5 ms·

My website has a few hundred thousand users. My development is completely user driven. I get hundreds of feature requests and other emails regarding my site p

by TekMol 4y ago

My website has a few hundred thousand users. My development is completely user driven. I get hundreds of feature requests and other emails regarding my site per month. So far, not a single user mentioned IPv6. So I never added an AAAA record. The codebase has grown for over 10 years now. God knows what subtle breakages would happen when IPv6 requests come in. I wonder if I ever will add IPv6 or just leave the site running on IPv4 forever.

ignoramous 4y ago
> So I never added an AAAA record. IPv4 servers are reachable by IPv6-only clients. ipv6test.google.com famously has only an A (IPv4) record for a reason. > God knows what subtle breakages would happen when IPv6 requests come in. Unless your product deals with the nitty gritty of the networking stack itself, pretty sure everything continues to hum along just fine, if the basics are covered.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- aoetalks 4y ago
  >IPv4 servers are reachable by IPv6-only clients How does this work?
  - zinekeller 4y ago
    It unfortunately involves CGNATted IPv4, but it's either DS-Lite (https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc6333 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc6333) where the end-user router emulates a dual-stack network but encapsulates IPv4 traffic on IPv6 from the perimeter to the CGNAT device at the ISP or just plain NAT64/DNS64 (https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc6147 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc6147) where IPv4 traffic is relayed at dedicated IPv6 addresses operated by the ISP with the help of special DNS (which might be the GP meant for IPv6-only networks, but it tends to be unreliable for a lot of reasons). In practice DNS64 is now being removed from a majority of networks because some specialty applications (I say "specialty" but these are work VPNs, conference systems and the like) reacts badly (because usually they can't understand IPv6 in the first place), replaced by either DS-Lite or plain dual-stack (possibly with CGNAT for IPv4).
  - hotpotamus 4y ago
    I forget this part of IPv6 class (I've literally gone to several IPv6 classes throughout the years but then end up forgetting details because I've yet to use it in production), but since the IPv6 space is so large, it's trivial to put an IPv4 address into it, and so they make NAT 6to4 type gateways that map the IPv4 internet into a block on the IPv6 network.
    - ignoramous 4y ago
      This wikipedia entry is a pretty handy reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6_transition_mechanism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6_transition_mechanism
- ozim 4y ago
  I think most or even all http servers and operating systems already can handle IPv6 no problem, one can set server bindings just the same as for IPv4. Hetzner and other providers of this size already support hosting options for IPv6. That said - my home ISP is not providing IPv6 at all, ISP we were getting office connection also provided no IPv6.
- TekMol 4y ago
  pretty sure everything continues to hum along just fine Haha. Wishful thinking. Have you ever worked with a live system that grew for 10 years? There could be tons of IP specific things in there. To enforce rate limits. For security. To do statistics. To do A/B tests...
  - kazen44 4y ago
    Yes, there could be. But in the end, those are just parameters of the specific networks/services that make up the internet. Considering that routing is not deterministic, you could get vastly different characteristics from point A to point B across the internet at specific times anyways.
  - mgbmtl 4y ago
    Sooner or later, you will have to support IPv6. May as well slowly start testing bits and pieces, and avoid doing it in a rush later on.
    - TekMol 4y ago
      I'm not sure I will have to. So far, nobody said IPv4 will be turned off. Maybe it will work for another 1000 years? Railroads have been around for over 2000 years and are still going strong. Despite cars and planes. Postal service has been going on for 4000 years. Since the times of the pharaohs! And It's still going strong, too. Despite phone, email and WhatsApp.
      - _joel 4y ago
        Not many wide-guage railroads left in the UK now though, despite probably being better.
      - klabb3 4y ago
        > Railroads have been around for over 2000 years and are still going strong. Despite cars and planes. Rail is vastly superior to both planes and cars in many circumstances, if done right. > Postal service has been going on for 4000 years. Since the times of the pharaohs! And It's still going strong, too. With significant upgrades to both the transport and addressing layers :)
LtWorf 4y ago
> So far, not a single user mentioned IPv6. That's because they don't know your website exists.
zamadatix 4y ago
I'd be surprised if users ever asked you to do that. The driver is usually about your infrastructure reaching the most clients most efficiently, not about users seeing it's 4 instead of 6 and asking for numbers go up. If your site is largely centrally hosted and doesn't require many IPs then nobody, including you, is going to care if it's v4 or v6 until ISPs stop providing v4 gateway services in the far far future as whether your site supports IPv4 isn't going to change anything for anyone. Well, unless your site is like the HN crowd where hacking for hacking's sake is the point in which case that's actually odd you haven't received an email. Google is obviously the exact opposite of this use case hence their interest and monitoring of IPv6 support and the latency impact numbers.

by TekMol 4y ago

ignoramous 4y ago

> So I never added an AAAA record. IPv4 servers are reachable by IPv6-only clients. ipv6test.google.com famously has only an A (IPv4) record for a reason. > God knows what subtle breakages would happen when IPv6 requests come in. Unless your product deals with the nitty gritty of the networking stack itself, pretty sure everything continues to hum along just fine, if the basics are covered.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
aoetalks 4y ago
>IPv4 servers are reachable by IPv6-only clients How does this work?
- zinekeller 4y ago
  It unfortunately involves CGNATted IPv4, but it's either DS-Lite (https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc6333 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc6333) where the end-user router emulates a dual-stack network but encapsulates IPv4 traffic on IPv6 from the perimeter to the CGNAT device at the ISP or just plain NAT64/DNS64 (https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc6147 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc6147) where IPv4 traffic is relayed at dedicated IPv6 addresses operated by the ISP with the help of special DNS (which might be the GP meant for IPv6-only networks, but it tends to be unreliable for a lot of reasons). In practice DNS64 is now being removed from a majority of networks because some specialty applications (I say "specialty" but these are work VPNs, conference systems and the like) reacts badly (because usually they can't understand IPv6 in the first place), replaced by either DS-Lite or plain dual-stack (possibly with CGNAT for IPv4).
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  I forget this part of IPv6 class (I've literally gone to several IPv6 classes throughout the years but then end up forgetting details because I've yet to use it in production), but since the IPv6 space is so large, it's trivial to put an IPv4 address into it, and so they make NAT 6to4 type gateways that map the IPv4 internet into a block on the IPv6 network.
  - ignoramous 4y ago
    This wikipedia entry is a pretty handy reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6_transition_mechanism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6_transition_mechanism
ozim 4y ago
I think most or even all http servers and operating systems already can handle IPv6 no problem, one can set server bindings just the same as for IPv4. Hetzner and other providers of this size already support hosting options for IPv6. That said - my home ISP is not providing IPv6 at all, ISP we were getting office connection also provided no IPv6.
TekMol 4y ago
pretty sure everything continues to hum along just fine Haha. Wishful thinking. Have you ever worked with a live system that grew for 10 years? There could be tons of IP specific things in there. To enforce rate limits. For security. To do statistics. To do A/B tests...
- kazen44 4y ago
  Yes, there could be. But in the end, those are just parameters of the specific networks/services that make up the internet. Considering that routing is not deterministic, you could get vastly different characteristics from point A to point B across the internet at specific times anyways.
- mgbmtl 4y ago
  Sooner or later, you will have to support IPv6. May as well slowly start testing bits and pieces, and avoid doing it in a rush later on.
  - TekMol 4y ago
    I'm not sure I will have to. So far, nobody said IPv4 will be turned off. Maybe it will work for another 1000 years? Railroads have been around for over 2000 years and are still going strong. Despite cars and planes. Postal service has been going on for 4000 years. Since the times of the pharaohs! And It's still going strong, too. Despite phone, email and WhatsApp.
    - _joel 4y ago
      Not many wide-guage railroads left in the UK now though, despite probably being better.
    - klabb3 4y ago
      > Railroads have been around for over 2000 years and are still going strong. Despite cars and planes. Rail is vastly superior to both planes and cars in many circumstances, if done right. > Postal service has been going on for 4000 years. Since the times of the pharaohs! And It's still going strong, too. With significant upgrades to both the transport and addressing layers :)

LtWorf 4y ago

> So far, not a single user mentioned IPv6. That's because they don't know your website exists.

zamadatix 4y ago

I'd be surprised if users ever asked you to do that. The driver is usually about your infrastructure reaching the most clients most efficiently, not about users seeing it's 4 instead of 6 and asking for numbers go up. If your site is largely centrally hosted and doesn't require many IPs then nobody, including you, is going to care if it's v4 or v6 until ISPs stop providing v4 gateway services in the far far future as whether your site supports IPv4 isn't going to change anything for anyone. Well, unless your site is like the HN crowd where hacking for hacking's sake is the point in which case that's actually odd you haven't received an email. Google is obviously the exact opposite of this use case hence their interest and monitoring of IPv6 support and the latency impact numbers.