9 ms·

What is the practical significance? (please explain like I'm 5) Google says: > The main difference between IPv4 and IPv6 is the address size of IP addresses.

by nomilk 4y ago

What is the practical significance? (please explain like I'm 5) Google says: > The main difference between IPv4 and IPv6 is the address size of IP addresses. What are the practical implications for internet users and infrastructure maintainers?

dheera 4y ago
It means that instead of "1.2.3.4" you now have to deal with "f0fd::8a8a:99:::://4::88ff::deca:dead:beef::/16" or something like that, and remember how many colons go where and you now have to remember hex numbers instead of decimal. What's the Google IPv4 DNS? 8.8.8.8. It's beautiful enough to be a decoration to frame and hang above a fireplace. What's the Google IPv6 DNS? Heck if I can remember, it has some 4's, 6's, 8's, 0's, 2's, and some colons and double-colons liberally sprinkled like a salt shaker that had its cap fall off as you were shaking it. I'm basically a walking DNS server of the company I work at, I know all the IPv4 addresses of pretty much every machine, and I couldn't do that with IPv6. I also know all the IPv4 addresses of every single IOT device in my home. It's really no wonder that the world is very slow to transition to IPv6.
throw0101a 4y ago
> What are the practical implications for internet users and infrastructure maintainers? You don't have to futz around with NAT and figuring out how to do connect P2P: * https://tailscale.com/blog/how-nat-traversal-works/ https://tailscale.com/blog/how-nat-traversal-works/ You have your home router firewall, you punch a hole in it (UPnP, PCP) on an as-needed basis, do your P2P thing. When you're done, the firewall hole is closed. No magic/fancy protocols trying to figure out what your "real" address is. Instead of having to chat or talk your some provider's central server, the software on your device can talk directly to the software on the other person's.
labcomputer 4y ago
> What are the practical implications for internet users and infrastructure maintainers? If you want to talk to Indian web users, you'll probably want to upgrade your servers from Irix version 5.3 to at least 6.2 (but preferably 6.5.22, as it has some security fixes). Now, you might be saying to yourself "Self, Silicon Graphics went bankrupt in 2006. Where the hell am I going to find install media for Irix 6.5 in the middle of 2022?" The answer to that, my friend, is eBay. Or maybe you're thinking, "But labcomputer, I don't trust these modern computers with their instruction re-ordering mumbo-jumbo! I want them to interpret the binary as ~~god~~ the compiler intended! And besides, my VAX doubles as a space heater. What am I going to do?" Well, good news! You're still in luck because you can upgrade your VAX to OpenVMS 5.7 and take advantage of all 128 bits of IPv6 goodness as you gently fall asleep to the roar of your VAXCluster's fans. Windows users don't need to feel left out, either. Ole Billy-boy's got you covered. You can upgrade to Windows XP (on that powerful new Pentium II you just picked up) to access glorious <blink> tags on IPv6-hosted websites in 256 colors!
securitypunk 4y ago
The IPv4 address space is depleted, so remaining on IPv4 means deploying NAT everywhere, with all the downsides that come with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_address_translation#Issues_and_limitations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_address_translation#Is...
anthropodie 4y ago
You no longer need services like tailscale or zerotier or VPN like wireguard just to connect to your home network. You also do not need static IP. I host my own task manager, calendar, media center, document server, google drive alternative, google photos alternative on my home network and can reach it from anywhere. It is all possible with IPv6 without paying a whole lot to other services. In future, I think IPv6 is going to play a crucial role in next generation of hardware devices and software applications that will bring people back from walled gardens to real Internet. We might finally have something where people host their own data like photos, stories at home securely and then they choose who should access or who should not. I know I am being way too optimistic but a man can dream.
- codethief 4y ago
  > You no longer need services like tailscale or zerotier or VPN like wireguard just to connect to your home network. You also do not need static IP. I disagree. Technologies like Tailscale, zerotier and Wireguard mostly exist to secure your private, distributed network. Tailscale has all kinds of measures to circumvent NATs, sure, but the main point is access control, encryption by default and presenting as little an attack surface as possible (by routing everything through Wireguard). IPv6 doesn't give you that: IPv6 addresses can still easily be spoofed, and ports can still be scanned. And vulternabilities in applications listening on public ports will always exist. VPNs provide you with an additional layer of security.
  - viraptor 4y ago
    > IPv6 addresses can still easily be spoofed That's not related to IPv6. If your ISP allows spoofing addresses, then v4/v6 doesn't really make a big difference.
    - codethief 4y ago
      How is an ISP supposed to know whether the "sender" on an IP packet is legitimate? > That's not related to IPv6. I didn't claim it was. It is, of course, already an issue in IPv4 networks. OP was claiming that, once everyone uses IPv6, VPN solutions like Tailscale or WireGuard would no longer be needed. I disagreed because one of main features these solutions provide is access control, i.e. which device gets to connect to which device (and which application) in your private network. Not only is this much more cumbersome to achieve with IPv6 alone (as you need to set up appropriate firewall rules manually on each device), the security guarantees afforded by such firewall rules also won't be as strong as 1) IP spoofing cannot be prevented, 2) encryption is not the default, 3) the attack surface is much larger. > If your ISP allows spoofing addresses This has nothing to do with one's ISP. The ISP cannot possibly know whether the sender IP address on an IP packet is legitimate or not.
dec0dedab0de 4y ago
The biggest benefit is that there are more public IP addresses. The original solution for public IP addresses running out was NAT/PAT which allows a network to have it's own private IP addresses, but hide all internet traffic behind one public IP address. Think if you have 10 devices connected to your wifi/router, but you're only paying for standard internet connection. By hiding behind one address, it provided a huge layer of protection between individual devices and the internet, but also made some types of traffic a huge pain in the ass (see ICE/STUN/TURN). With IPV6 we can give every device it's own public address, but one major concern is that it could lead to an explosion of insecure devices accessible directly from the internet. Right now if your printer or refrigerator is insecure, it doesn't really matter because it is inaccessible from the internet. The business answer for this is properly configured firewalls and proxy servers, but that's too much for the average home user. The biggest downside is systems that assume all addresses are IPv4. These could be legacy hardware thats been sitting in a closet chugging along for 20 years, or brand new software where the developer didn't consider v6 as a possibility. EDIT: Some specific benefits: Cheaply hosting stuff from my house. Easy Direct secure communication without a middle-man. More competition for hosting companies Room for more people
- shrx 4y ago
  > The business answer for this is properly configured firewalls and proxy servers, but that's too much for the average home user. So what is the alternative for the average home user?
- viraptor 4y ago
  > With IPV6 we can give every device it's own public address, but one major concern is that it could lead to an explosion of insecure devices accessible directly from the internet. This gets repeated, but we've already got lots of home IPv6 routers and none of them allow direct access by default. You need to jump through some hoops to enable external access. Nobody wants public access by default and anyone who does it will get noticed and called out very quickly.
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  The home side is basically the same as the business side: a good router has needed to be a good firewall regardless of NAT anyway, because the router can't just assume NAT (even if it is de facto everywhere). NATs as first-pass filter of a firewall was always an accidental feature at best. Obviously we start to see which routers are "good" home routers shake out as IPv6 adoption picks up, but given current statistics homes are leading IPv6 adoption and it is businesses (with their complex surveillance proxies and IPv4 micro-management practices) that are greatly lagging in adoption curves. (Typical IPv6 graphs show a "bathtub" effect where IPv6 goes up in evenings and weekends as people switch from work devices and networks/VPNs to home devices and home networks.) Homes are more ready for IPv6 than people want to give credit to. Claiming NATs to be one of the best features of Home IPv4 seems sometimes to just be FUD designed to be anti-IPv6 as much as it is a legitimate concern.
ATsch 4y ago
> What are the practical implications for internet users and infrastructure maintainers? For users: the widespread deployment of NAT has eliminated global end-to-end connectivity of the internet. That drives further centralization of the internet, as offering services requires expensive purchases of IPv4 space, big central NAT gateways and makes p2p applications difficult to impossible. For infrastructure maintainers: the increased address space makes it possible again to allocate addresses as you wish. There's no need to architect your network around IP address scarcity. You can allocate pretty much as many networks as you want, for whatever you want, without worrying it's going to be too small.
- m463 4y ago
  also privacy (although there are privacy extensions for ipv6)
- throwaway894345 4y ago
  Can you convince me that end-to-end connectivity is desirable in most cases? I certainly don't want ingress from the public Internet to devices on my home network in the general case, and I think it's kind of nice that the Internet only knows the address of my router rather than that of my physical machine (of course, there are other ways to fingerprint devices, but let's not make it easier than necessary). You definitely want a gateway to implement firewall rules, and I'm not sure whether I care if that gateway is doing NAT as well or not? What can I do with a non-NAT-ing gateway? The only thing I can think of is that cloud IP addresses aren't as carefully guarded (I don't get up-charged for an un-associated elastic IP address).
  - chongli 4y ago
    I certainly don't want ingress from the public Internet to devices on my home network in the general case This is ultimately an operating system issue. For most of the history of the web, we've used NAT routers and firewalls as a fig leaf over the operating system issue. What is it? Operating systems are extremely promiscuous about listening for traffic on a multitude of ports. Operating systems are promiscuous about including a vast number of daemons running in the background handling a variety of tasks. Operating systems are promiscuous about running a bunch of daemons that phone home all the time. All of this stuff is completely opaque to the user. All of it occurs on a default opt-out basis. All of it requires an extraordinary amount of knowledge for the user to feasibly withdraw consent. This is the operating system problem. In another world, I can envision computers running operating systems which are totally transparent and easily understood by their users. All running services would be opt-in and users would be fully aware of exactly what's happening on their machines. That would be the world where end-to-end internet connectivity is highly desirable.
kazen44 4y ago
another point which makes ipv6 easier to handle for network operators is the fact that subnetting is (practically) a thing of the past. Customers are supposed to get a /56, and the global routing table consists of /32's or at maximum a /48 in regards to subnet length. This greatly reduces the global routing tables size because aggregation is actually doable, compared to IPv4. Also, ipv6 has some neat features like duplicate address detection, link-local addressing and Stateless autoconfiguration.
enw 4y ago
With IPv6 we can host from home without NAT or DDNS.
paxys 4y ago
There are a lot of theoretical advantages to IPv6. Every single internet endpoint can have a unique address. You will no longer need any form of NAT. Any two random connected devices can talk to each other with a simple TCP/UDP request. Practically all of this is still very unlikely, but at least it is a step in the right direction.
guntars 4y ago
Something else that isn't often mentioned is that NAT requires keeping track of connection state on the router and anyone that writes code knows that state is the devil. That's state for every connection and for every device on the network. A perfectly implemented NAT router with unlimited memory is just as reliable as an IPv6 router that just forwards packets. In reality, the consumer grade devices have 16MB or so of memory and fall far short of this ideal.
- fouronnes3 4y ago
  I'm completely out of the loop, but last time I checked "IPv6 will kill NAT forever" was basically a lie, and there is NAT-hell in IPv6 too. Is that so?
- yardstick 4y ago
  IPv6 router firewalls still should be stateful (Ie allow connections initiated from my LAN to the Internet, but don’t allow connections initiated from the Internet to my LAN). Sure, if you are speaking about core routers, they don’t care about state. But for homes and offices, traffic direction matters for security.
  - guntars 4y ago
    That's fair, I can see how any kind of more advanced filtering than "just block incoming SYN packets" would require state, but at least it's optional.
gopalv 4y ago
> What are the practical implications for internet users and infrastructure maintainers? There are technical implications on routing and "what is on the internet" vs "connected to the internet" (the difference between having an address vs a NAT gateway for access). But for India specifically, the difference is more political & specifically for the internal cloud infra land. IPv4 was "sold & bought" during the era when US and Europe controlled who got how much. See the xkcd for an idea of the distribution - https://xkcd.com/195/ https://xkcd.com/195/ If you are a up&coming cloud provider in India, you definitely have a scarcity of ipv4 addresses you can hand out to your customers - you can hand out ipv6 addresses no problem, but if people's devices are on ipv4, then this is behind the scenes and needs a fair amount of complexity. You can do several tricks on the hosting side with DNS and SNI (so thousands of domain names can map to a group of 10-15 IP addresses and the loadbalancer can use the SNI to route the connections to the right internal ipv6). So IPv6 adoption for cellphones for instance is not really important for the clients on phones, but it really matters if you want to build out a cloud infra stack hosted in India by a provider (like Reliance) who doesn't own enough ipv4 ranges to scale up things.
shepherdjerred 4y ago
IPv6 simplifies networking by freeing us of the hacks surrounding IPv4. These hacks were made to stop us from running out of addresses. Every device will have a unique IPv6 address. This solves a lot of pain regarding port forwarding and NAT — an issue I felt often when trying to play video games or host a Minecraft server when I was younger. It’ll be easier for regular people to access their local networks which could help make it a more mainstream option for people who want to home host services like file syncing or media servers.
- autoexec 4y ago
  > Every device will have a unique IPv6 address. You get a unique IP with NAT too, it's just not globally routable which is actually really nice since most people don't want the entire planet to see their internet network and folks running servers and P2P applications are generally capable enough at networking to configure their router to allow communication even with NAT in place. If IPv6 wants to do away with NAT, what solution does IPv6 offer for preventing device enumeration and tracking?
  - viraptor 4y ago
    You can still use NAT with IPv6. And no, some services services are a serious pita to configure with NAT even if you know what you're doing. That's also assuming you're not NATed by your ISP and can bind external ports in the first place and that's not a given.
    - autoexec 4y ago
      Yeah, I've seen a few other options too like proxies and NPTv6 but all of it just confirms that IPv6 isn't the NAT killer people make it out to be. In the end, there are uses for NAT that remain useful and desirable. I know we'll all have to move to from IPv4 eventually, but I can't help hoping that by the time that comes we'll have moved on to IPv7 or at least IPv6SE or something that addresses all the issues that have hurt IPv6 adoption.
  - imtringued 4y ago

by nomilk 4y ago

dheera 4y ago

It means that instead of "1.2.3.4" you now have to deal with "f0fd::8a8a:99:::://4::88ff::deca:dead:beef::/16" or something like that, and remember how many colons go where and you now have to remember hex numbers instead of decimal. What's the Google IPv4 DNS? 8.8.8.8. It's beautiful enough to be a decoration to frame and hang above a fireplace. What's the Google IPv6 DNS? Heck if I can remember, it has some 4's, 6's, 8's, 0's, 2's, and some colons and double-colons liberally sprinkled like a salt shaker that had its cap fall off as you were shaking it. I'm basically a walking DNS server of the company I work at, I know all the IPv4 addresses of pretty much every machine, and I couldn't do that with IPv6. I also know all the IPv4 addresses of every single IOT device in my home. It's really no wonder that the world is very slow to transition to IPv6.

throw0101a 4y ago

> What are the practical implications for internet users and infrastructure maintainers? You don't have to futz around with NAT and figuring out how to do connect P2P: * https://tailscale.com/blog/how-nat-traversal-works/ https://tailscale.com/blog/how-nat-traversal-works/ You have your home router firewall, you punch a hole in it (UPnP, PCP) on an as-needed basis, do your P2P thing. When you're done, the firewall hole is closed. No magic/fancy protocols trying to figure out what your "real" address is. Instead of having to chat or talk your some provider's central server, the software on your device can talk directly to the software on the other person's.

labcomputer 4y ago

> What are the practical implications for internet users and infrastructure maintainers? If you want to talk to Indian web users, you'll probably want to upgrade your servers from Irix version 5.3 to at least 6.2 (but preferably 6.5.22, as it has some security fixes). Now, you might be saying to yourself "Self, Silicon Graphics went bankrupt in 2006. Where the hell am I going to find install media for Irix 6.5 in the middle of 2022?" The answer to that, my friend, is eBay. Or maybe you're thinking, "But labcomputer, I don't trust these modern computers with their instruction re-ordering mumbo-jumbo! I want them to interpret the binary as ~~god~~ the compiler intended! And besides, my VAX doubles as a space heater. What am I going to do?" Well, good news! You're still in luck because you can upgrade your VAX to OpenVMS 5.7 and take advantage of all 128 bits of IPv6 goodness as you gently fall asleep to the roar of your VAXCluster's fans. Windows users don't need to feel left out, either. Ole Billy-boy's got you covered. You can upgrade to Windows XP (on that powerful new Pentium II you just picked up) to access glorious <blink> tags on IPv6-hosted websites in 256 colors!

securitypunk 4y ago

The IPv4 address space is depleted, so remaining on IPv4 means deploying NAT everywhere, with all the downsides that come with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_address_translation#Issues_and_limitations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_address_translation#Is...

anthropodie 4y ago

You no longer need services like tailscale or zerotier or VPN like wireguard just to connect to your home network. You also do not need static IP. I host my own task manager, calendar, media center, document server, google drive alternative, google photos alternative on my home network and can reach it from anywhere. It is all possible with IPv6 without paying a whole lot to other services. In future, I think IPv6 is going to play a crucial role in next generation of hardware devices and software applications that will bring people back from walled gardens to real Internet. We might finally have something where people host their own data like photos, stories at home securely and then they choose who should access or who should not. I know I am being way too optimistic but a man can dream.

codethief 4y ago
> You no longer need services like tailscale or zerotier or VPN like wireguard just to connect to your home network. You also do not need static IP. I disagree. Technologies like Tailscale, zerotier and Wireguard mostly exist to secure your private, distributed network. Tailscale has all kinds of measures to circumvent NATs, sure, but the main point is access control, encryption by default and presenting as little an attack surface as possible (by routing everything through Wireguard). IPv6 doesn't give you that: IPv6 addresses can still easily be spoofed, and ports can still be scanned. And vulternabilities in applications listening on public ports will always exist. VPNs provide you with an additional layer of security.
- viraptor 4y ago
  > IPv6 addresses can still easily be spoofed That's not related to IPv6. If your ISP allows spoofing addresses, then v4/v6 doesn't really make a big difference.
  - codethief 4y ago
    How is an ISP supposed to know whether the "sender" on an IP packet is legitimate? > That's not related to IPv6. I didn't claim it was. It is, of course, already an issue in IPv4 networks. OP was claiming that, once everyone uses IPv6, VPN solutions like Tailscale or WireGuard would no longer be needed. I disagreed because one of main features these solutions provide is access control, i.e. which device gets to connect to which device (and which application) in your private network. Not only is this much more cumbersome to achieve with IPv6 alone (as you need to set up appropriate firewall rules manually on each device), the security guarantees afforded by such firewall rules also won't be as strong as 1) IP spoofing cannot be prevented, 2) encryption is not the default, 3) the attack surface is much larger. > If your ISP allows spoofing addresses This has nothing to do with one's ISP. The ISP cannot possibly know whether the sender IP address on an IP packet is legitimate or not.

dec0dedab0de 4y ago

The biggest benefit is that there are more public IP addresses. The original solution for public IP addresses running out was NAT/PAT which allows a network to have it's own private IP addresses, but hide all internet traffic behind one public IP address. Think if you have 10 devices connected to your wifi/router, but you're only paying for standard internet connection. By hiding behind one address, it provided a huge layer of protection between individual devices and the internet, but also made some types of traffic a huge pain in the ass (see ICE/STUN/TURN). With IPV6 we can give every device it's own public address, but one major concern is that it could lead to an explosion of insecure devices accessible directly from the internet. Right now if your printer or refrigerator is insecure, it doesn't really matter because it is inaccessible from the internet. The business answer for this is properly configured firewalls and proxy servers, but that's too much for the average home user. The biggest downside is systems that assume all addresses are IPv4. These could be legacy hardware thats been sitting in a closet chugging along for 20 years, or brand new software where the developer didn't consider v6 as a possibility. EDIT: Some specific benefits: Cheaply hosting stuff from my house. Easy Direct secure communication without a middle-man. More competition for hosting companies Room for more people

shrx 4y ago
> The business answer for this is properly configured firewalls and proxy servers, but that's too much for the average home user. So what is the alternative for the average home user?
viraptor 4y ago
> With IPV6 we can give every device it's own public address, but one major concern is that it could lead to an explosion of insecure devices accessible directly from the internet. This gets repeated, but we've already got lots of home IPv6 routers and none of them allow direct access by default. You need to jump through some hoops to enable external access. Nobody wants public access by default and anyone who does it will get noticed and called out very quickly.
WorldMaker 4y ago
The home side is basically the same as the business side: a good router has needed to be a good firewall regardless of NAT anyway, because the router can't just assume NAT (even if it is de facto everywhere). NATs as first-pass filter of a firewall was always an accidental feature at best. Obviously we start to see which routers are "good" home routers shake out as IPv6 adoption picks up, but given current statistics homes are leading IPv6 adoption and it is businesses (with their complex surveillance proxies and IPv4 micro-management practices) that are greatly lagging in adoption curves. (Typical IPv6 graphs show a "bathtub" effect where IPv6 goes up in evenings and weekends as people switch from work devices and networks/VPNs to home devices and home networks.) Homes are more ready for IPv6 than people want to give credit to. Claiming NATs to be one of the best features of Home IPv4 seems sometimes to just be FUD designed to be anti-IPv6 as much as it is a legitimate concern.

ATsch 4y ago

> What are the practical implications for internet users and infrastructure maintainers? For users: the widespread deployment of NAT has eliminated global end-to-end connectivity of the internet. That drives further centralization of the internet, as offering services requires expensive purchases of IPv4 space, big central NAT gateways and makes p2p applications difficult to impossible. For infrastructure maintainers: the increased address space makes it possible again to allocate addresses as you wish. There's no need to architect your network around IP address scarcity. You can allocate pretty much as many networks as you want, for whatever you want, without worrying it's going to be too small.

m463 4y ago
also privacy (although there are privacy extensions for ipv6)
throwaway894345 4y ago
Can you convince me that end-to-end connectivity is desirable in most cases? I certainly don't want ingress from the public Internet to devices on my home network in the general case, and I think it's kind of nice that the Internet only knows the address of my router rather than that of my physical machine (of course, there are other ways to fingerprint devices, but let's not make it easier than necessary). You definitely want a gateway to implement firewall rules, and I'm not sure whether I care if that gateway is doing NAT as well or not? What can I do with a non-NAT-ing gateway? The only thing I can think of is that cloud IP addresses aren't as carefully guarded (I don't get up-charged for an un-associated elastic IP address).
- chongli 4y ago
  I certainly don't want ingress from the public Internet to devices on my home network in the general case This is ultimately an operating system issue. For most of the history of the web, we've used NAT routers and firewalls as a fig leaf over the operating system issue. What is it? Operating systems are extremely promiscuous about listening for traffic on a multitude of ports. Operating systems are promiscuous about including a vast number of daemons running in the background handling a variety of tasks. Operating systems are promiscuous about running a bunch of daemons that phone home all the time. All of this stuff is completely opaque to the user. All of it occurs on a default opt-out basis. All of it requires an extraordinary amount of knowledge for the user to feasibly withdraw consent. This is the operating system problem. In another world, I can envision computers running operating systems which are totally transparent and easily understood by their users. All running services would be opt-in and users would be fully aware of exactly what's happening on their machines. That would be the world where end-to-end internet connectivity is highly desirable.

kazen44 4y ago

another point which makes ipv6 easier to handle for network operators is the fact that subnetting is (practically) a thing of the past. Customers are supposed to get a /56, and the global routing table consists of /32's or at maximum a /48 in regards to subnet length. This greatly reduces the global routing tables size because aggregation is actually doable, compared to IPv4. Also, ipv6 has some neat features like duplicate address detection, link-local addressing and Stateless autoconfiguration.

enw 4y ago

With IPv6 we can host from home without NAT or DDNS.

paxys 4y ago

There are a lot of theoretical advantages to IPv6. Every single internet endpoint can have a unique address. You will no longer need any form of NAT. Any two random connected devices can talk to each other with a simple TCP/UDP request. Practically all of this is still very unlikely, but at least it is a step in the right direction.

guntars 4y ago

Something else that isn't often mentioned is that NAT requires keeping track of connection state on the router and anyone that writes code knows that state is the devil. That's state for every connection and for every device on the network. A perfectly implemented NAT router with unlimited memory is just as reliable as an IPv6 router that just forwards packets. In reality, the consumer grade devices have 16MB or so of memory and fall far short of this ideal.

fouronnes3 4y ago
I'm completely out of the loop, but last time I checked "IPv6 will kill NAT forever" was basically a lie, and there is NAT-hell in IPv6 too. Is that so?
yardstick 4y ago
IPv6 router firewalls still should be stateful (Ie allow connections initiated from my LAN to the Internet, but don’t allow connections initiated from the Internet to my LAN). Sure, if you are speaking about core routers, they don’t care about state. But for homes and offices, traffic direction matters for security.
- guntars 4y ago
  That's fair, I can see how any kind of more advanced filtering than "just block incoming SYN packets" would require state, but at least it's optional.

gopalv 4y ago

> What are the practical implications for internet users and infrastructure maintainers? There are technical implications on routing and "what is on the internet" vs "connected to the internet" (the difference between having an address vs a NAT gateway for access). But for India specifically, the difference is more political & specifically for the internal cloud infra land. IPv4 was "sold & bought" during the era when US and Europe controlled who got how much. See the xkcd for an idea of the distribution - https://xkcd.com/195/ https://xkcd.com/195/ If you are a up&coming cloud provider in India, you definitely have a scarcity of ipv4 addresses you can hand out to your customers - you can hand out ipv6 addresses no problem, but if people's devices are on ipv4, then this is behind the scenes and needs a fair amount of complexity. You can do several tricks on the hosting side with DNS and SNI (so thousands of domain names can map to a group of 10-15 IP addresses and the loadbalancer can use the SNI to route the connections to the right internal ipv6). So IPv6 adoption for cellphones for instance is not really important for the clients on phones, but it really matters if you want to build out a cloud infra stack hosted in India by a provider (like Reliance) who doesn't own enough ipv4 ranges to scale up things.

shepherdjerred 4y ago

IPv6 simplifies networking by freeing us of the hacks surrounding IPv4. These hacks were made to stop us from running out of addresses. Every device will have a unique IPv6 address. This solves a lot of pain regarding port forwarding and NAT — an issue I felt often when trying to play video games or host a Minecraft server when I was younger. It’ll be easier for regular people to access their local networks which could help make it a more mainstream option for people who want to home host services like file syncing or media servers.

autoexec 4y ago
> Every device will have a unique IPv6 address. You get a unique IP with NAT too, it's just not globally routable which is actually really nice since most people don't want the entire planet to see their internet network and folks running servers and P2P applications are generally capable enough at networking to configure their router to allow communication even with NAT in place. If IPv6 wants to do away with NAT, what solution does IPv6 offer for preventing device enumeration and tracking?
- viraptor 4y ago
  You can still use NAT with IPv6. And no, some services services are a serious pita to configure with NAT even if you know what you're doing. That's also assuming you're not NATed by your ISP and can bind external ports in the first place and that's not a given.
  - autoexec 4y ago
    Yeah, I've seen a few other options too like proxies and NPTv6 but all of it just confirms that IPv6 isn't the NAT killer people make it out to be. In the end, there are uses for NAT that remain useful and desirable. I know we'll all have to move to from IPv4 eventually, but I can't help hoping that by the time that comes we'll have moved on to IPv7 or at least IPv6SE or something that addresses all the issues that have hurt IPv6 adoption.
- imtringued 4y ago