9 ms·
Stupid question: Everytime I'm given the option to work with v4 or v6 (which, granted, is not often) I do v4 for one silly, stupid reason: I can remember a v4
by ergothus 7y ago
Stupid question: Everytime I'm given the option to work with v4 or v6 (which, granted, is not often) I do v4 for one silly, stupid reason: I can remember a v4 address for, like the 10 minutes while configuring that I might at any moment have to record/enter it somewhere. (So: Not just once, but being able to have it as needed in a small time window)
What do people do with v6? Have better memories than me? cut-and-paste repeatedly as needed?
While I do less-and-less sysadmin work over time, even on my home network, there are opportunities to get more comfortable with v6 that I've skipped because of this, yet I never see anyone talking about it.
- briffle 7y agoWe use DNS... Its been around about as long as IPv4
- azinman2 7y agoDNS doesn’t help when you’re having to manually enter an IP into a config, which is what the OP implied.
- oarsinsync 7y agoIf an application supports IPv6, it should support DNS. If it doesn’t support DNS, that feels like a bug. The only configuration item that should require manual entry of an IPv6 address is a NIC. Even that has other mechanisms. Everything else should support DNS. Edit: doh, the second place is the dns zone file
- Paperweight 7y agoSo you gotta log into your registrar and copy paste your IPv6 address and wait god knows how long for it to propagate...
- oarsinsync 7y agoOr you can host your own dns. Or you can get a decent dns host. It doesn’t need to be your domain registrar, much like you don’t need your website or email hosted with your domain registrar.
- icebraining 7y agoDNS doesn't actually "propagate", all you're waiting for is the caches to expire, and you can control that by keeping a low TTL on the record.
- azinman2 7y agoAgain, to me the OP is talking explicitly about places where you have to enter it in. What are the other mechanisms? Let’s forget about situations where you can copy/paste or use DHCP. My answer would be to use my phone to take a photo of the address (if not easily accessible via web browser), and then use that to manually enter it. Probably not a situation where you can rely on memory, unfortunately.
- oarsinsync 7y agoOutside of the NIC and DNS, where else do you need to enter in an IP literal?
- zenexer 7y agoFirewalls, for example. We have huge files containing risk levels for various IP addresses. Most of it is automated, but sometimes we have to tweak something manually. These aren't IP addresses that we control, so DNS isn't helpful. Often we're dealing with ranges as well, for which DNS is also unhelpful.
- dredmorbius 7y agoTechnically, you could claim you're authoritative, just hope the assignments don't leak ;-)
- mping 7y agoDns resolver Internal IPs
- gbear605 7y agoConnecting to things on your local network
- ay 7y agoMy experience is contrary: Put the “interesting” addresses in DNS immediately upon acquiring/configuring them. When you need a literal - lookup DNS name, copy-paste from one terminal into the other. I do this for both Ipv4 and Ipv6 addresses. Turns out the human brain sometimes does also have difficulty figuring the differences between 192.168.129.1 and 192.186.130.1 when one of them is mistyped....
- penagwin 7y agoYou still need to put that ip address manually into a few places to have that setup (dns, static ip settings, possibly router settings, etc.)
- snagglegaggle 7y agoYeah, but what about ephemeral DNS for your LAN? Zeroconf and NetBIOS work but can be harder to set up than IPv4 (especially if your install media doesn't have it set up by default).
- api 7y agoThis isn't a great solution. Every IT person knows "its always DNS," and you have to set up IP stuff to bring up DNS in general. DNS is brittle and doesn't deal well with multiple network domains or debugging if the network is down, and those are precisely the situations where one finds oneself typing IPs. I really think the size of the IPs is a major cause of slow V6 uptake.
- Fnoord 7y agoSize in which regard though? They're hexadecimals. If they were numbers or letters (0-9, a-z instead of 0-0, a-f) the number of bits would be still high, but with lower amount of characters. You might loose something beautiful as autoconfig but who needs a /64 for one device anyway? Plus, it does not work well for anonymity. You might as well randomize it.
- zaphoyd 7y agoautoconfig, DHCP, DNS, cut & paste, and pen/paper all work fine, depending on the reason you need to move the address. I doubt there is much discussion because there isn't really a way around it. The world is full of situations (MAC addresses, VIN numbers, software serial numbers, content hashes, UUIDs, etc, etc, etc) where a global address space doesn't fit in Human short term memory. Computers are pretty good at remembering numbers for us, that would be my first choice.
- esotericn 7y ago> cut-and-paste repeatedly as needed Pretty much this, though with IPv4 as I don't trust myself to remember that either. I find myself increasingly frustrated with tools which force GUI flows or context switches that require me to do that, though. I prefer a 'edit a bunch of flat files in repos, push, magic config engine makes it happen' flow. It's quicker for me to copy-paste than it is to type even an IPv4.
- kees99 7y agoThis, exactly. I've spent way more time troubleshooting various obscure network problems that ended up being a typo in IP address/port number, than I'd be proud to admit.
- esotericn 7y agoRight. When I do "remember" an IPv4 it's usually that I've committed a /24 to long-term through repeated exposure, and then I really just have the 8 bits in short term memory.
- perlgeek 7y agoWhen I work with v6 addresses, often only the last two bytes change from one address to the next, so I copy&paste the common prefix, and just work on the last two bytes. If that's not the case, always copy&paste.
- birdyrooster 7y agoYou remember the prefixes (e.g. 1234:5:6:7::/48) you care most about and the hexadecimal nature of the address makes them fairly memorable and compact. You can prefix addresses with a-f to hint at usage and even spell words. Unused octets can be omitted thanks to the nature of the ::.
- ipython 7y agoThis is exactly how I do it. Not sure why you’re downvoted.
- ATsch 7y agoYes, this is important to remember. While automatically assigned IPv6 addresses will usually use the full 128 bits (last half is random), manually assigned addresses usually don't. So e.g. one of my servers is 2a00:1234:8::10, which is pretty easy to remember. There's going to be no way around memorizing the first two or three colon sections, which are assigned to you, but the last part is going to be as easy to remember as you make it. 2600::1, owned by sprint, which is the shortest pingable IP address I know, is exactly as long as 1.1.1.1, the shortest possible IPv4 address.
- U8dcN7vx 7y agoI raise you ... $ ping 1.1 PING 1.1 (1.0.0.1) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from 1.0.0.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=56 time=26.0 ms ...
- chmod775 7y agoI raise you ... $ ping 0 PING 0 (127.0.0.1) 56(84) bytes of data. Note that this may default to 0.0.0.0 instead depending on what you're running, which is technically the correct interpretation. I'm not sure who is doing the shenanigans here.
- U8dcN7vx 7y agoTouche! All zeros is self, which is to say generally the same as 127.1.
- JohnFen 7y ago> What do people do with v6? I write them down.
- clhodapp 7y agoPerhaps the impulse is cruel but for me, the fact that humans can't remember IPv6 addresses is a selling point. It forces people into what I believe are better practices (indirection through dns, using tagging in firewalls and load balancers, auto-assigning IPs, copy-pasting addresses in the cases where they're actually needed).
- JMTQp8lwXL 7y agoYeah, but to set up an AAAA record, you still need the IP address. The usability still leaves something to be desired. At least we should never run out of IPv6 addresses.
- denkmoon 7y agoIf you're setting up a AAAA once, you can deal with the copy paste. If you're updating them a lot, or a lot all at once, you should probably use a dynamic DNS updater.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago> At least we should never run out of IPv6 addresses. This is true in terms of the raw total number of IPv6 addresses. Everything I've seen discussing them assumes they'll be assigned hierarchically, though, which is a great way to ensure most of them are never used. Block assignments through a hierarchy can chew through any number of addresses no matter how big the space is.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- waste_monk 7y agoHeirarchical assignment allows route summarisation. Imagine how much TCAM you'd need for unsummarized IPv6.
- musicale 7y agoNon-memorability is an annoying problem for IPv6. The IP internet seems to depend on some degree of manual configuration, which requires identifying numerical IP addresses. It's puzzling that the IETF hasn't recommended a human-memorable, word-based scheme for prefixes, something like what3words for IPv6.
- musicale 7y agoHere is one project to represent them as haiku: https://gabrielbrady.com/projects/hipku/ https://gabrielbrady.com/projects/hipku/ We could also use syllabic encoding; for example, using 'bdfghjklmnprstvz' * 'aeio', we could encode 12 octet prefix 60:51:80:66:55:83:66:dc:56:fb:14:d1 as ka-dediba-keneji-bokere-sejizi-sehohe Which is somewhat easier to read and retype.
- edoceo 7y agoWow, like mnemonic encoder. Imma try something real quick...
- iggldiggl 7y ago> Here is one project to represent them as haiku: https://gabrielbrady.com/projects/hipku/ https://gabrielbrady.com/projects/hipku/ Cute idea, although somehow in my opinion the IPv4 haikus tend to sound better than those representing IPv6 addresses.
- ipython 7y agoIt’s really not that bad. You remember your prefix and then manually assign in your /64. The address space is so sparse the first part is easy to remember - so really we are talking about 24-32 bits hexadecimal here.
- 3xblah 7y agoNo one has yet mentioned but some people have built special keypads for inputting hexadecimal addresses. I remember seeing a patent a number of years ago for an "IPv6 keyboard". Not sure if he ever tried to mass produce it. A web search shows one website is selling something called an "IPv6 Buddy". Perhaps it is the same person, but I doubt it.
- xs83 7y agoAbsolutely agree! Also I think many of us have so many systems that either can't / won't support IPV6 that it is just way too much hassle vs private addreses & a NAT gateway!
- denkmoon 7y agoThe only hard thing to remember in ipv6 is the prefix that my ISP gives me, but it's mostly irrelevant. My DHCP6 gives out a range of ::0550:0000 to ::0550:ffff, I chose 0550 randomly, and I use a dynamic DNS updater to keep my hostnames up to date. It's only marginally harder than ipv4.
- edoceo 7y agoIn Xfce there is a clip-manager plugin. So, when dealing with dozens of IPv6, all are magically on this easy to get to panel. And I only focus on the last four chairs. I never type them.
- tyingq 7y agoGet a utility for cut/paste that allows multiple choices? For windows, they are called "clipboard managers".
- bane 7y agoThe real problem is that they're just such big addresses. We could totally just rerepresent v6 addresses as 4 sets of 4 octets, but that's basically remembering 4 ipv4 addresses. The hex approach used today is a pretty good compromise, but people haven't really regularly operated with hexadecimal digits as a daily representation for a couple decades. Between hex and a direct binary representation there aren't really a lot of standard representations. Even say 16 ASCII characters won't work since there are quite a few whitespace and nondisplayable characters in the set.
- alexeldeib 7y agoI was curious if anyone had tried encoding them in e.g. base64 and found this: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1924 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1924 base85. Still 20 digits...Not much easier to remember. They are truly huge.
- ATsch 7y agoAs bad of an idea as memorizing addresses is, they're only so big if you use all of the bits. If you manually assign addresses, most of the bits will be zeroes or low numbers, which means you can just collapse them. E.g. if you had a /32 and two dns servers, the second one might be reachable at 2400:123:d::2, which is exactly as long as say 143.239.132.2. And because you only get at most one octet to play with on v4, you can't easily make your addresses more memorable either.
- mantoto 7y agoWe autoscale our stuff. I need a /28 for one kubernetes cluster of 1-300 nodes and 1-4 ils for ingress. The ipv4 shortige definitely had a huge impact on those designs.