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This really (continues) to burst the trope here on HN that IPv6 is "easy". If you look at any discussion of for example expanding IPv4 address space, lot's of

This really (continues) to burst the trope here on HN that IPv6 is "easy". If you look at any discussion of for example expanding IPv4 address space, lot's of "experts" come out of the woodwork claiming IPv6 is the same as IPv4 and/or that it is easy. No it is not just an address space expansion and no it is not easy for many use cases. Even the big players (Azure / GCP) struggle to fully enable an IPv6 only or IPv6 supporting servicing offering across their products.

yesco 5y ago
They had an internal issue that needed debugging and so they decided it was easier to just disable it all-together for the holidays. This is less an indicator for complexity and more an indicator of apathy. An ipv4 issue would have obviously prompted a much more swift response. In fact considering this is reddit, I'm surprised this hasn't happened more often considering they seemingly go down every other day regardless. The only ones making this hard are apathetic engineers who keep kicking the can down the road for the next generation. Arguments against ipv6 are like sailers on a sinking ship bickering with the rescuers that while the ship is completely underwater at this point, they can still float on their backs for a day or two, so their help is unecessesary. IPv6 is inevitable, you can either deal with it now while it's hard, or deal with it later when ipv4 addresses are too expensive and your infrastructure is already so entrenched that transitioning is a nightmare. The latter is the situation Azure & GCP are slowly finding themselves stuck in, and they have only themselves to blame.
- theamk 5y ago
  Many of the existing internal networks are using private, non-routable IPv4 ranges. And exposing random hosts on the internet is a bad practice, security-wise. The only things that needs routable IPs are VPN endpoints and load balancers. Together, that means there is no need to ever get rid of IPv4 on the internal networks. Yes, maybe the workstations will have IPv6 for random website access, but that old NAS box will always be at 10.1.2.3.
  - yesco 5y ago
    I agree with you, but I'm not sure why this would be relevant?
    - theamk 5y ago
      This was re your "IPv6 is inevitable" comment -- we can get pretty far with IPv4. In particular, as long as you keep using third-party load balancers, you could probably keep using it for decades. And you may never have to migrate your internal infrastructure at all.
- toast0 5y ago
  > IPv6 is inevitable, you can either deal with it now while it's hard 20+ years on, and IPv6 is still hard. This is unlike other things that were hard 20 years ago; TLS was hard 20 years ago, and now it's not so bad. 20 years ago, databases were hard, now they're not so bad. Etc. But IPv6 is still hard, so it shouldn't be surprising that people are still waiting. OTOH, IPv6 is widely deployed in (many) mobile networks, so using it can eliminate the NAT layer(s) that are almost certainly present for IPv4 on mobile.
  - whoknowswhat11 5y ago
    For those of us who have been around the block - we've been hearing from these "experts" that IPv4 is over for decades. It's boring at this point frankly.

yesco 5y ago

They had an internal issue that needed debugging and so they decided it was easier to just disable it all-together for the holidays. This is less an indicator for complexity and more an indicator of apathy. An ipv4 issue would have obviously prompted a much more swift response. In fact considering this is reddit, I'm surprised this hasn't happened more often considering they seemingly go down every other day regardless. The only ones making this hard are apathetic engineers who keep kicking the can down the road for the next generation. Arguments against ipv6 are like sailers on a sinking ship bickering with the rescuers that while the ship is completely underwater at this point, they can still float on their backs for a day or two, so their help is unecessesary. IPv6 is inevitable, you can either deal with it now while it's hard, or deal with it later when ipv4 addresses are too expensive and your infrastructure is already so entrenched that transitioning is a nightmare. The latter is the situation Azure & GCP are slowly finding themselves stuck in, and they have only themselves to blame.

theamk 5y ago
Many of the existing internal networks are using private, non-routable IPv4 ranges. And exposing random hosts on the internet is a bad practice, security-wise. The only things that needs routable IPs are VPN endpoints and load balancers. Together, that means there is no need to ever get rid of IPv4 on the internal networks. Yes, maybe the workstations will have IPv6 for random website access, but that old NAS box will always be at 10.1.2.3.
- yesco 5y ago
  I agree with you, but I'm not sure why this would be relevant?
  - theamk 5y ago
    This was re your "IPv6 is inevitable" comment -- we can get pretty far with IPv4. In particular, as long as you keep using third-party load balancers, you could probably keep using it for decades. And you may never have to migrate your internal infrastructure at all.
toast0 5y ago
> IPv6 is inevitable, you can either deal with it now while it's hard 20+ years on, and IPv6 is still hard. This is unlike other things that were hard 20 years ago; TLS was hard 20 years ago, and now it's not so bad. 20 years ago, databases were hard, now they're not so bad. Etc. But IPv6 is still hard, so it shouldn't be surprising that people are still waiting. OTOH, IPv6 is widely deployed in (many) mobile networks, so using it can eliminate the NAT layer(s) that are almost certainly present for IPv4 on mobile.
- whoknowswhat11 5y ago
  For those of us who have been around the block - we've been hearing from these "experts" that IPv4 is over for decades. It's boring at this point frankly.