but if you do that in v4, it turns the field into octal! At least in v6 it's just a superfluous 0.). The only real complication is ::, which just means "insert zeros here". (192.168.0.1 can also be written as 192.168.1, 192.11010049 or 3232235521. Or 192.0xa80001. Or 0xc0.0xa80001. Or 0300.168.1. Or a good number of other ways. That's far worse than anything you can do to a v6 address.)