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IPv6 isn’t such a monster, I found, after biting the bullet seriously last year. There are still way too many IPv4 only sites though. As with anything IP rela

IPv6 isn’t such a monster, I found, after biting the bullet seriously last year. There are still way too many IPv4 only sites though. As with anything IP related there’s a culture that’s just as important as the technical side. If your ISP gives you anything less than a /56 for your site (a VPS running multiple containers is a valid definition of site!) take your business elsewhere. There’s a lot of hyperbole about v6 address space, but even taking account of its sparseness, IP rationing really is for v4 only. For every /24 allocated to an LIR (NB 2 bits fewer than the subject of this RIPE bulletin) they can assign as many sites a /56 as there are current IPv4 addresses in total.

tormeh 7y ago
Why would you do that? The promise of IPv6 to me is that all devices gets their own IP address, enabling us to move away from the server-client architecture of the internet. Allocating all IPv6 addresses to commercial server operators would require us to continue using NAT, so then we might as well continue using IPv4.
- gorgoiler 7y ago
  There really is more than enough address space. The 24bit prefix for each Local Internet Registry means each assignment is its own internet of internets, with enough breathing room for multiple levels of hierarchical assignment, and still with 64bits leftover on the LANs for clients to randomly assign themselves scores of addresses without fear of collision.
- Tuna-Fish 7y ago
  There is no address allocation scheme that would force you to use NAT on IPv6. A lot of people don't really understand exactly what moving from 32bit to 128-bit addresses means. Let's say that we waste 65535/65536, or about 99.9985% of IPv6 address space on pointless allocations, leaving only one /16 left. This still means there are 5 192 296 858 534 827 628 530 496 329 220 096 addresses left to allocate, or 5*10^30, or enough addresses that if we had to distribute them to a trillion people per planet living on a trillion planets, they'd still get 5 billion addresses per person.
  - gorgoiler 7y ago
    Part of demystifying IPv6 was that in practice the most significant 64 bits are the limiting factor. It helped me to put more manageable numbers on things. Each ISP can have 65k customers who are big orgs with complex site needs and a /48, or 4 billion small customers getting a bundle of individual networks on their /56. In the latter, each has address space for, say, 256 VLANs which allows network isolation of many internet enabled fridges. And in theory the current scheme allows for 16 million ISPs to exist, though in practice not all the address space is available.

tormeh 7y ago

Why would you do that? The promise of IPv6 to me is that all devices gets their own IP address, enabling us to move away from the server-client architecture of the internet. Allocating all IPv6 addresses to commercial server operators would require us to continue using NAT, so then we might as well continue using IPv4.

gorgoiler 7y ago
There really is more than enough address space. The 24bit prefix for each Local Internet Registry means each assignment is its own internet of internets, with enough breathing room for multiple levels of hierarchical assignment, and still with 64bits leftover on the LANs for clients to randomly assign themselves scores of addresses without fear of collision.
Tuna-Fish 7y ago
There is no address allocation scheme that would force you to use NAT on IPv6. A lot of people don't really understand exactly what moving from 32bit to 128-bit addresses means. Let's say that we waste 65535/65536, or about 99.9985% of IPv6 address space on pointless allocations, leaving only one /16 left. This still means there are 5 192 296 858 534 827 628 530 496 329 220 096 addresses left to allocate, or 5*10^30, or enough addresses that if we had to distribute them to a trillion people per planet living on a trillion planets, they'd still get 5 billion addresses per person.
- gorgoiler 7y ago
  Part of demystifying IPv6 was that in practice the most significant 64 bits are the limiting factor. It helped me to put more manageable numbers on things. Each ISP can have 65k customers who are big orgs with complex site needs and a /48, or 4 billion small customers getting a bundle of individual networks on their /56. In the latter, each has address space for, say, 256 VLANs which allows network isolation of many internet enabled fridges. And in theory the current scheme allows for 16 million ISPs to exist, though in practice not all the address space is available.