9 ms·

Wow; that is a lot worse than I thought. I really wish IPv6 was better understood than it is now, it really is quite a good standard, but it is also quite a bit

Wow; that is a lot worse than I thought. I really wish IPv6 was better understood than it is now, it really is quite a good standard, but it is also quite a bit different than IPv4 which I think scares people away (it can also be hard to remember longer IPv6 addresses).

seiferteric 5y ago
> it can also be hard to remember longer IPv6 addresses mDNS helps since you can use hostname.local without having to set up a DNS server. I was going to make a joke blog post about using ipv4 addresses as hostnames so you can "keep using ipv4" while actually using ipv6, but I found you can't have "." in hostnames, so maybe instead use "-".
- arianvanp 5y ago
  Problem is .local domains don't resolve everywhere . E.g. on mobile or chrome's own DNS stack :(
  - nybble41 5y ago
    If you run your own DNS resolver for your local network, you can use a Discovery Proxy (RFC 8766) to allow unicast DNS resolution of multicast DNS records. I'm using mdns-discovery-proxy[0] (slightly modified to support a newer version of the zeroconf Python library) with bind9 so that xyz.local is mirrored in unicast DNS as xyz.home.arpa. The script (proxy.py in Git; I renamed it) is run with this systemd service (/etc/systemd/system/mdns-discovery-proxy.service): [Unit] Description=DNS-SD Proxy After=network.target network.service [Service] Type=simple DynamicUser=yes ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/mdns-discovery-proxy.py home.arpa 35353 Restart=always RestartSec=30 [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target And the bind9 configuration to forward the zone is (in /etc/bind/named.conf.local): zone "home.arpa" { type forward; forward only; forwarders { 127.0.0.1 port 35353; }; }; [0] https://github.com/nybble41/mdns-discovery-proxy https://github.com/nybble41/mdns-discovery-proxy
  - iknowstuff 5y ago
    For me, both iOS and Chrome on Windows resolve .local.
- rhn_mk1 5y ago
  Does mDNS work across VPN tunnels? The main reason I delay IPv6 is because I access hosts across the VPN by their IPs, and I don't want to publish their DNS records.
  - mustardo 5y ago
    If you run your own internal DNS server: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-horizon_DNS https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-horizon_DNS
    - rhn_mk1 5y ago
      I guess that's equivalent to setting up a hosts file... Unless the DNS resolver can be configured to treat a selected server on the VPN side as authoritative for .mynetwork.
  - megous 5y ago
    Not currently. ff02::fb is used, which has link-local scope.
- fuzzy2 5y ago
  Also, ULA. You can have both “real” (internet-routable) IPv6 addresses for all devices as well as (fixed) ULA addresses for local communication and ease of use. fd00:dead:beef::/64
tialaramex 5y ago
Same with Security Keys, there are a bunch of technologies like this, where you can literally write documentation explaining "This is what we did at our multi-billion dollar business to successfully solve the problem" and people will walk past, fingers stuffed in their ears, hoping that some day the problem will be solved somehow, but, like, magically without them having to change or learn. Just keep doing what they're doing and then, somehow magically it'll be fine. See also: Climate change.
- notreallyserio 5y ago
  For most people, IPv4 is a solution to a problem that didn’t require change or learning. It’s just what is used behind the scenes to make the web and chat and email happen. And happen it all does, without trouble, so why lots of money to replace it? What is the sales pitch you would bring to the CEO of a Fortune 500?
  - dcow 5y ago
    There isn't one until IPv6-only ISPs (or plans) pop up offering cheaper connectivity because you don't need an expensive v4 address. NAT sucks and everyone's job would be easier if they didn't have to deal with it, but the CEO likely doesn't care about that and probably just sees the "add IPv6 support" scope and cost estimate and NOPEs out. I love IPv6 btw. I just don't think you'll see anything meaningful happen until FAANG drop IPv4 support. Imagine that. People would convert pretty quick if Google couldn't crawl your site or you couldn't buy an iPhone without IPv6...
    - semi-extrinsic 5y ago
      An IPv4 address still isn't very expensive. I'm paying about $1.30 per month to have a static IPv4 address from my home ISP.
      - p1mrx 5y ago
        Your ISP probably hasn't tried to acquire IPv4 addresses recently. https://ipv4.global/reports/ https://ipv4.global/reports/ shows prices around $40/address, so it would take 2-3 years to break even at $1.30/month. (Although, people rent apartments with break-even periods well beyond 10 years, so maybe 2-3 is still fine.)
akersten 5y ago
> it really is quite a good standard, I think we need to start judging how good a standard is by how easy it is to implement for its intended purpose. The purpose of IPv6 was to superscede IPv4. 25 years later, only 1/4 of the top sites from this link are IPv6 enabled. That's... well, at some point you have to stop blaming lazy sysadmins or stubborn vendors and start considering that it's genuinely just a bad and hard to understand standard. In 2050 we'll still be on IPv4. That's how bad I think IPv6 is. Technically impressive? Sure. Viable as an understandable network paradigm and designed for widespread real-life use? Looking like no.
- nybble41 5y ago
  It's not that IPv6 is bad. There are no other, more successful alternative proposals to grow the address space while maintaining end-to-end connectivity. It's just a difficult coordination problem. From a purely technical point of view IPv6 works, today. It's not hard to set up IPv6 networks and connect them together. But there is a lot of IPv4-only equipment, legacy applications, etc. in active use which would have problems with any new protocol.
  - arp242 5y ago
    Not wrong, but I have a feeling that a protocol which changed things less would have caught on a lot faster. IPv6 changes a lot more than just expanding the address space. 32bit IPv4 gives us 4.2 billion IP addresses (although there are fewer usable addresses due to reservations etc.). If we would have just tacked on another byte we'd have 1 trillion (theoretical) IP addresses. Two extra bytes and we'd have some number I don't even know the name of (~2.7e14). Changing from 213.113.223.023 to 142.213.113.223.023 is a lot less invasive, both for users and implementations (although increasing the address space isn't necessarily easy, it doesn't require an entire new stack). Now, these other IPv6 changes aren't necessarily bad and also address real problems as well, but it seems IPv6 changes too much in one step for its own good. In this regard, it's not that dissimilar to Python 3 (except even worse!) Also: one think that struck me about that list is that sites who do implement IPv6 are all Western, and that none of the Asian (mostly Chinese) sites implement IPv6. You'd expect it to be the other way round because Asian/Chinese would benefit a lot more from IPv6 since they have fewer allocated addresses, and their infrastructure also tends to be newer so legacy hardware is less of a concern. I don't know what this means or why this is the case though.
pantalaimon 5y ago
Amazon invested so much in IPv4 address space, they have no interest in supporting IPv6.

seiferteric 5y ago

> it can also be hard to remember longer IPv6 addresses mDNS helps since you can use hostname.local without having to set up a DNS server. I was going to make a joke blog post about using ipv4 addresses as hostnames so you can "keep using ipv4" while actually using ipv6, but I found you can't have "." in hostnames, so maybe instead use "-".

arianvanp 5y ago
Problem is .local domains don't resolve everywhere . E.g. on mobile or chrome's own DNS stack :(
- nybble41 5y ago
  If you run your own DNS resolver for your local network, you can use a Discovery Proxy (RFC 8766) to allow unicast DNS resolution of multicast DNS records. I'm using mdns-discovery-proxy[0] (slightly modified to support a newer version of the zeroconf Python library) with bind9 so that xyz.local is mirrored in unicast DNS as xyz.home.arpa. The script (proxy.py in Git; I renamed it) is run with this systemd service (/etc/systemd/system/mdns-discovery-proxy.service): [Unit] Description=DNS-SD Proxy After=network.target network.service [Service] Type=simple DynamicUser=yes ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/mdns-discovery-proxy.py home.arpa 35353 Restart=always RestartSec=30 [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target And the bind9 configuration to forward the zone is (in /etc/bind/named.conf.local): zone "home.arpa" { type forward; forward only; forwarders { 127.0.0.1 port 35353; }; }; [0] https://github.com/nybble41/mdns-discovery-proxy https://github.com/nybble41/mdns-discovery-proxy
- iknowstuff 5y ago
  For me, both iOS and Chrome on Windows resolve .local.
rhn_mk1 5y ago
Does mDNS work across VPN tunnels? The main reason I delay IPv6 is because I access hosts across the VPN by their IPs, and I don't want to publish their DNS records.
- mustardo 5y ago
  If you run your own internal DNS server: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-horizon_DNS https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-horizon_DNS
  - rhn_mk1 5y ago
    I guess that's equivalent to setting up a hosts file... Unless the DNS resolver can be configured to treat a selected server on the VPN side as authoritative for .mynetwork.
- megous 5y ago
  Not currently. ff02::fb is used, which has link-local scope.
fuzzy2 5y ago
Also, ULA. You can have both “real” (internet-routable) IPv6 addresses for all devices as well as (fixed) ULA addresses for local communication and ease of use. fd00:dead:beef::/64

tialaramex 5y ago

Same with Security Keys, there are a bunch of technologies like this, where you can literally write documentation explaining "This is what we did at our multi-billion dollar business to successfully solve the problem" and people will walk past, fingers stuffed in their ears, hoping that some day the problem will be solved somehow, but, like, magically without them having to change or learn. Just keep doing what they're doing and then, somehow magically it'll be fine. See also: Climate change.

notreallyserio 5y ago
For most people, IPv4 is a solution to a problem that didn’t require change or learning. It’s just what is used behind the scenes to make the web and chat and email happen. And happen it all does, without trouble, so why lots of money to replace it? What is the sales pitch you would bring to the CEO of a Fortune 500?
- dcow 5y ago
  There isn't one until IPv6-only ISPs (or plans) pop up offering cheaper connectivity because you don't need an expensive v4 address. NAT sucks and everyone's job would be easier if they didn't have to deal with it, but the CEO likely doesn't care about that and probably just sees the "add IPv6 support" scope and cost estimate and NOPEs out. I love IPv6 btw. I just don't think you'll see anything meaningful happen until FAANG drop IPv4 support. Imagine that. People would convert pretty quick if Google couldn't crawl your site or you couldn't buy an iPhone without IPv6...
  - semi-extrinsic 5y ago
    An IPv4 address still isn't very expensive. I'm paying about $1.30 per month to have a static IPv4 address from my home ISP.
    - p1mrx 5y ago
      Your ISP probably hasn't tried to acquire IPv4 addresses recently. https://ipv4.global/reports/ https://ipv4.global/reports/ shows prices around $40/address, so it would take 2-3 years to break even at $1.30/month. (Although, people rent apartments with break-even periods well beyond 10 years, so maybe 2-3 is still fine.)

akersten 5y ago

> it really is quite a good standard, I think we need to start judging how good a standard is by how easy it is to implement for its intended purpose. The purpose of IPv6 was to superscede IPv4. 25 years later, only 1/4 of the top sites from this link are IPv6 enabled. That's... well, at some point you have to stop blaming lazy sysadmins or stubborn vendors and start considering that it's genuinely just a bad and hard to understand standard. In 2050 we'll still be on IPv4. That's how bad I think IPv6 is. Technically impressive? Sure. Viable as an understandable network paradigm and designed for widespread real-life use? Looking like no.

nybble41 5y ago
It's not that IPv6 is bad. There are no other, more successful alternative proposals to grow the address space while maintaining end-to-end connectivity. It's just a difficult coordination problem. From a purely technical point of view IPv6 works, today. It's not hard to set up IPv6 networks and connect them together. But there is a lot of IPv4-only equipment, legacy applications, etc. in active use which would have problems with any new protocol.
- arp242 5y ago
  Not wrong, but I have a feeling that a protocol which changed things less would have caught on a lot faster. IPv6 changes a lot more than just expanding the address space. 32bit IPv4 gives us 4.2 billion IP addresses (although there are fewer usable addresses due to reservations etc.). If we would have just tacked on another byte we'd have 1 trillion (theoretical) IP addresses. Two extra bytes and we'd have some number I don't even know the name of (~2.7e14). Changing from 213.113.223.023 to 142.213.113.223.023 is a lot less invasive, both for users and implementations (although increasing the address space isn't necessarily easy, it doesn't require an entire new stack). Now, these other IPv6 changes aren't necessarily bad and also address real problems as well, but it seems IPv6 changes too much in one step for its own good. In this regard, it's not that dissimilar to Python 3 (except even worse!) Also: one think that struck me about that list is that sites who do implement IPv6 are all Western, and that none of the Asian (mostly Chinese) sites implement IPv6. You'd expect it to be the other way round because Asian/Chinese would benefit a lot more from IPv6 since they have fewer allocated addresses, and their infrastructure also tends to be newer so legacy hardware is less of a concern. I don't know what this means or why this is the case though.

pantalaimon 5y ago

Amazon invested so much in IPv4 address space, they have no interest in supporting IPv6.