7 ms·

IPv6 was over engineered. The fact that you need several hours to understand it while you get IPv4 in 5 minutes doesn’t push for adoption.

tenebrisalietum 6y ago
Explain. IPv4 takes time to understand too (e.g. subnetting) but it's more common so people deal with it much more.
- Hnrobert42 6y ago
  Understanding how to read/write an IPv6 address is WAY more complicated than for IPv4. That barrier to entry alone likely prevents a lot of casual adoption. You can come back that IPv6 isn’t all that bad, but the real world adoption rate amongst individuals, even skilled hobbyists, speaks for itself.
  - capitol_ 6y ago
    I'm not that sure on how an adoption rate of 30-35% speaks for itself? https://www.google.com/intl/ru/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=ipv6-adoption https://www.google.com/intl/ru/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=ipv6... Maybe you mean that the increase in adoption is too slow, and I agree to that, but change always takes more time than we want, specially when there isn't clear financial incentives.
    - konjin 6y ago
      ipv6 is today older than the internet was when it was invented.
    - Hnrobert42 6y ago
      That’s why I said among individuals, specifically hobbyists. Sure, companies that consume vast quantities of IPv4 addresses have an economic incentive to use IPv6, so you will see some adoption. But the reason there is such a long tail is because the cost of adoption (learning it) is higher than the supposed benefits for most individuals and small corporations.
  - IgorPartola 6y ago
    That is probably the silliest argument against IPv6 you can make. Just look at the header structure and IPv6 becomes pretty clear. And without old cruft that IPv4 is burdened with, I would argue IPv6 is easier to grok.
  - tenebrisalietum 6y ago
    The ideal situation for both IPv4 and IPv6 is to not have to deal with raw addresses. If you are reading IP addresses over the phone or in a ticket to connect to computers on a regular basis, your company did IT on the real cheap and is likely suboptimal in many ways except for amount of money spent on IT.
- Mauricebranagh 6y ago
  Not as much, you could learn the basics on ipv4 in two to three 4 hour classes of study - assuming you know how to convert between binary octal and decimal.
  - welterde 6y ago
    The same is true of IPv6? There is really nothing deeply magical there that takes forever to understand. Maybe be a bit more concrete about what's so much more complicated about IPv6 than IPv4..
    - sixothree 6y ago
      What I am seeing here mostly is the biggest problem is that you can't hold an IPv6 address in your head. Ever. I can look at an v4 address then 15 seconds later look at another address and know they are different. That's not possible with v6. So I think people are conflating "difficult to wield" as "more complicated".
      - welterde 6y ago
        If you only use autoconfiguration perhaps, but for manually assigned addresses it's really not too bad since one can structure them in a logical way (which would be extremely expensive to do in the IPv4 case). If you are a company you can get your own IPv6 space and can structure things hierarchically: <company prefix>:<site>:<vlan>::<hostnumber>. And in fact I can remember more IPv6 addresses for hosts than IPv4 addresses for the same hosts right now.. so there is that.
      - oarsinsync 6y ago
        And yet I have fe80:: in my head and 2001:db8:: in my head (as well as my own /32). I don’t have the documentation prefix (if one even exists) for IPv4 in my head. It’s harder, but “can’t... ever” and “not possible” are not true for everyone.
baryphonic 6y ago
Ehhh I don't know about that. IP takes a while to understand for most of the reasons articulated in the post. DHCP and ARP, for example, are a bit strange. It's just everyone already understands it, so explanations have been distilled pretty well. That being said, I don't grok IPv6 myself, on account of never actually looking into it.
- wnoise 6y ago
  ARP I'll give you (though even there it's only actually in the binding of IPv4 to ethernet-like lower layers. IP over e.g. PPP doesn't need it). DHCP isn't inherent in IPv4 at all though. You want to throw it in, because IPv6 has address autoconfiguration built-in. But this is actually just more evidence that IPv6 is more complex.
  - baryphonic 6y ago
    I want to throw DHCP in because in practice, you need it to connect to random IPv4 networks. Besides, the counterpoint is even tougher. Should we expect beginners to configure static addresses when actually configuring their networks? Getting bogged down in the details of broadcast addresses, subnet masks and gateway addresses can be a bit unsettling for a total beginner. It's second nature to seasoned hackers, so we discount how foreign it was when we first learned it.
api 6y ago
IPv4 as deployed with NAT is more complex than IPv6. The most significant barriers to V6 adoption are, in this order: 1. It’s an entirely new network. IPv4 only hosts are not reachable on the IPv6 net. It replaces rather than extends IP, and I can’t figure out why they did that. 2. The addresses are too long to remember and easily type, and the encoding with its shortening rules is non-canonical and annoying to visually parse. Extending V4 to 64 bits on top of the V4 space would have been a much better idea for multiple reasons. Every V4 becomes a /32 in a full /64. Using something like base32 addresses could have been kept to just barely type-able length. People always push back on #2 with “use DNS.” I always wonder if these people have ever done IT or devops. You constantly type IPs in the real world and long V6 addresses are a huge annoyance.
- ignoramous 6y ago
  > Every V4 becomes a /32 in a full /64. IPv4-mapped IPv6? http://www.tcpipguide.com/free/t_IPv6IPv4AddressEmbedding-2.htm http://www.tcpipguide.com/free/t_IPv6IPv4AddressEmbedding-2....
- jrockway 6y ago
  I do a lot of devops and haven't typed an IP address in a while. I do a lot of comparisons, however, and comparing 128 bit numbers is slightly more difficult than 32 bit numbers. Overall, I stopped remembering IP address a long time ago. I wouldn't recognize "jrock.us" if you showed it to me. I kind of recognize my current external IPv4 address, but it could be off by a lot before I'd notice. I think, many years ago, I typed a lot of IP addresses, but don't anymore. I am personally fully-ready for IPv6, but understand that the world is not. (For example, my website was IPv6-accessible for many years, but changed providers and now it's not. I was a little sad about this, but it turns out nobody cares, so I didn't spend any time on it. Unfortunate, but someday it will work again, I'm sure.)
- welterde 6y ago
  > It’s an entirely new network. IPv4 only hosts are not reachable on the IPv6 net. It replaces rather than extends IP, and I can’t figure out why they did that. IPv6 cannot be an extension of IPv4 since IPv4 is not forward-compatible. It has nothing in it that would allow stuffing more address bits into it. And since you cannot encode more than 32bit in 32bit you will never be able to have a IPv4 successor that can just interoperate with IPv4 - you will always end up in exactly the same situation as IPv6 is right now. And if you just want to route your IPv4-ng over IPv4 in the core or something (which is what your idea is more or less). You can do that with IPv6 as well: Use 6in4 tunneling. But you are still at the same problem that a IPv4-only cannot communicate with an IPv4-ng-only host, since it is unaware of IPv4-ng.
jrockway 6y ago
I learn new things about IPv4 every day. Over the weekend there was an article about someone writing an IPv4 address parser and there were a couple of cases that were new to me. One thing about "second system syndrome" that doesn't get talked about much is how the second system always has to take into account the unwritten rules from the first system, that the original designer didn't take into account. What was previously unspecified now becomes specified, and that increases the amount of text in the second system's specification. But, the complexity might not be as high -- it's just that you can read about it all in one place.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
freeopinion 6y ago
That's a very simplistic statement. That's like saying IA-64 was over-engineered. It's completely unhelpful unless you can articulate in which ways it is over-engineered and propose a practical alternative. I take my hat off to the AMD folks that brought us x86_64. I challenge you to design a successor to IPv4 that is better than IPv6. Put it out there and let the world start taking shots at it. We'll see how well it holds up. There is plenty of opportunity for a better idea to catch on. Just like x86_64 succeeded despite the existence of IA-64. IPv6 has been so poorly adopted that it is not too late to retreat. But it would take a lot more than lazy criticism to find a workable path forward.

tenebrisalietum 6y ago

Explain. IPv4 takes time to understand too (e.g. subnetting) but it's more common so people deal with it much more.

Hnrobert42 6y ago
Understanding how to read/write an IPv6 address is WAY more complicated than for IPv4. That barrier to entry alone likely prevents a lot of casual adoption. You can come back that IPv6 isn’t all that bad, but the real world adoption rate amongst individuals, even skilled hobbyists, speaks for itself.
- capitol_ 6y ago
  I'm not that sure on how an adoption rate of 30-35% speaks for itself? https://www.google.com/intl/ru/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=ipv6-adoption https://www.google.com/intl/ru/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=ipv6... Maybe you mean that the increase in adoption is too slow, and I agree to that, but change always takes more time than we want, specially when there isn't clear financial incentives.
  - konjin 6y ago
    ipv6 is today older than the internet was when it was invented.
  - Hnrobert42 6y ago
    That’s why I said among individuals, specifically hobbyists. Sure, companies that consume vast quantities of IPv4 addresses have an economic incentive to use IPv6, so you will see some adoption. But the reason there is such a long tail is because the cost of adoption (learning it) is higher than the supposed benefits for most individuals and small corporations.
- IgorPartola 6y ago
  That is probably the silliest argument against IPv6 you can make. Just look at the header structure and IPv6 becomes pretty clear. And without old cruft that IPv4 is burdened with, I would argue IPv6 is easier to grok.
- tenebrisalietum 6y ago
  The ideal situation for both IPv4 and IPv6 is to not have to deal with raw addresses. If you are reading IP addresses over the phone or in a ticket to connect to computers on a regular basis, your company did IT on the real cheap and is likely suboptimal in many ways except for amount of money spent on IT.
Mauricebranagh 6y ago
Not as much, you could learn the basics on ipv4 in two to three 4 hour classes of study - assuming you know how to convert between binary octal and decimal.
- welterde 6y ago
  The same is true of IPv6? There is really nothing deeply magical there that takes forever to understand. Maybe be a bit more concrete about what's so much more complicated about IPv6 than IPv4..
  - sixothree 6y ago
    What I am seeing here mostly is the biggest problem is that you can't hold an IPv6 address in your head. Ever. I can look at an v4 address then 15 seconds later look at another address and know they are different. That's not possible with v6. So I think people are conflating "difficult to wield" as "more complicated".
    - welterde 6y ago
      If you only use autoconfiguration perhaps, but for manually assigned addresses it's really not too bad since one can structure them in a logical way (which would be extremely expensive to do in the IPv4 case). If you are a company you can get your own IPv6 space and can structure things hierarchically: <company prefix>:<site>:<vlan>::<hostnumber>. And in fact I can remember more IPv6 addresses for hosts than IPv4 addresses for the same hosts right now.. so there is that.
    - oarsinsync 6y ago
      And yet I have fe80:: in my head and 2001:db8:: in my head (as well as my own /32). I don’t have the documentation prefix (if one even exists) for IPv4 in my head. It’s harder, but “can’t... ever” and “not possible” are not true for everyone.

baryphonic 6y ago

Ehhh I don't know about that. IP takes a while to understand for most of the reasons articulated in the post. DHCP and ARP, for example, are a bit strange. It's just everyone already understands it, so explanations have been distilled pretty well. That being said, I don't grok IPv6 myself, on account of never actually looking into it.

wnoise 6y ago
ARP I'll give you (though even there it's only actually in the binding of IPv4 to ethernet-like lower layers. IP over e.g. PPP doesn't need it). DHCP isn't inherent in IPv4 at all though. You want to throw it in, because IPv6 has address autoconfiguration built-in. But this is actually just more evidence that IPv6 is more complex.
- baryphonic 6y ago
  I want to throw DHCP in because in practice, you need it to connect to random IPv4 networks. Besides, the counterpoint is even tougher. Should we expect beginners to configure static addresses when actually configuring their networks? Getting bogged down in the details of broadcast addresses, subnet masks and gateway addresses can be a bit unsettling for a total beginner. It's second nature to seasoned hackers, so we discount how foreign it was when we first learned it.

api 6y ago

IPv4 as deployed with NAT is more complex than IPv6. The most significant barriers to V6 adoption are, in this order: 1. It’s an entirely new network. IPv4 only hosts are not reachable on the IPv6 net. It replaces rather than extends IP, and I can’t figure out why they did that. 2. The addresses are too long to remember and easily type, and the encoding with its shortening rules is non-canonical and annoying to visually parse. Extending V4 to 64 bits on top of the V4 space would have been a much better idea for multiple reasons. Every V4 becomes a /32 in a full /64. Using something like base32 addresses could have been kept to just barely type-able length. People always push back on #2 with “use DNS.” I always wonder if these people have ever done IT or devops. You constantly type IPs in the real world and long V6 addresses are a huge annoyance.

ignoramous 6y ago
> Every V4 becomes a /32 in a full /64. IPv4-mapped IPv6? http://www.tcpipguide.com/free/t_IPv6IPv4AddressEmbedding-2.htm http://www.tcpipguide.com/free/t_IPv6IPv4AddressEmbedding-2....
jrockway 6y ago
I do a lot of devops and haven't typed an IP address in a while. I do a lot of comparisons, however, and comparing 128 bit numbers is slightly more difficult than 32 bit numbers. Overall, I stopped remembering IP address a long time ago. I wouldn't recognize "jrock.us" if you showed it to me. I kind of recognize my current external IPv4 address, but it could be off by a lot before I'd notice. I think, many years ago, I typed a lot of IP addresses, but don't anymore. I am personally fully-ready for IPv6, but understand that the world is not. (For example, my website was IPv6-accessible for many years, but changed providers and now it's not. I was a little sad about this, but it turns out nobody cares, so I didn't spend any time on it. Unfortunate, but someday it will work again, I'm sure.)
welterde 6y ago
> It’s an entirely new network. IPv4 only hosts are not reachable on the IPv6 net. It replaces rather than extends IP, and I can’t figure out why they did that. IPv6 cannot be an extension of IPv4 since IPv4 is not forward-compatible. It has nothing in it that would allow stuffing more address bits into it. And since you cannot encode more than 32bit in 32bit you will never be able to have a IPv4 successor that can just interoperate with IPv4 - you will always end up in exactly the same situation as IPv6 is right now. And if you just want to route your IPv4-ng over IPv4 in the core or something (which is what your idea is more or less). You can do that with IPv6 as well: Use 6in4 tunneling. But you are still at the same problem that a IPv4-only cannot communicate with an IPv4-ng-only host, since it is unaware of IPv4-ng.

jrockway 6y ago

I learn new things about IPv4 every day. Over the weekend there was an article about someone writing an IPv4 address parser and there were a couple of cases that were new to me. One thing about "second system syndrome" that doesn't get talked about much is how the second system always has to take into account the unwritten rules from the first system, that the original designer didn't take into account. What was previously unspecified now becomes specified, and that increases the amount of text in the second system's specification. But, the complexity might not be as high -- it's just that you can read about it all in one place.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

freeopinion 6y ago

That's a very simplistic statement. That's like saying IA-64 was over-engineered. It's completely unhelpful unless you can articulate in which ways it is over-engineered and propose a practical alternative. I take my hat off to the AMD folks that brought us x86_64. I challenge you to design a successor to IPv4 that is better than IPv6. Put it out there and let the world start taking shots at it. We'll see how well it holds up. There is plenty of opportunity for a better idea to catch on. Just like x86_64 succeeded despite the existence of IA-64. IPv6 has been so poorly adopted that it is not too late to retreat. But it would take a lot more than lazy criticism to find a workable path forward.