4 ms·

The thing that holds me back with IPv6 is not the notation, but that you have to take account the outside world into consideration when you assign local IPs. It

The thing that holds me back with IPv6 is not the notation, but that you have to take account the outside world into consideration when you assign local IPs. It's a bit like needing globally resolvable DNS names in your local net. With IPv4, you just stick to an IP range that has not been assigned, and just hand out addresses. You don't even have to understand subnets properly. The net mask just tells you when a packet goes to another computer directly vs. via a gateway. It's all very direct and basic. Compared to IPv6 where it feels like there are five different kinds of addresses, and a part of the address comes from some external authority, a part is random, and a part is assigned by you. We have had telecom technicans and IT contractors come in to set up our network and the first thing they both did was to disable IPv6, with a comment like "hell god no you don't need that stuff". They didn't seem to understand it either.

tenebrisalietum 5y ago
> but that you have to take account the outside world into consideration when you assign local IPs It was supposed to be this way with IPv4 as well, until we ran out of addresses. Imagine if we did not have IPv4 address exhaustion and Comcast would give you a full /24. So you have xxx.xxx.xxx.0 to xxx.xxx.xxx.255 for your home network. > part of the address comes from some external authority Part of any public IPv4 comes from some external authority, that's what the subnet mask delineates. People are too stuck on NAT and as a result we'll never have a truly decentralized Internet. I will say I'm having trouble wrapping my head around the need for "link-local" stuff - isn't that Layer 2's job?
- captainmuon 5y ago
  I guess many people (me included I confess) use NAT as a poor man's firewall. So having a separate link-local "address space" is a feature, not a bug. Also, considering how often I have to deal things like somebody setting a wrong static IP on a device, it comforts me that this is not unleashed on the greater internet, but all I can mess up is my own LAN...

tenebrisalietum 5y ago

> but that you have to take account the outside world into consideration when you assign local IPs It was supposed to be this way with IPv4 as well, until we ran out of addresses. Imagine if we did not have IPv4 address exhaustion and Comcast would give you a full /24. So you have xxx.xxx.xxx.0 to xxx.xxx.xxx.255 for your home network. > part of the address comes from some external authority Part of any public IPv4 comes from some external authority, that's what the subnet mask delineates. People are too stuck on NAT and as a result we'll never have a truly decentralized Internet. I will say I'm having trouble wrapping my head around the need for "link-local" stuff - isn't that Layer 2's job?

captainmuon 5y ago
I guess many people (me included I confess) use NAT as a poor man's firewall. So having a separate link-local "address space" is a feature, not a bug. Also, considering how often I have to deal things like somebody setting a wrong static IP on a device, it comforts me that this is not unleashed on the greater internet, but all I can mess up is my own LAN...