5 ms·

Why is it bad to give users 64 bits of address space? Today's Ethernet/WiFi networks don't use the space very effectively, but IP will be with us for a very lo

by p1mrx 4y ago

Why is it bad to give users 64 bits of address space? Today's Ethernet/WiFi networks don't use the space very effectively, but IP will be with us for a very long time, and those bits are reserved for future innovation at the network edge.

jmyeet 4y ago
Why is it good? IPv6 has a lot of problems. Primarily it solves non-problems and doesn't solve actual problems (other than address space). The actual problems with IPv4 are: 1. Lack of sufficient addresses; and 2. Roaming. It's actually a step backwards for IP portability too. This too is another example of solving a non-problem (ie routing of random address blocks). The user /64 space was specifically done to be large enough to fit a MAC address, which we never ended up doing. Ports are somehow deemed bad too. So with IPV^ we haven't gotten away from the need for NATs, we have a ridicously large address space and then waste half of those bits. This is all classic Second System Syndrome stuff.
- sliken 4y ago
  That's not my take at all. I have a /60 from my ISP, and have 5 ports on my router, each getting it's own /64. Hosts get a stateless IPv6 address, no running out of leases, no DHCP service that's painful to make redundant, no expired leases when the DHCP server is down, etc. I consider that a win. Also with so many IPs, each client can grab a few, and rotate them, so facebook doesn't see the same IP as twitter, etc. Nor can you assume that connecting to facebook today will be from the same IP as facebook tomorrow. So your MAC related IP never need to be shared with the internet, but can be used to accept incoming connections, for those that know the IP, or know the DNS to look up the IP. For those that really want DHCP you can have that as well with DHCPv6. IPv6 also removes the need for a NAT, all my /60 of IP addresses are visible to the internet, nothing gross like the various ugly hacks for connection forwarding, tunneling, and various weird unreliable technologies trying to get past consumer NATs. IPv6 seems so much saner than IPv4. You can autoconfigure IPs and setup a firewall for any restrictions you want to make. I can share files gasp without dropbox, share photos without a photo hosting site, remotely open/close/check my garage door without depending on some few $ a month cloud service, remotely view my home security cams, etc. Generally I think of the normal IPv4 provided single IP+NAT as a crippled consumer only connection that forces the use of someone else's service/cloud for even the most simple of things.
  - topranks 4y ago
    Some of the IPv6 changes are good, many of them are not so amazing. I think one can say in general that if we had of stuck to only increasing the address field size, and not changed a bunch of other things between IPv4 and IPv6 we could have gotten there a lot quicker and be mostly through the transition. Hindsight is of course everything.
    - p1mrx 4y ago
      > and not changed a bunch of other things between IPv4 and IPv6 Do you have any examples of things that would speed the transition if left unchanged?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - crmrc114 4y ago
    Right, and now your isp knows how many devices you have, what endpoints each of them connect to and at what time. This is what kills me with v6. Privacy is already a large enough issue, I have no interest in letting my ISP "see" my internal network and egress traffic flows from each device.
    - sliken 4y ago
      No, they don't, sure in a given period of time they know how many unique IPv6 addresses are in use. But they can't tell how many devices that is. I'd much rather have 2^68 IPs that I can sprinkle over as many devices as I want than a single IPv4 that makes p2p hard, makes services hard, and requires the use of either NAT or tons of port forwarding.
    - jjav 4y ago
      > Right, and now your isp knows how many devices you have It sounds crazy today, but this is how it used to be with IPv4 back in the day. For instance at my first job, every employee's computer (Sun SPARCstations) and every server in the building was directly on the internet with a routable IP address. No firewalls in sight, no NAT. sendmail ran on every box, so incoming email was handled directly by your own workstation, from anywhere in the internet. So my email address was name@myhostname.company.com (we did have aliases and forwarding so name@company.com also worked). I ran FTP server and mailing lists and (slightly later) web sites from my workstation. This was peak decentralized internet and a wonderful time.
- p1mrx 4y ago
  > Why is it good? It's good because it enables future innovation at the network edge. I don't know what that will look like, but it's better to have too much freedom than too little. > Roaming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locator/Identifier_Separation_Protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locator/Identifier_Separation_... is an interesting solution to the roaming problem, though development seems less active than it once was. In any case, it's easier to build this sort of technology when you're not fighting for scraps of address space.
  - ithkuil 4y ago
    LISP looks similar to what can be achieved with zero tier or tailscale today: with an overlay network you effectively separate the identity from the location and you can move your physical machine around while maintaining all the connections with the "internal" addresses intact. Does LISP allow you to achieve the same goal but in the open internet?
    - p1mrx 4y ago
      That's my understanding, yes. LISP would allow any ISP to perform tunnel encap/decap on their own routers, so traffic doesn't need to traverse a third-party network.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- teddyh 4y ago
  The Case for IPv6: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-iab-case-for-ipv6-06 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-iab-case-for-ipv...

by p1mrx 4y ago

jmyeet 4y ago

Why is it good? IPv6 has a lot of problems. Primarily it solves non-problems and doesn't solve actual problems (other than address space). The actual problems with IPv4 are: 1. Lack of sufficient addresses; and 2. Roaming. It's actually a step backwards for IP portability too. This too is another example of solving a non-problem (ie routing of random address blocks). The user /64 space was specifically done to be large enough to fit a MAC address, which we never ended up doing. Ports are somehow deemed bad too. So with IPV^ we haven't gotten away from the need for NATs, we have a ridicously large address space and then waste half of those bits. This is all classic Second System Syndrome stuff.

sliken 4y ago
That's not my take at all. I have a /60 from my ISP, and have 5 ports on my router, each getting it's own /64. Hosts get a stateless IPv6 address, no running out of leases, no DHCP service that's painful to make redundant, no expired leases when the DHCP server is down, etc. I consider that a win. Also with so many IPs, each client can grab a few, and rotate them, so facebook doesn't see the same IP as twitter, etc. Nor can you assume that connecting to facebook today will be from the same IP as facebook tomorrow. So your MAC related IP never need to be shared with the internet, but can be used to accept incoming connections, for those that know the IP, or know the DNS to look up the IP. For those that really want DHCP you can have that as well with DHCPv6. IPv6 also removes the need for a NAT, all my /60 of IP addresses are visible to the internet, nothing gross like the various ugly hacks for connection forwarding, tunneling, and various weird unreliable technologies trying to get past consumer NATs. IPv6 seems so much saner than IPv4. You can autoconfigure IPs and setup a firewall for any restrictions you want to make. I can share files gasp without dropbox, share photos without a photo hosting site, remotely open/close/check my garage door without depending on some few $ a month cloud service, remotely view my home security cams, etc. Generally I think of the normal IPv4 provided single IP+NAT as a crippled consumer only connection that forces the use of someone else's service/cloud for even the most simple of things.
- topranks 4y ago
  Some of the IPv6 changes are good, many of them are not so amazing. I think one can say in general that if we had of stuck to only increasing the address field size, and not changed a bunch of other things between IPv4 and IPv6 we could have gotten there a lot quicker and be mostly through the transition. Hindsight is of course everything.
  - p1mrx 4y ago
    > and not changed a bunch of other things between IPv4 and IPv6 Do you have any examples of things that would speed the transition if left unchanged?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- crmrc114 4y ago
  Right, and now your isp knows how many devices you have, what endpoints each of them connect to and at what time. This is what kills me with v6. Privacy is already a large enough issue, I have no interest in letting my ISP "see" my internal network and egress traffic flows from each device.
  - sliken 4y ago
    No, they don't, sure in a given period of time they know how many unique IPv6 addresses are in use. But they can't tell how many devices that is. I'd much rather have 2^68 IPs that I can sprinkle over as many devices as I want than a single IPv4 that makes p2p hard, makes services hard, and requires the use of either NAT or tons of port forwarding.
  - jjav 4y ago
    > Right, and now your isp knows how many devices you have It sounds crazy today, but this is how it used to be with IPv4 back in the day. For instance at my first job, every employee's computer (Sun SPARCstations) and every server in the building was directly on the internet with a routable IP address. No firewalls in sight, no NAT. sendmail ran on every box, so incoming email was handled directly by your own workstation, from anywhere in the internet. So my email address was name@myhostname.company.com (we did have aliases and forwarding so name@company.com also worked). I ran FTP server and mailing lists and (slightly later) web sites from my workstation. This was peak decentralized internet and a wonderful time.
p1mrx 4y ago
> Why is it good? It's good because it enables future innovation at the network edge. I don't know what that will look like, but it's better to have too much freedom than too little. > Roaming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locator/Identifier_Separation_Protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locator/Identifier_Separation_... is an interesting solution to the roaming problem, though development seems less active than it once was. In any case, it's easier to build this sort of technology when you're not fighting for scraps of address space.
- ithkuil 4y ago
  LISP looks similar to what can be achieved with zero tier or tailscale today: with an overlay network you effectively separate the identity from the location and you can move your physical machine around while maintaining all the connections with the "internal" addresses intact. Does LISP allow you to achieve the same goal but in the open internet?
  - p1mrx 4y ago
    That's my understanding, yes. LISP would allow any ISP to perform tunnel encap/decap on their own routers, so traffic doesn't need to traverse a third-party network.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
teddyh 4y ago
The Case for IPv6: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-iab-case-for-ipv6-06 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-iab-case-for-ipv...