6 ms·

IPv6 is a 'tragedy of the commons' issue just like recycling: you get no benefits to you individually from addressing the issue. However the day the issue is s

• cm2187 5y ago
  There is one individual incentive though: the increasing cost of v4 addresses.
  • baq 5y ago
    another reason why folks holding large chunks of ipv4 address space don't want ipv6 - they don't want to see their asset drop in value.
  • netr0ute 5y ago
    Why do IPv4 addresses even cost money? They're no better than NFTs and don't even have a "token" of their own.
    • Nextgrid 5y ago
      They're a scarce commodity, and unlike NFTs, have a real use-case. Until everyone moves to IPv6, if you want people to be able to reach your service, you need an IPv4 address. If you're an ISP or cloud provider, you need those so your customers can still communicate with v4-only peers.
    • fishtacos 5y ago
      Not sure how they're even comparable on any aspect. IPV4 addresses are scarce due to lack of foresight and useful. NFTs are scarce by design and useless.
      • ignoramous 5y ago
        > NFTs are scarce by design and useless. So, I know of one real-world usecase that's not useless: Some startups have begun legally selling properties (homes, ranches, plots) via NFTs.
        • fishtacos 5y ago
          What does the use of NFTs change in the transaction?
        • simonw 5y ago
          Oh fun, which startups are those? Real estate on the blockchain is my favourite bad blockchain idea because if someone loses access to their wallet they presumably lose the ability to ever sell their house.
          • mrkurt 5y ago
            You just gotta etch the block into the foundation. Then it's physically part of the house. Maybe make a radioactive label and bury it on the property. That way people now the property they're standing is on actual property.
          • ignoramous 5y ago
            > Oh fun, which startups are those? Some are covered in this article: https://archive.is/k3w7F https://archive.is/k3w7F > ...if someone loses access to their wallet they presumably lose the ability to ever sell their house. It is software at the end of the day and seems like there is already a solution for it: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Multi-signature https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Multi-signature
            • Dylan16807 5y ago
              So two escrow companies and I each have 2-of-3 keys. At this point what is the blockchain providing that normal title records don't?
    • codechad 5y ago
    • patmorgan23 5y ago
      IPv4 addresses have utility. You still need one in order to participate in the largest communication network in the history of the earth. And theirs a limited number of them. Demand + Scarcity = non-zero price. What utility do NFTs provide other than entertainment/status?
      • netr0ute 5y ago
        Who enforces the price? I can just advertise any address I want with BGP.
        • baq 5y ago
          and be promptly kicked off the internet by your isp... or somebody elses.
          • netr0ute 5y ago
            Unless you own routers that other ISPs almost depend on, then you can say "take it or leave it"
            • iso1631 5y ago
              So lets say Centurylink decide to start advertising blocks they don't own, people like Cogent and Tata drop their links, people with multiple ISPs drop their links (shifting traffic to other tier 1 ISPs), and those with centurylink only change their ISP because they can no longer get to facebook.
              • netr0ute 5y ago
                That would work if most people had multiple ISPs, but most don't actually. Thus, you have some bargaining power, especially if you have some network advantage or feature nobody else has.
                • midasuni 5y ago
    • kazen44 5y ago
      what? ipv4 addresses are unique in the default free zone. they cost money because without having a prefix that is unique, you cannot route across the internet.
• drran 5y ago
  IPv6 has a political issue. Support for IPv4 addresses (::0.0.0.0) was removed, because IPv6 users were able to connect to IPv4 hosts directly, bypassing IPv4 NAT's and firewalls.
  • drran 5y ago
  • yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
    > Support for IPv4 addresses (::0.0.0.0) was removed, because IPv6 users were able to connect to IPv4 hosts directly, bypassing IPv4 NAT's and firewalls. How's that work? It can't be sending actual v4 traffic or it'd work like normal v4.
    • wyufro 5y ago
      It was using IPv6 in IP, just like 6to4, protocol 41. I haven't heard it called a political issue before though. It just had problems, like being blocked in firewalls and security problems where the encapsulated packet wasn't checked properly, etc.
      • drran 5y ago
        I'm not a native speaker, so I apologize. > The "IPv4-Compatible IPv6 address" is now deprecated because the current IPv6 transition mechanisms no longer use these addresses. «We forbid you to go right because we are going left.» It doesn't look like a technical issue. How I should call it?
        • wyufro 5y ago
          Right. Neither am I, so take this with a grain of salt. But I'd use "committee decision" in this case.
    • drran 5y ago
      IPv6 is large enough to represent the whole IPv4 range. Multiple times. Initially (at the very beginning) it was possible to connect to IPv4 address using IPv6 socket. They were called «IPv4-Compatible IPv6 Address»[0]. For example, I can ping both ipv4 and ipv6 addresses using ping: $ ping 127.0.0.1 PING 127.0.0.1 (127.0.0.1) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.048 ms $ ping ::1 PING ::1(::1) 56 data bytes 64 bytes from ::1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.044 ms However, this feature allowed to bypass NAT and connect to IPv4 hosts directly via IPv6, so it deprecated. (I skipped names to avoid scapegoating). $ ping6 ::1 PING ::1(::1) 56 data bytes 64 bytes from ::1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.043 ms $ ping6 127.0.0.1 ping6: 127.0.0.1: Address family for hostname not supported It's not a technical issue, see above: it's possible to serve both protocols at the same time. It worked for a brief period. It's purely political decision: backward support for IPv4 in IPv6 was disabled because some people are thinking that such behavior is dangerous. [0]: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4291#section-2.5.5.1 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4291#section-2.5.5....
• ATsch 5y ago
  As often when people reference the metaphor of the tragedy of the commons, which had no historical basis in reality (quite the opposite), there's more going on here. IPv4 addresses are a significant competitive moat for incumbent businesses. Existing companies have no interest in making IP addresses a non-scarce resource that aids competitors or alternatives (on-prem hosting, p2p, local ISPs, etc). The only reason things have begun changing recently is government mandates and that the moat has gotten so big that they've started falling into it themselves.
  • jaystraw 5y ago
    Tangent, but as someone who often finds the tragedy of the commons as the simplest explanation to many things, I'm interested in hearing your take on it
    • ATsch 5y ago
      There's a lot of more qualified people who have written better criticisms of it than I can, but it generally boils down to a few things: 1. Lack of basis in reality. While of course there are occasional cases of communities mismanaging resources, this was and is far from univeral or usual. In fact the english public land that the thought expermiment gets it's name from and claims can not work had succesfully been in common ownership for to my knowledge all of recorded history until it's relatively recent enclosure (privatization). 2. It supposes the commoners would desire infinite short term growth above and beyond what they needed, could personally tend to or the land could sustain. This is both ahistorical and circular logic. In reality commoners had long known the amount of cattle the commons could sustain and allocated limits among themselves. 3. Where examples of over-grazing do exist, it was as a result of deliberate action by wealthy people to drive commoners off of the land for enclosure. This is not unlike the patterns we do commonly see in the real world today, where resource exhaustion generally takes place when there there are big power differences. 4. Far more than as a prediction of reality, it has been successful as a justification for various unsightly things, from land theft and colonialism past and present, to eugenics and global poverty. It is not a neutral description of human nature and historical tendencies, but a distortion of them that aids the wealthy and poweful. If you are looking for a better alternative I suggest you look at the power relationships between the people who are using the commons instead, it's usually much more enlightening.
• spookthesunset 5y ago
  > port forwarding Well, you are gonna have to replace port forwarding with firewall rules instead. At least for me, I really don't excited about my parents or in-laws internal networks being wide open to the internet. Thus their entire subnet would need to sit behind a "default deny" firewall. And if they need to expose some service to the internet, they'd need to punch a hole in the firewall--which is exactly the same dance you'd have to play with port forwarding. The only thing IPv6 brings to the table for consumers is each device gets a globally routable address. But that doesn't mean each device can or should be be reachable from outside the router. One way or another client software will not get away from having to open ports on the router.
  • franga2000 5y ago
    The difference is that with a firewall, you open the port and that's that. With port forwarding, you get whatever port happens to be available. If done manually, you have to tell the other sode which port to use. If done automatically (like upnp), you need to do that every time your port changes.
    • tsimionescu 5y ago
      There is no difference of opening a port in a firewall or a NAT (well, as long as there is a single machine that wants to listen on that port, at least). And some kind of UPnP will still be required even if your internal network were using ISP-assigned IPv6 addresses for protocols that want to open multiple connections, like VoIP conferencing, bit torrent etc. Of course, if you have an internal network where you actually communicate between your various machines, you won't want to use ISP-assigned publicly routable IPs, since those can change at any time, so you'll also need some kind of network address translation at the edge.
      • franga2000 5y ago
        > well, as long as there is a single machine that wants to listen on that port, at least Well yes, most networks have more than one machine and multiple users might want to run the same service. > you'll also need some kind of network address translation at the edge. Not at all, each machine gets two addresses - one routable from the ISP and one non-routable from the router. Internal services simply use the non-routable ones.