7 ms·

About 5 years ago, I asked the owner of my fixed wireless ISP if he was planning to support IPv6 and I received a 500 word email rant about the uselessness of v

About 5 years ago, I asked the owner of my fixed wireless ISP if he was planning to support IPv6 and I received a 500 word email rant about the uselessness of v6. I haven't asked again. (I still get a 0/10 score at https://test-ipv6.com/ https://test-ipv6.com/)

sneak 5y ago
There is a lot of cultural inertia that instantly biases against anything new in sysadmin/netadmin circles. It's super annoying, tbh. A subset of technologists only seem comfortable with the technology that was available when they were 18-24, regardless of how old they get. "What's this? I never needed it before, what's the sysctl to turn it off?"
- zorked 5y ago
  Just witness the pitchfork army whenever systemd is mentioned.
  - dijit 5y ago
    Just don’t want it forced on me and by its nature it becomes a hard dependency over time, thus, it does. I’m not interested in another argument but calling my position “pitchforks” is a bit disengenuous and irritating (which is why I’m replying, off-topic, to you). While I think it has something to offer I would like potentially better alternatives to be able to exist in future, this is not “pitchforks”.
    - Gigachad 5y ago
      >Just don’t want it forced on me and by its nature it becomes a hard dependency over time, thus, it does. systemd is the choice of basically everyone who builds distros, so of course it's going to be hard to avoid unless you volunteer to do all of that work yourself. When you take work from someone else, that comes with taking on the choices that they make.
      - dijit 5y ago
        Don’t let this descend into another systemd thread. Just don’t lump all criticism against systemd as pitchforks, since it delegitimises complaints. What you state is absolutely true, but denying there’s more nuance is not helpful. That’s all I’ll say because this is not a worthwhile conversation to have here.
      - dane-pgp 5y ago
        > systemd is the choice of basically everyone who builds distros Even if we ignore the fact that systemd made it artificially difficult* for distros to support other init systems (so it wasn't a freely made "choice"), have you never encountered a situation where the popular choice turned out to be the wrong one? Think, for example, of people throwing their trash into nearby rivers, or developers using 2 digits to store year values. (* Imagine being a volunteer for a distro and having to deal with bugs like "I installed my new printer and it changed my init system[0] / my system no longer boots"). [0] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=863974 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=863974
- themitigating 5y ago
  There's a bias against anything new in human circles
- orev 5y ago
  There is a lot of cultural inertia that instantly biases against anything old and stable in developer circles. It's super annoying, tbh. A subset of developers only seem comfortable with technology invented in the past 18-24 months, regardless of how untested and unstable it is. “What's this? It was written 2 years ago? It must be old and useless. I’m going to require my app to use the latest version and I don’t care what kind of headaches it makes for the people who actually need to make sure it’s up an running when users try to use it.”
  - colechristensen 5y ago
    Both things are true and equally annoying.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - magila 5y ago
    Sure, that's annoying too, but I don't see how it's relevant to the topic at hand. IPv6 isn't some shiny new tech, the original RFC just turned 26. It's also not just a superficial re-write of some existing tool, it fixes a real problem which clearly needs to be addressed (no pun intended).
    - _0w8t 5y ago
      I wish v6 just tried to fix things. The problem with v6 was that it also tried to do thing in a right way and broke too much compatibility. And then it turned out what was right in 1995 was no longer so for the last 10 years.
      - Dagger2 5y ago
        It mostly only broke the things it had to break. v4 isn't forwards compatible to longer address lengths, so the lack of compatibility isn't the fault of any aspect of v6's design.
        5y ago
- pjc50 5y ago
  Well, yes. Getting up to speed on the new thing is work, and unless it's clear what the benefit is then I'm disinclined to do that work. IP6 requires a bunch of new tooling and configuration, and if running dual stack provides plenty of new opportunities for failure.
  - novok 5y ago
    In 2021 IP6 is still 'new' to you?
    - RupertHandjob 5y ago
      My ISP has offered ipv6 for almost 7 years. When ever I tried to you use ipv6 it was just a miserable shit show. Their support says everything is fine and in the support forums thing work fine for some and for some not so much. When ever I enabled ipv6 I got 10/10 from test-ipv6.com and randomly few ours later it would go down for no reason. I used few hours to understand wtf was happening. Then I just gave up and disabled ipv6. I got peace of mind and lost nothing. Maybe someday I am bored enough to try again that sorcery and black magic.
- Gigachad 5y ago
  Reminds me of how people would get angry when you suggest a site should switch to HTTPS and people would demand you prove why it would be worth it rather than just doing it anyway since it's free and easy. Glad we have mostly moved past that.
- notreallyserio 5y ago
  > "What's this? I never needed it before, what's the sysctl to turn it off?" Of course, turning off IPv6 fixed a lot of connectivity issues, at least back in the day. Maybe it's better now, but I see no benefit in re-enabling it. What's the value-add?
  - magila 5y ago
    The value is that you don't get caught with your pants down when IPv4 addresses get expensive enough to shaping businesses' decisions. It's going to be a lot less stressful to come to grips with IPv6 now rather than waiting until it becomes a critical path dependency of some business goal.
    - Proven 5y ago
- ggm 5y ago
  "Our sires' age was worse than our grandsires'. We, their sons, are more worthless than they; so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more corrupt." Horace Odes, III 65BCE
- thyrsus 5y ago
  As a sysadmin, I'd be fine if the stuff on top supported ipv6. E.g., I'm not aware of support for ipv6 in Kubernetes. In anticipation, where can I catch up on ipv6 routing? Does the number of route entries explode? I do need a "business reason" to adopt it, since the Center for Internet Security benchmark dings your system if it is turned on.
  - Dagger2 5y ago
    Kubernetes does do v6 today. Given the amount of address space a Kubernetes cluster can use, it's useful there.
  - Melkman 5y ago
    On the contrary, the numbers of routes decline. Since you get a single IPv6 assignment, often a /48, you can summarize all your networks to that assignment. IPv4 is a mess in this regard. Small assignments to ISP's and businesses were made to be frugal and delay address space exhaustion. This has caused the address space to be very scattered. You can see at https://bgp.potaroo.net/index-bgp.html https://bgp.potaroo.net/index-bgp.html that IPv4 has about 900k advertised routes and IPv6 has about 150k advertised routes. The IPv4 address space will fragment further now the price for IPv4 addresses is going up fast. Everyone with enough unused space will fractures their assignment and sell the unused pieces. That's also your business reason. The price for IPv4 connectivity will go up. At some point a startup will not use IPv4 anymore because it will be too expensive. If you don't have IPv6 access you will not be able to use the services of that startup. Price of an IPv4 address has doubled last year and gone from about $7.50 in 2016 to about $40 now. https://ipv4marketgroup.com/ipv4-pricing/ https://ipv4marketgroup.com/ipv4-pricing/ https://ipv4.global/reports/ https://ipv4.global/reports/
sliken 5y ago
Heh, well of course, if you have enough IPv4, there's not much IPv6 does for you. However if your a normal consumer with a single network visible IP (if that), it's REALLY useful. I've got a /60 (16 /64s'), and I have one per port on my router and it's quite nice to be able to get to anything inside my home network from anywhere on the internet. Filesharing, monitoring home automation, opening/closing my garage door, etc.
- VectorLock 5y ago
  >to anything inside my home network from anywhere on the internet When you put it like that, it sounds kind of scary.
  - mulmen 5y ago
    Why? This is what firewalls are for.
    - drsnow 5y ago
      Because a firewall exploit means your thermostat is now controllable over the internet and you can conveniently preheat your oven over the internet too and now your house is burning down
      - kungito 5y ago
        how is that worse than ipv4 firewall exploit?
        aaomidi 5y ago
        It's actually better because you actually get obscurity with ipv6.
      - aaomidi 5y ago
        Have you considered how much of a pita/impossibility scanning an ipv6 space is?
geodel 5y ago
I have checked it many times before and score was reliably 0/10 before. Seeing your comment I decided to check it out on this site and guess what today score is 9/10.
- floatboth 5y ago
  What is the missing 1 point?
  - bombcar 5y ago
    Iirc it’s usually IPv6 pure dns (ie not getting IPv6 addresses I’ve IPv4)
    - geodel 5y ago
      Yes, that was missing point.
bombcar 5y ago
I was up to 9/10 and then our ISP replaced something and we lost our IPv6 addresses.

sneak 5y ago

There is a lot of cultural inertia that instantly biases against anything new in sysadmin/netadmin circles. It's super annoying, tbh. A subset of technologists only seem comfortable with the technology that was available when they were 18-24, regardless of how old they get. "What's this? I never needed it before, what's the sysctl to turn it off?"

zorked 5y ago
Just witness the pitchfork army whenever systemd is mentioned.
- dijit 5y ago
  Just don’t want it forced on me and by its nature it becomes a hard dependency over time, thus, it does. I’m not interested in another argument but calling my position “pitchforks” is a bit disengenuous and irritating (which is why I’m replying, off-topic, to you). While I think it has something to offer I would like potentially better alternatives to be able to exist in future, this is not “pitchforks”.
  - Gigachad 5y ago
    >Just don’t want it forced on me and by its nature it becomes a hard dependency over time, thus, it does. systemd is the choice of basically everyone who builds distros, so of course it's going to be hard to avoid unless you volunteer to do all of that work yourself. When you take work from someone else, that comes with taking on the choices that they make.
    - dijit 5y ago
      Don’t let this descend into another systemd thread. Just don’t lump all criticism against systemd as pitchforks, since it delegitimises complaints. What you state is absolutely true, but denying there’s more nuance is not helpful. That’s all I’ll say because this is not a worthwhile conversation to have here.
    - dane-pgp 5y ago
      > systemd is the choice of basically everyone who builds distros Even if we ignore the fact that systemd made it artificially difficult* for distros to support other init systems (so it wasn't a freely made "choice"), have you never encountered a situation where the popular choice turned out to be the wrong one? Think, for example, of people throwing their trash into nearby rivers, or developers using 2 digits to store year values. (* Imagine being a volunteer for a distro and having to deal with bugs like "I installed my new printer and it changed my init system[0] / my system no longer boots"). [0] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=863974 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=863974
themitigating 5y ago
There's a bias against anything new in human circles
orev 5y ago
There is a lot of cultural inertia that instantly biases against anything old and stable in developer circles. It's super annoying, tbh. A subset of developers only seem comfortable with technology invented in the past 18-24 months, regardless of how untested and unstable it is. “What's this? It was written 2 years ago? It must be old and useless. I’m going to require my app to use the latest version and I don’t care what kind of headaches it makes for the people who actually need to make sure it’s up an running when users try to use it.”
- colechristensen 5y ago
  Both things are true and equally annoying.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- magila 5y ago
  Sure, that's annoying too, but I don't see how it's relevant to the topic at hand. IPv6 isn't some shiny new tech, the original RFC just turned 26. It's also not just a superficial re-write of some existing tool, it fixes a real problem which clearly needs to be addressed (no pun intended).
  - _0w8t 5y ago
    I wish v6 just tried to fix things. The problem with v6 was that it also tried to do thing in a right way and broke too much compatibility. And then it turned out what was right in 1995 was no longer so for the last 10 years.
    - Dagger2 5y ago
      It mostly only broke the things it had to break. v4 isn't forwards compatible to longer address lengths, so the lack of compatibility isn't the fault of any aspect of v6's design.
      - 5y ago
pjc50 5y ago
Well, yes. Getting up to speed on the new thing is work, and unless it's clear what the benefit is then I'm disinclined to do that work. IP6 requires a bunch of new tooling and configuration, and if running dual stack provides plenty of new opportunities for failure.
- novok 5y ago
  In 2021 IP6 is still 'new' to you?
  - RupertHandjob 5y ago
    My ISP has offered ipv6 for almost 7 years. When ever I tried to you use ipv6 it was just a miserable shit show. Their support says everything is fine and in the support forums thing work fine for some and for some not so much. When ever I enabled ipv6 I got 10/10 from test-ipv6.com and randomly few ours later it would go down for no reason. I used few hours to understand wtf was happening. Then I just gave up and disabled ipv6. I got peace of mind and lost nothing. Maybe someday I am bored enough to try again that sorcery and black magic.
Gigachad 5y ago
Reminds me of how people would get angry when you suggest a site should switch to HTTPS and people would demand you prove why it would be worth it rather than just doing it anyway since it's free and easy. Glad we have mostly moved past that.
notreallyserio 5y ago
> "What's this? I never needed it before, what's the sysctl to turn it off?" Of course, turning off IPv6 fixed a lot of connectivity issues, at least back in the day. Maybe it's better now, but I see no benefit in re-enabling it. What's the value-add?
- magila 5y ago
  The value is that you don't get caught with your pants down when IPv4 addresses get expensive enough to shaping businesses' decisions. It's going to be a lot less stressful to come to grips with IPv6 now rather than waiting until it becomes a critical path dependency of some business goal.
  - Proven 5y ago
ggm 5y ago
"Our sires' age was worse than our grandsires'. We, their sons, are more worthless than they; so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more corrupt." Horace Odes, III 65BCE
thyrsus 5y ago
As a sysadmin, I'd be fine if the stuff on top supported ipv6. E.g., I'm not aware of support for ipv6 in Kubernetes. In anticipation, where can I catch up on ipv6 routing? Does the number of route entries explode? I do need a "business reason" to adopt it, since the Center for Internet Security benchmark dings your system if it is turned on.
- Dagger2 5y ago
  Kubernetes does do v6 today. Given the amount of address space a Kubernetes cluster can use, it's useful there.
- Melkman 5y ago
  On the contrary, the numbers of routes decline. Since you get a single IPv6 assignment, often a /48, you can summarize all your networks to that assignment. IPv4 is a mess in this regard. Small assignments to ISP's and businesses were made to be frugal and delay address space exhaustion. This has caused the address space to be very scattered. You can see at https://bgp.potaroo.net/index-bgp.html https://bgp.potaroo.net/index-bgp.html that IPv4 has about 900k advertised routes and IPv6 has about 150k advertised routes. The IPv4 address space will fragment further now the price for IPv4 addresses is going up fast. Everyone with enough unused space will fractures their assignment and sell the unused pieces. That's also your business reason. The price for IPv4 connectivity will go up. At some point a startup will not use IPv4 anymore because it will be too expensive. If you don't have IPv6 access you will not be able to use the services of that startup. Price of an IPv4 address has doubled last year and gone from about $7.50 in 2016 to about $40 now. https://ipv4marketgroup.com/ipv4-pricing/ https://ipv4marketgroup.com/ipv4-pricing/ https://ipv4.global/reports/ https://ipv4.global/reports/

sliken 5y ago

Heh, well of course, if you have enough IPv4, there's not much IPv6 does for you. However if your a normal consumer with a single network visible IP (if that), it's REALLY useful. I've got a /60 (16 /64s'), and I have one per port on my router and it's quite nice to be able to get to anything inside my home network from anywhere on the internet. Filesharing, monitoring home automation, opening/closing my garage door, etc.

VectorLock 5y ago
>to anything inside my home network from anywhere on the internet When you put it like that, it sounds kind of scary.
- mulmen 5y ago
  Why? This is what firewalls are for.
  - drsnow 5y ago
    Because a firewall exploit means your thermostat is now controllable over the internet and you can conveniently preheat your oven over the internet too and now your house is burning down
    - kungito 5y ago
      how is that worse than ipv4 firewall exploit?
      - aaomidi 5y ago
        It's actually better because you actually get obscurity with ipv6.
    - aaomidi 5y ago
      Have you considered how much of a pita/impossibility scanning an ipv6 space is?

geodel 5y ago

I have checked it many times before and score was reliably 0/10 before. Seeing your comment I decided to check it out on this site and guess what today score is 9/10.

floatboth 5y ago
What is the missing 1 point?
- bombcar 5y ago
  Iirc it’s usually IPv6 pure dns (ie not getting IPv6 addresses I’ve IPv4)
  - geodel 5y ago
    Yes, that was missing point.

bombcar 5y ago

I was up to 9/10 and then our ISP replaced something and we lost our IPv6 addresses.