6 ms·

Sadly, depending on the ISP, the prefix is not necessarily static and may change on reconnect (for example, Deutsche Telekom will only keep the prefix static fo

Sadly, depending on the ISP, the prefix is not necessarily static and may change on reconnect (for example, Deutsche Telekom will only keep the prefix static for business accounts). This is completely arbitrary and makes relying on GUAs for internal addresses problematic. It’s too bad that we are inheriting the static IP policies from IPv4, because ISPs want to upsell.

anthropodie 6y ago
Same thing is happening with Jio in India. Is it possible that this is happening because Jio is mobile network. I think I read somewhere that mobile phones are not provided static IPs.
- tormeh 6y ago
  Would make sense for routing if the first n bits are common to the cell tower. Static IPs for phones would result in slower and more expensive routing, as we can't use prefixes for routing anymore.
magicalhippo 6y ago
I've had my IPv4 address from my cable ISP for years. They give me a new IPv6 prefix every time my cable modem loses connection. For privacy I think it would be nice if the IP/prefix isn't fixed per household for long periods of time, but there seems to be a lot of IPv6 software out there designed with the assumption that the prefix is static.
- lizknope 6y ago
  Mostly the same here. My cable modem IPv4 address would stay the same for about a year. It only changed when we had an extended power outage of more than 6 hours about once a year during a bad storm.
redprince 6y ago
There's also a privacy argument here. Changing prefixes makes user tracking harder. That's about the only win for the user. I for one would have preferred to have a choice. I would accept the privacy issues for a static prefix in return. Supporting a dynamic prefix in a not so typical home setup is a PITA.
- ryandrake 6y ago
  Honest question: What is the practical problem with having an IP address from one's ISP that changes from day to day? Dynamic seems to be a privacy win with little to no downside. If I expect incoming connections and need to tell others how to connect to my machine, that's solved by DNS. I have a script that edits my DNS record any time it detects that my public IP changes, so it's automatic.
  - speleding 6y ago
    If you have any IoT devices that you would like to connect to, like security cameras, then a dynamic IP means that you need an intermediary like a cloud service of some kind to be able to reach those. That's a serious down side. DNS can serve as that intermediary (I use it that way for my cameras) but there will be some time between an IP adjust and the DNS update, so it's a bit flaky.
sirn 6y ago
My ISP in Japan (NTT Flets) is even weirder. They have sort-of static IPv6 (due to MAP-E[1] require static prefix) and assigns customer a /64, but don't do Prefix Delegation unless a customer also pay for a Fiber landline (Hikari Denwa) in which they will assign /56 and do proper PD. This has been a huge hindrance for anyone wanting to run their own home router their router must bridge IPv6 to ISP router (and thus not able to do their own firewall/DHCPv6/SLAAC) The only workaround is to use ndppd[1] set to proxy to the upstream router. However ndppd is undergoing a rewrite right now and latest stable release (0.2.5) has few bugs causing ndppd to stop working after a while. So far, the only way to get everything work for me was to build ndppd from master (which was deprecated in favor for a new 1.0, which is still in development). OpenWRT seems to include a working version of ndppd out of the box, but its MAP-E supports is somewhat broken. [1]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-mdt-softwire-map-encapsulation-00 https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-mdt-softwire-map-encapsula... [2]: https://github.com/DanielAdolfsson/ndppd https://github.com/DanielAdolfsson/ndppd
the8472 6y ago
You can configure a ULA prefix in your router instead and use those internally.
- zonefuenf 6y ago
  I do exactly that and it works reasonably (I'm routing with pfSense, which does not support multiple IPs per interface very well, though).
dspillett 6y ago
There are a few ISPs that rpovide proper, static, end-to-end IPv6 networking, with decent documentation, but they are unfortunately few and far between and are usually relatively expensive (bargain-basement ISPs don't tend to support IPv6, at least for their customers, at all). Here in the UK AAISP (Andrews & Arnold) are the usual example that springs to mind for doing dual-stack IPv4 & IPv6 right. There are others that support it to varying degrees.
- gertrunde 6y ago
  I chose my ISP for much the same reason (idnet), well the combination of IPv6, static IPv4, and not being one of the big four. (And it's always entertaining to ask the folk trying to sell BT/Talktalk/Sky/Virgin broadband deals on the street about IPv6 for the utterly blank looks that you get).
  - dspillett 6y ago
    The fixed IPv4 was a key matter when I signed up. Particularly that they offered /29s, though that is less important now that SNI is almost universally supported and due to physical line issues over the last year or few (and wanting >17Mbps upstream) I've moved most of the public bits I hosted (literally) in-house to external locations. The question of IPv6 and fixed IPv4 is fun to raise when sales robots talk about matching other ISP's offerings. The irritating one is when they say "I'm sure we can..." and persist when I say "I know for a fact your consumer product range does not offer that".
    - gertrunde 6y ago
      I once asked a Virgin Media sales-droid about IPv6 on a leased line, and was told they could give us IPv6 if we handed back our IPv4 addressing... somewhat special.
- usrlocal1023 6y ago
  There is also Zen Internet who are cheaper than AAISP. They provide a static /48 subnet allocation that you can divide up into 2^16 /64 subnets. Unfortunately IPv6 is opt in so after getting your connection you will have to contact them, they will then assign you a /48 and enable IPv6 on your connection.
rnhmjoj 6y ago
If the prefix is dynamic there is a (undocumented?) feature[1] in iptables that allows to only match an EUI-64 or custom static suffix, which should be enough for home networks. I'm mentioning this here because I looked for hours for a solution the first time I had to deal with this. Basically you specify the destination address as: ::[suffix]/::ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff or, if you are lucky enough to get a /56 prefix and want to control a single /64 subnet at a time: ::[subnet]:[suffix]/::00ff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff [1]: http://blog.dupondje.be/?p=17 http://blog.dupondje.be/?p=17
raxxorrax 6y ago
I am on IPv6 and access IPv4 through bridges. For anonymity purposes I vastly prefer to have dynamic IPs to be honest. Imagine all the tracking nightmare if we all had static IPs. All those shitty websites having you on log isn't really something I would want. I don't see advantages, getting a host with a static IP is extremely cheap today.
- 293984j29384 6y ago
  Web-based tracking is done via browser fingerprinting and cookies. IP addresses aren't reliable due to NAT and organizational proxies.
  - shawnz 6y ago
    Right, IP addresses aren't reliable for tracking because static IPs aren't commonplace. But if they were, then they would be.
    - ShamelessC 6y ago
      I'm not an expert in this area really. I've heard the argument made that even if static IP's were commonplace you would still need other fingerprinting methods as there are entire houses/apartment complexes/businesses running multiple users through NAT behind their static IP. Also, I'm not sure what your experience has been but my IP only changes very rarely. Seems to happen about once every 6 months. My understanding that this was somewhat common, at least in the land of cable/coax-ISPs. Is 6 months not long enough to glean anything useful?
      - dalore 6y ago
        IPv6 does away with NAT since there are so many IPs that everyone gets one without needing NAT. But proxies will still group the users on the same IP.
      - conk 6y ago
        Also mobile devices that connect to different networks would get different IPs. Your cell phone would get a different IP address at home, cell, work, friends house etc... Thus there would still need to be some tracking/fingerprint to follow across networks.
kcolford 6y ago
As bad as our ISP situation is in Canada, there are a few smaller ones like teksavvy which will make your ipv6 assignment static of you call in and request it.
- canada_dry 6y ago
  > like teksavvy Which, by design, means that Rogers and Bell must support this capability. Yet, they likely won't offer it unless it's monetized (i.e. monthly service charge).
throw0101a 6y ago
> Sadly, depending on the ISP, the prefix is not necessarily static and may change on reconnect I'm happy that my ISP does this, as I have my router reboot every night so that I can get a new IPv4 address every day to reduce tracking. I already surf with cookies disabled by default, and only enable them to log into web sites. I like the fact that I get a new IPv6 prefix every night as it ties into the above tracking avoidance nicely. I'm sure there are further browser-based fingerprinting techniques being done, but it's nice to take out some low-hanging fruit.
- thinkloop 6y ago
  Ideally one would be able to request a new static IP depending on their needs.
chenxiaolong 6y ago
I’ve gotten pretty lucky with my past and current ISPs (Spectrum and AT&T fiber in the USA). The only times I’ve had my public IPv4 address or IPv6 prefix change was when the router’s MAC address or DUID (dhcpv6) changed. For my use case, I kind of like this system since everything is (mostly) static and I can change it if I need to.
jagger27 6y ago
>because ISPs want to upsell I wish it were even an option to buy a static IPv6 block from my ISP, but they don't even offer it at all. This is with Bell Canada with 1.5Gbps down/1Gbps up fibre-to-the-home. You'd think if they can support cutting edge last mile connectivity they'd support a 90s IP standard... Instead we're stuck with ephemeral IPv4 addresses that geo-resolve to cities hundreds of kilometres away. I guess they ran out of addresses that are registered to my actual city. Just last week an online purchase I made was flagged for fraud because my IP didn't resolve close enough to my listed address. The support team then asked me to try tethering to my mobile phone, which of course was assigned an IPv4 address that resolved to a different city hundreds of kilometres in the opposite direction. Why-o-why wasn't IPv4 64 bits long to begin with?
- takeda 6y ago
  4.3billion computers seemed like it was enough when the world population was 3.6 billion. But then they started assigning /8 (16.8 million addresses) to companies like Ford Motors. Another 16.8 million addresses to represent loopback. IPv6 is assigned similarly like that, for example /64 (18,446,744,073,709,551,616 addresses) is the smallest allocation unit for SLAAC. I'm wondering when we will need IPv7.
  - LinuxBender 6y ago
    Don't forget ipv10 [1] [1] - https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-omar-ipv10-06.html https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-omar-ipv10-06.html
- tenebrisalietum 6y ago
  IP was developed before the PC revolution. At that time computers/servers were immobile installations in large institutions like schools, companies, and other similar facilities. No one could imagine that this technology basically would shrink and be available to everyone in their pocket connected by widespread and comparatively cheaper cellular technology.
  - syncsynchalt 6y ago
colanderman 6y ago
Hurricane Electric provides free static /64 and /48 tunnels: https://tunnelbroker.net/ https://tunnelbroker.net/ I've been using one for years, it's great, albeit with the occasional hiccup connecting to picky CDNs.
apple4ever 6y ago
Comcast is the same way, even though their IPv4 is mostly static! Drives me batty so I went with Hurricane Electric connected to my pfSense router.

anthropodie 6y ago

Same thing is happening with Jio in India. Is it possible that this is happening because Jio is mobile network. I think I read somewhere that mobile phones are not provided static IPs.

tormeh 6y ago
Would make sense for routing if the first n bits are common to the cell tower. Static IPs for phones would result in slower and more expensive routing, as we can't use prefixes for routing anymore.

magicalhippo 6y ago

I've had my IPv4 address from my cable ISP for years. They give me a new IPv6 prefix every time my cable modem loses connection. For privacy I think it would be nice if the IP/prefix isn't fixed per household for long periods of time, but there seems to be a lot of IPv6 software out there designed with the assumption that the prefix is static.

lizknope 6y ago
Mostly the same here. My cable modem IPv4 address would stay the same for about a year. It only changed when we had an extended power outage of more than 6 hours about once a year during a bad storm.

redprince 6y ago

There's also a privacy argument here. Changing prefixes makes user tracking harder. That's about the only win for the user. I for one would have preferred to have a choice. I would accept the privacy issues for a static prefix in return. Supporting a dynamic prefix in a not so typical home setup is a PITA.

ryandrake 6y ago
Honest question: What is the practical problem with having an IP address from one's ISP that changes from day to day? Dynamic seems to be a privacy win with little to no downside. If I expect incoming connections and need to tell others how to connect to my machine, that's solved by DNS. I have a script that edits my DNS record any time it detects that my public IP changes, so it's automatic.
- speleding 6y ago
  If you have any IoT devices that you would like to connect to, like security cameras, then a dynamic IP means that you need an intermediary like a cloud service of some kind to be able to reach those. That's a serious down side. DNS can serve as that intermediary (I use it that way for my cameras) but there will be some time between an IP adjust and the DNS update, so it's a bit flaky.

sirn 6y ago

My ISP in Japan (NTT Flets) is even weirder. They have sort-of static IPv6 (due to MAP-E[1] require static prefix) and assigns customer a /64, but don't do Prefix Delegation unless a customer also pay for a Fiber landline (Hikari Denwa) in which they will assign /56 and do proper PD. This has been a huge hindrance for anyone wanting to run their own home router their router must bridge IPv6 to ISP router (and thus not able to do their own firewall/DHCPv6/SLAAC) The only workaround is to use ndppd[1] set to proxy to the upstream router. However ndppd is undergoing a rewrite right now and latest stable release (0.2.5) has few bugs causing ndppd to stop working after a while. So far, the only way to get everything work for me was to build ndppd from master (which was deprecated in favor for a new 1.0, which is still in development). OpenWRT seems to include a working version of ndppd out of the box, but its MAP-E supports is somewhat broken. [1]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-mdt-softwire-map-encapsulation-00 https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-mdt-softwire-map-encapsula... [2]: https://github.com/DanielAdolfsson/ndppd https://github.com/DanielAdolfsson/ndppd

the8472 6y ago

You can configure a ULA prefix in your router instead and use those internally.

zonefuenf 6y ago
I do exactly that and it works reasonably (I'm routing with pfSense, which does not support multiple IPs per interface very well, though).

dspillett 6y ago

There are a few ISPs that rpovide proper, static, end-to-end IPv6 networking, with decent documentation, but they are unfortunately few and far between and are usually relatively expensive (bargain-basement ISPs don't tend to support IPv6, at least for their customers, at all). Here in the UK AAISP (Andrews & Arnold) are the usual example that springs to mind for doing dual-stack IPv4 & IPv6 right. There are others that support it to varying degrees.

gertrunde 6y ago
I chose my ISP for much the same reason (idnet), well the combination of IPv6, static IPv4, and not being one of the big four. (And it's always entertaining to ask the folk trying to sell BT/Talktalk/Sky/Virgin broadband deals on the street about IPv6 for the utterly blank looks that you get).
- dspillett 6y ago
  The fixed IPv4 was a key matter when I signed up. Particularly that they offered /29s, though that is less important now that SNI is almost universally supported and due to physical line issues over the last year or few (and wanting >17Mbps upstream) I've moved most of the public bits I hosted (literally) in-house to external locations. The question of IPv6 and fixed IPv4 is fun to raise when sales robots talk about matching other ISP's offerings. The irritating one is when they say "I'm sure we can..." and persist when I say "I know for a fact your consumer product range does not offer that".
  - gertrunde 6y ago
    I once asked a Virgin Media sales-droid about IPv6 on a leased line, and was told they could give us IPv6 if we handed back our IPv4 addressing... somewhat special.
usrlocal1023 6y ago
There is also Zen Internet who are cheaper than AAISP. They provide a static /48 subnet allocation that you can divide up into 2^16 /64 subnets. Unfortunately IPv6 is opt in so after getting your connection you will have to contact them, they will then assign you a /48 and enable IPv6 on your connection.

rnhmjoj 6y ago

If the prefix is dynamic there is a (undocumented?) feature[1] in iptables that allows to only match an EUI-64 or custom static suffix, which should be enough for home networks. I'm mentioning this here because I looked for hours for a solution the first time I had to deal with this. Basically you specify the destination address as: ::[suffix]/::ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff or, if you are lucky enough to get a /56 prefix and want to control a single /64 subnet at a time: ::[subnet]:[suffix]/::00ff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff [1]: http://blog.dupondje.be/?p=17 http://blog.dupondje.be/?p=17

raxxorrax 6y ago

I am on IPv6 and access IPv4 through bridges. For anonymity purposes I vastly prefer to have dynamic IPs to be honest. Imagine all the tracking nightmare if we all had static IPs. All those shitty websites having you on log isn't really something I would want. I don't see advantages, getting a host with a static IP is extremely cheap today.

293984j29384 6y ago
Web-based tracking is done via browser fingerprinting and cookies. IP addresses aren't reliable due to NAT and organizational proxies.
- shawnz 6y ago
  Right, IP addresses aren't reliable for tracking because static IPs aren't commonplace. But if they were, then they would be.
  - ShamelessC 6y ago
    I'm not an expert in this area really. I've heard the argument made that even if static IP's were commonplace you would still need other fingerprinting methods as there are entire houses/apartment complexes/businesses running multiple users through NAT behind their static IP. Also, I'm not sure what your experience has been but my IP only changes very rarely. Seems to happen about once every 6 months. My understanding that this was somewhat common, at least in the land of cable/coax-ISPs. Is 6 months not long enough to glean anything useful?
    - dalore 6y ago
      IPv6 does away with NAT since there are so many IPs that everyone gets one without needing NAT. But proxies will still group the users on the same IP.
    - conk 6y ago
      Also mobile devices that connect to different networks would get different IPs. Your cell phone would get a different IP address at home, cell, work, friends house etc... Thus there would still need to be some tracking/fingerprint to follow across networks.

kcolford 6y ago

As bad as our ISP situation is in Canada, there are a few smaller ones like teksavvy which will make your ipv6 assignment static of you call in and request it.

canada_dry 6y ago
> like teksavvy Which, by design, means that Rogers and Bell must support this capability. Yet, they likely won't offer it unless it's monetized (i.e. monthly service charge).

throw0101a 6y ago

> Sadly, depending on the ISP, the prefix is not necessarily static and may change on reconnect I'm happy that my ISP does this, as I have my router reboot every night so that I can get a new IPv4 address every day to reduce tracking. I already surf with cookies disabled by default, and only enable them to log into web sites. I like the fact that I get a new IPv6 prefix every night as it ties into the above tracking avoidance nicely. I'm sure there are further browser-based fingerprinting techniques being done, but it's nice to take out some low-hanging fruit.

thinkloop 6y ago
Ideally one would be able to request a new static IP depending on their needs.

chenxiaolong 6y ago

I’ve gotten pretty lucky with my past and current ISPs (Spectrum and AT&T fiber in the USA). The only times I’ve had my public IPv4 address or IPv6 prefix change was when the router’s MAC address or DUID (dhcpv6) changed. For my use case, I kind of like this system since everything is (mostly) static and I can change it if I need to.

jagger27 6y ago

>because ISPs want to upsell I wish it were even an option to buy a static IPv6 block from my ISP, but they don't even offer it at all. This is with Bell Canada with 1.5Gbps down/1Gbps up fibre-to-the-home. You'd think if they can support cutting edge last mile connectivity they'd support a 90s IP standard... Instead we're stuck with ephemeral IPv4 addresses that geo-resolve to cities hundreds of kilometres away. I guess they ran out of addresses that are registered to my actual city. Just last week an online purchase I made was flagged for fraud because my IP didn't resolve close enough to my listed address. The support team then asked me to try tethering to my mobile phone, which of course was assigned an IPv4 address that resolved to a different city hundreds of kilometres in the opposite direction. Why-o-why wasn't IPv4 64 bits long to begin with?

takeda 6y ago
4.3billion computers seemed like it was enough when the world population was 3.6 billion. But then they started assigning /8 (16.8 million addresses) to companies like Ford Motors. Another 16.8 million addresses to represent loopback. IPv6 is assigned similarly like that, for example /64 (18,446,744,073,709,551,616 addresses) is the smallest allocation unit for SLAAC. I'm wondering when we will need IPv7.
- LinuxBender 6y ago
  Don't forget ipv10 [1] [1] - https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-omar-ipv10-06.html https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-omar-ipv10-06.html
tenebrisalietum 6y ago
IP was developed before the PC revolution. At that time computers/servers were immobile installations in large institutions like schools, companies, and other similar facilities. No one could imagine that this technology basically would shrink and be available to everyone in their pocket connected by widespread and comparatively cheaper cellular technology.
- syncsynchalt 6y ago

colanderman 6y ago

Hurricane Electric provides free static /64 and /48 tunnels: https://tunnelbroker.net/ https://tunnelbroker.net/ I've been using one for years, it's great, albeit with the occasional hiccup connecting to picky CDNs.

apple4ever 6y ago

Comcast is the same way, even though their IPv4 is mostly static! Drives me batty so I went with Hurricane Electric connected to my pfSense router.