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Exactly. Technically ipv6 is designed to solve a real problem. Except the people who are charged with using/delivering service with IP addresses hate it with a

Exactly. Technically ipv6 is designed to solve a real problem. Except the people who are charged with using/delivering service with IP addresses hate it with a passion. The majority of network folks I have interacted with joke about it. IPv6 is a terrible solution because ipv4 is so much easier for people to write down, remember, and actually use. An ipv6 address is more like a MAC address in that it exists and it’s supposed to be unique but no one is reciting their MAC address every day. Phone numbers, mailing addresses, and email addresses are all memorable. IPv6 is not and will not succeed as a result. Yes, I’m acutely aware it’s being forced on the industry because ipv4 is running out and there is no other option. However, the price of ipv4 blocks shows how badly people don’t want to switch to this miserable standard.

iam-TJ 6y ago
The same was said about IP (IPv4). The original solution was a static hostname<>IP address table, "hosts.txt", centrally administered, that all hosts copied via FTP until that became too large. That led to the development of the Domain Name System (DNS) in 1983 [0]. DNS AAAA records do for IPv6 what A records do for IPv4. PTR records (for reverse look-ups) work for both. For zero configuration (no DNS server) we have multicast DNS (mDNS) [1]. [0] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc882.html https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc882.html [1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6762.html https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6762.html
cranekam 6y ago
Who in their right mind is memorising IPv4 addresses, at least beyond the IP range used on their home network? Nobody remembers MAC addresses because nobody needs to: IP and the upper layers hide that. If you don't want to adopt IPv6 because it would make remembering your IP addresses harder I'd say you have much more pressing issues to resolve first. I'd also argue that many people, me included, have simply stopped remembering phone numbers (and maybe addresses) now. I have some (my parents', etc) committed to long-term memory but there is no way I need or even try to remember new phone numbers I come across. My contacts list does it for me. IPv6 adoption is slow because a) it hasn't been essential so far, b) it's weird and different to IPv4 and if using it isn't essential, why bother? It's the technical equivalent to rewriting all your recipes from imperial to metric units, despite owning scales and measuring tools that still do both. (Note: I am a nerd and like playing with this stuff so I am mostly v6 where possible.)
- CarelessExpert 6y ago
  > Who in their right mind is memorising IPv4 addresses, at least beyond the IP range used on their home network? Hell, I don't even remember them on my home network. I have a server running a dozen VMs and I'll be damned if I can remember the IPs for all those services. DNS exists for a reason. Moreover, the only time I might be working with those raw IPs is with services using static IPs. But in that case my IPv6 addresses aren't actually that much more complicated. On the v4 side I might have: 192.168.1.122 And on the IPv6 side (where I have a /48 allocated) I might have: 2600:ABCD:XYZW::11
  - cranekam 6y ago
    Yes, it's all easy. I have a /64 assigned to my LAN, an /80 assigned to each of my hosts for allocating IPs to containers, etc. I have DNS and a text file listing which blocks I have allocated out of the /48 my ISP gives me. It's not hard or substantially different to IPv4.
fulafel 6y ago
> IPv6 is a terrible solution because ipv4 is so much easier for people to write down I'm not sure if you're serious, but in case you are, I'd ask you to consider the percentage of people using IP whose use cases involve writing down IP addresses.
- oarsinsync 6y ago
  Just us network administrators, who administer the networks that your IPs run on. It’s difficult to convince someone to make their own job harder, especially when nobody is actually asking them to, either.
  - fulafel 6y ago
    If you are administering networks by writing down ip addresses, it sounds like an old habit that maybe survived this long because of conveniently short addresses, but hardly essential. (Yes I have done it too back in the day, though we had this nifty tech called copy & paste...)

iam-TJ 6y ago

The same was said about IP (IPv4). The original solution was a static hostname<>IP address table, "hosts.txt", centrally administered, that all hosts copied via FTP until that became too large. That led to the development of the Domain Name System (DNS) in 1983 [0]. DNS AAAA records do for IPv6 what A records do for IPv4. PTR records (for reverse look-ups) work for both. For zero configuration (no DNS server) we have multicast DNS (mDNS) [1]. [0] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc882.html https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc882.html [1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6762.html https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6762.html

cranekam 6y ago

Who in their right mind is memorising IPv4 addresses, at least beyond the IP range used on their home network? Nobody remembers MAC addresses because nobody needs to: IP and the upper layers hide that. If you don't want to adopt IPv6 because it would make remembering your IP addresses harder I'd say you have much more pressing issues to resolve first. I'd also argue that many people, me included, have simply stopped remembering phone numbers (and maybe addresses) now. I have some (my parents', etc) committed to long-term memory but there is no way I need or even try to remember new phone numbers I come across. My contacts list does it for me. IPv6 adoption is slow because a) it hasn't been essential so far, b) it's weird and different to IPv4 and if using it isn't essential, why bother? It's the technical equivalent to rewriting all your recipes from imperial to metric units, despite owning scales and measuring tools that still do both. (Note: I am a nerd and like playing with this stuff so I am mostly v6 where possible.)

CarelessExpert 6y ago
> Who in their right mind is memorising IPv4 addresses, at least beyond the IP range used on their home network? Hell, I don't even remember them on my home network. I have a server running a dozen VMs and I'll be damned if I can remember the IPs for all those services. DNS exists for a reason. Moreover, the only time I might be working with those raw IPs is with services using static IPs. But in that case my IPv6 addresses aren't actually that much more complicated. On the v4 side I might have: 192.168.1.122 And on the IPv6 side (where I have a /48 allocated) I might have: 2600:ABCD:XYZW::11
- cranekam 6y ago
  Yes, it's all easy. I have a /64 assigned to my LAN, an /80 assigned to each of my hosts for allocating IPs to containers, etc. I have DNS and a text file listing which blocks I have allocated out of the /48 my ISP gives me. It's not hard or substantially different to IPv4.

fulafel 6y ago

> IPv6 is a terrible solution because ipv4 is so much easier for people to write down I'm not sure if you're serious, but in case you are, I'd ask you to consider the percentage of people using IP whose use cases involve writing down IP addresses.

oarsinsync 6y ago
Just us network administrators, who administer the networks that your IPs run on. It’s difficult to convince someone to make their own job harder, especially when nobody is actually asking them to, either.
- fulafel 6y ago
  If you are administering networks by writing down ip addresses, it sounds like an old habit that maybe survived this long because of conveniently short addresses, but hardly essential. (Yes I have done it too back in the day, though we had this nifty tech called copy & paste...)