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You have that backwards. On any modern Windows, MacOS, BSD, or Linux install, your system maintains multiple* public-routeable IPv6 addresses at once. New con

You have that backwards. On any modern Windows, MacOS, BSD, or Linux install, your system maintains multiple* public-routeable IPv6 addresses at once. New connections are opened on the newest address, and the old addresses are retired as legacy connections are closed. SLAAC (stateless autoconfiguration) allows the system to automatically configure new addresses at-will. Two web pages that you open within seconds may not see the same IP address when you use v6. For example, the computer I'm typing this on currently has 9 public-routeable IPv6 addresses (plus additional link-local and private addresses), on one NIC. That's the normal state of IPv6, not some exotic configuration. It "just happens" when you have SLAAC set up. You could, if you wanted (though I don't know of any OS that supports it) open literally every new connection from a new address. IPv6 also has better multi-homing support, so you can distribute your connections among multiple ISPs (and, again, with SLAAC, configuring IPv6 addresses from multiple routers on a single NIC is trivial).

autoexec 4y ago
I actually do kind of like the idea of a new IP for every connection... I haven't had much time to look into it recently, so maybe the situation has changed, but I do recall seeing multiple issues with SLAAC and other privacy features (not just involving EUI-64) still leaving devices trackable in common situations, and even that's only where it's supported. Hopefully there are workarounds and patches for the issues that have been identified so far, and I should probably take another hard look at the current state of things but the impression I got just a couple of years ago is that if IPv4 can be made to protect privacy it'd still be way too complicated for most end users where NAT pretty much just works, and works with most devices and gateways.

autoexec 4y ago

I actually do kind of like the idea of a new IP for every connection... I haven't had much time to look into it recently, so maybe the situation has changed, but I do recall seeing multiple issues with SLAAC and other privacy features (not just involving EUI-64) still leaving devices trackable in common situations, and even that's only where it's supported. Hopefully there are workarounds and patches for the issues that have been identified so far, and I should probably take another hard look at the current state of things but the impression I got just a couple of years ago is that if IPv4 can be made to protect privacy it'd still be way too complicated for most end users where NAT pretty much just works, and works with most devices and gateways.