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Roku devices don't support IPv6 in 2023 and it's costing ISPs
- vkdelta 4y agoFor a company who thrives on making cheap devices and charging for licenses/platform, this is almost a crime especially when supporting ipv6 on Linux based devices is much easier now. Wonder why don’t support it.
- colordrops 4y agoAre Rokus Linux based? I'd love to install an alternate distribution on one.
- yamtaddle 4y agoFrom Wikipedia: > The Roku box runs a custom Linux distribution called Roku OS. Looks like yes.
- throw0101c 4y ago> Are Rokus Linux based? Even if it wasn't, don't most embedded OSes come with IPv6 support? How small do you have to be to not have it? QNX is pretty compact, and even it has it: * https://www.qnx.com/developers/docs/7.0.0/#com.qnx.doc.neutrino.lib_ref/topic/i/ip6_proto.html https://www.qnx.com/developers/docs/7.0.0/#com.qnx.doc.neutr...
- kevin_thibedeau 4y agoLwIP is common on embedded devices. It has only supported dual stack in the last few years but even if it's possible, there are resource savings when only running v4.
- filmgirlcw 4y agoWhat would the point be, exactly? The stuff that makes a Roku worthwhile are all the apps and the proprietary drivers and networking stack stuff. If you're going to put an alternate distro on it, you might be better off getting a whitebox Android TV/Kodi/whatever box off of Aliexpress than trying to get around the limitations on the Roku hardware.
- javajosh 4y agoIt would be pretty cool to be able to program my Roku to do anything I want, rather than be limited to whatever they want. In theory I can connect another device to the TV and use it as a display, but even in that case the Roku software is active. A security researcher (amateur or professional) is going to want to get in there and see what's going on in addition to running through a proxy. There are also some scenarios (admittedly pretty contrived in our compute-rich world) where your TV computer is the only one available to you, and so it would be in your interest to expand its functions. Imagine a kid in a poor neighborhood - theoretically with just a keyboard and a USB stick he could be using that TV as an internet-connected computer to learn how to program. That's a lot more value than running Netflix, IMHO.
- filmgirlcw 4y agoRight -- and I get that -- but I guess my point is, what can even really be done by rooting a Roku, since all the stuff in user space is close source/proprietary and the drivers are unlikely to be useful with an alternate distro. A RPi would be a much better choice for a poor kid in a neighborhood who wanted to have a way to program.
- javajosh 4y agoHave you tried buying an RPi lately? They are impossible to find. And it may be that compute devices will get harder to find over time. That poor kid may not have another choice.
- abracadaniel 4y agoThis is an area that seems surprisingly empty from my observations. There doesn't seem to be much interest in rooting Rokus, and even if you did there doesn't seem to be a good open source replacement. The closest would be to install Android TV, but that's just exchanging one closed garden for another.
- Syonyk 4y ago> Wonder why don’t support it. It's probably harder to tie devices in a single household together with IPv6 than with IPv4, or so they think. They don't make (much) money on their devices, they make money on selling data collected and aggregated by their devices. Their "privacy" policy [0] is a hoot to read. "Whatever we can do, we will. If the laws of the country we collected the data in would interfere with that, we'll move the data and then do what we want." I mean, they grant themselves permission to nmap your network for other devices! Emphasis mine. > We may receive information about the browsers and devices you use to access the Internet, including our services, such as device types and models, unique identifiers including advertising identifiers (e.g., for Roku Devices, the Advertising Identifier associated with that device), MAC address, IP address, operating system type and version, browser type and language, Wi-Fi network name and connection data, __and information about other devices connected to the same network__. [0]: https://docs.roku.com/published/userprivacypolicy/en/us https://docs.roku.com/published/userprivacypolicy/en/us
- jmclnx 4y ago> It's probably harder to tie devices in a single household together with IPv6 than with IPv4, or so they think So I wonder if this means it is harder to ID the consumer with IPv6 ?
- megous 4y agoIt's easier. You'd be using SLAAC and your devices would have globally unique IP address based on the MAC address of their network interface.
- outworlder 4y agoExpect that some systems use random temporary IPv6 exactly to make it harder to track (even Windows)
- megous 4y agoProbably not very helpful against adversary device (like Roku) running on the same LAN.
- favaq 4y agoWhat makes no sense in 2023 is to have an IPv6-only network. That is liable not to work. Someone will eventually bring some old device that won't be able to connect.
- jonny_eh 4y agoDid you mean "IPv6-only network"?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- favaq 4y agoDefinitely, thanks!
- JohnFen 4y ago> Someone will eventually bring some old device that won't be able to connect. I have a separate WiFi AP just for my guests. It only goes to the internet and does not route to my LAN at all. It supports IPv4 and IPv6 so everyone's covered. I do this because my LAN is encrypted and it's inconvenient to have to issue new certs to anybody stopping by just so they can reach the internet. But as a bonus, I don't have to worry about accommodating whatever oddball hardware my guests may have. I recommend this practice. It works really well.
- dmitrygr 4y agoMy #1 step in troubleshooting any network issues is to disable IPv6. Step #2 is so rarely needed that I no longer remember what it was. IPv6 has been a failure, it is about time we openly admitted it. Why? Simple - it causes consumer pain and no consumer gain
- dragonwriter 4y agoYou can’t just change the size of an IPv4 address without creating a whole new thing.
- dmitrygr 4y agoYes, but let's not pretend that IPv6 was just IPv4 with a larger addr size. A lot of other unnecessary cruft got changed. That is kinda the issue. Add an extra octet to IPv4, call it IPv5. Done. DHCP (as is) can already handle variable-length addresses so it'll work unmodified for 5-byte addrs, for example. Same for ARP.
- thesnide 4y agoI am wondering if we could hack the ipip tunnel to automagically handle a bigger address space. Much akin to your idea but mostly supported already
- wvenable 4y agoBut the IPv6 changes are actually good, right? IPv4 was designed for an entirely different world and IPv6 was designed for this world. You're only going to get one chance to make these kind of improvements.
- tristanbvk 4y agoIPv6 has link-local, v4 doesn't. That is a huge configuration win.
- sigjuice 4y ago
- ehPReth 4y agoI really hate Roku as a product, ads on the home screen and the remote(??) of something I paid for? No thanks. Though, I will concede it is cool to load mostly "unapproved" apps if the developer shares the app ID. (Certain x-rated sites liked to advertise they have a Roku app, something that would never make its way to most other TV boxes)
- some-guy 4y agoI promise you, LG's WebOS is worse in almost every conceivable way.
- TheHappyOddish 4y agoRubbish. My webOS TV has proper filtering at the router level and has exactly 0 ads on it. Having full root access is great too.
- luhn 4y agoThat's par for the course nowadays, unfortunately. I couldn't name a smart TV system that doesn't have ads. Roku is far from being the worst offender, my LG C2 that I paid out the nose for has the majority of the home screen taken up with ads.
- dimgl 4y ago> I couldn't name a smart TV system that doesn't have ads. What do you consider to be ads? Apple TV is pretty tasteful in this regard. It never feels like I’m getting served an ad at all. In fact, with all Apple products I never feel like I’m getting served an ad.
- yamtaddle 4y agoI feel the same way about tvOS, but I've not used it without being subscribed to Apple TV, so I don't know if it pushes that hard if you don't have it. Otherwise the default screen has their service's stuff mixed in with other services (if they support that—some don't, like IIRC Netflix) and the amount of promotion isn't worse than if you're in another streaming app and they're trying to show you shows you're already paying for, that they want you to watch—and the actual app menu has none of that, no ads at all.
- scarface74 4y ago> First off I despise both Apple and that other evil empire (house of mouse) I want nothing to do with either of them. It’s funny that the poster despises Apple. But is okay with a company where the CEO explicitly said that they want to make money not via hardware sells, but via selling user’s television watching behavior. Everything about the Roku is a janky experience. From the ad that takes up the Home Screen to the hard coded buttons that go to the highest bidder. I have one remote that still has a useless Rdio button.
- ehPReth 4y ago> via selling user’s television watching behavior Gross. I hate how commonplace this is becoming. Even your basic non-Roku-OS TV people are saying never to connect it to the internet as it'll just fingerprint stuff on your HDMI and tell advertisers you're watching Game of Thrones
- DaiPlusPlus 4y agoI used to think like that, then I realised that my life is not actually being made worse because of it. The TV doesn’t know who I am, personally (I’m not signed-in to any accounts) and it’s all just mass aggregate data that will probably end-up being ignored by network-execs so why worry?
- slackdog 4y agoI'm not worried about some specific risk coming from Roku itself. But Roku contributes to the normalization of surveillance capitalism which I think is fundamentally corrosive to a free and democratic society. Having such a business model makes Roku a willful part of the problem, so I want nothing to do with them.
- scarface74 4y agoMy issue with Roku is that advertising makes it a bad product.
- hitpointdrew 4y agoWho the hell is giving their Roku a public IP? How is this remotely a problem? This is 100% not the fault of Roku, and 100% the fault of the ISP. The ISP should have an IPv6 to IPv4 gateway built into their modem/router. You have a WAN port that is IPv6 and an LAN port that IPv4. IPv6 for local networks, makes no sense is completely unnecessary, and is a hill I will die on. IPv4 is here to stay.
- blibble 4y ago> IPv6 for local networks, makes no sense is completely unnecessary, and is a hill I will die on. IPv4 is here to stay. my mobile phone in the UK on one of the big 4 carriers only has IPv6 addresses and only has IPv6 connectivity (using 464XLAT)
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ArchOversight 4y agoThe ISP said they got only a limited set of IPv4 addresses, those are assigned to their CGNAT gateways. Which are expensive, especially for an Indian Reservation, not the deep pockets of some MSP. The users are behind CG-NAT. But instead of using IPv6 which is cheaper (no need to maintain CG-NAT, translation devices, or deal with traffic that is being routed way more expensively) the Roku devices are only streaming over IPv4. Each new user that adds an IPv4 only device adds additional load the CG-NAT and additional capacity will need to be provisioned. That is an additional expense and burden. Most of my traffic at my house (on Comcast) is over IPv6, because most if not all streaming services now support IPv6 for content delivery, so the small amount of data that may need to go over IPv4 when the majority can go over IPv6 reduces the load on IPv4.
- zamadatix 4y agoRealistically they are already running a large scale NAT device anyways, otherwise the v6 only clients wouldn't be able to reach v4 only internet services (hello HN server), and if they had planned to CG-NAT from the start it probably could have all been done on the same pair of internet edge routers for much less than 300k additional expense.
- zamadatix 4y agoBy traffic it seems like "if only we didn't have these Rokus!" but it's a streaming device, it generates a lot of traffic compared to the other IPv4 only devices. Inevitably the long tail of devices is what's costing them extra (sounds like CG-NAT dual stack or 464xlat at the gateway) not just the Roku devices. As someone who operates their own ASN with IPv6 because I like v6 so much the problem here was simply poor planning. Handing out Apple TV's to replace Roku devices isn't going to make the need for v4 services go away at these homes.
- ArchOversight 4y agoIt may not reduce the need for IPv4, but it will reduce the need for costly CG-NAT devices and capacity for IPv4 when the streaming can happen over IPv6 which does not require the costly CG-NAT devices.
- Gigachad 4y agoWonder if ISPs will just let their CG-NAT get overloaded and if you want to send a v4 packet you just have to wait for your time slice on the hardware.
- toast0 4y agoI've seen that. Too many connections, so the idle timeout is now ten seconds. And, as per usual middlebox NAT, no packets sent when closing an idle connection, and no response to packets sent on 'unknown' connections.
- zamadatix 4y agoI may be mistaken on how many people this ISP is serving but for 300K they should have gotten pro serv, licensing, and hardware for ~100 million sessions, some of which now no longer need to go through the NAT64 hardware. Hopefully they didn't buy through the same people that sold them the NAT64 hardware+software without CG-NAT built in though...
- cocodill 4y agothat's not a bug, it's a feature
- znpy 4y agoThe amount of idiocy and ignorance around ipv6 is crazy. I’ve seen many supposedly senior engineers that claimed they didn’t want to implement ipv6 because anyone could connect to hosts from “outside”. Nat has become so engraved in people’s thinking that they can’t even understand the actual role of a firewall anymore. We’re going to see many stories like this, where networking incompetence will start costing pretty pennies to companies.
- FridgeSeal 4y ago> I’ve seen many supposedly senior engineers that claimed they didn’t want to implement ipv6 because anyone could connect to hosts from “outside” I had this argument with the head of dev ops at my previous work. They claimed IPv6/dual stack networks were a security risk that couldn’t possibly be tolerated. The fact that they were going to be private sunsets, and would have a firewall, NACL’s, etc was lost on them.
- jedberg 4y agoBasic corporate and home networking with NAT and sane default firewalls have been solved for so long now that even senior engineers have never had to deal with it. I haven't had to deal with firewalls in 15 years now. So I can't entirely fault them for not understanding, but you're right, it's kinda nuts.
- whatwhaaaaat 4y agoIt’s not just that ipv6 is publicly routable but rather the mistrust of ipv6 itself. There have been a multitude of remotely exploitable vulnerabilities with ipv6 many in embedded devices that are not getting patched. Turn on ipv6 and all of these vulnerabilities are instantly exploitable. It’s not a matter of filtering as some of these vulnerabilities are in parts of the icmpv6 required for configuration. For an alarming example check out some of the rtos vulns back in 2020.
- zamadatix 4y agoOn the flip side I'm so regularly impressed by what random HNers know about networking (particularly due to containers) I sometimes wonder if there is a point in me being a network guy! I think a large part of the general attitude is IPv6 is a topic everyone is exposed to but few have really been expected to know so there is a lot of strong feelings about how it's crazy compared to the thing they've already spent 20 years getting familiar with. I think if everyone was exposed to NAT in the same fashion there would be a 10x stronger reaction against NAT than IPv6 but at this point everyone is used to NAT and IPv4 and forgets how weird/annoying they really are too.
- Awelton 4y agoI just bought a brand new motherboard that still has VGA and PS/2 ports, so I would guess IPv4 isn't going away any time soon. Old standards seem to hang around forever for legacy support. Why an ISP would assume they could set up an IPv6 only network is beyond me.
- drdaeman 4y agoUnless it's a server motherboard, it most likely supports DisplayPort or HDMI, possibly even over Thunderbolt/USB-C? Legacy compatibility is not an issue (unless it makes things complicated, unreliable or limited in the name of backward compatibility). Lack of modern functionality is. Similarly, presence IPv4 support in devices is not a problem - lack of IPv6 support is. The comparable issue would be if you have bought a new motherboard but all it supports is VGA - now, that'd be quite inconvenient (even if it's a server board that runs headless 99.99% of the time).
- zamadatix 4y agoThis reminded me of an e300-8D I recently parted ways with. Bought new in 2017 but only had VGA out from the BMC... I gave away the VGA monitor I was using with it. Looking back I'm surprised I didn't just buy an active converter, it was such a pain to pull that monitor out :p.
- drdaeman 4y agoSame story, except that I have an ASRockRack EPYC board for a home router/server/NAS combo. Fortunately, most of server boards have a built-in LOM solution with some sort of IP-KVM. So the actual video output is only ever needed for the very first time - and that's if LOM defaults are not known. Or, well, if things break - e.g., I've had issues because management port sharing was enabled by default and I haven't realized I should turn it off until I've noticed that my server became unresponsive for IPMI-over-IP queries. I'm a bit frustrated that I had to purchase an adapter, but at least that was an one-in-a-lifetime purchase.
- outworlder 4y ago
- winstonprivacy 4y agoIPv6... Can it just go away already? Adoption has been declining for years. Many devices don't support it. Many services seemingly support it but break in strange ways. And not to mention it's a subtle and yet powerful privacy attack vector.
- Plasmoid 4y agoIPv6 adoption has been increasing.
- dmd 4y agoOn what metric does this look like it's declining? https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html
- eqvinox 4y agoThat graph also shows another interesting bit: it seems that IPv6 usage is higher on weekends — i.e. home internet connections. So it's even worse that Roku of all people doesn't support IPv6, considering IPv6 is ahead in homes.
- ArchOversight 4y ago> Adoption has been declining for years. Source? > Many devices don't support it. Source? > Many services seemingly support it but break in strange ways. Got any examples? > And not to mention it's a subtle and yet powerful privacy attack vector. This is the only statement you've made that has any merit, and even then very little. Privacy Addresses have been a thing for a while, and most OS's support it. No longer are there stable addresses being generated from the MAC address, and all outbound connections are now on randomized addresses from the /64 that is announced through SLAAC. Just like IPv4 having a single address for a household, IPv6 has a /64 per household (although many ISP's let you request more if you want). IPv6 is growing, more and more traffic is going over IPv6 and it is not likely to go away any time soon.
- zamadatix 4y ago
- totallyunknown 4y agoI have reviewed the logs for our video CDN and out of 150,000 sessions, only 48 were identified to be using IPv6. These sessions were identified by the user-agent Roku/DVP-12.0 (12.0.0.xxxx-xx), indicating that the recent update to the operating system now supports IPv6.
- slaymaker1907 4y agoI wonder if it's just a bunch of old and outdated Roku boxes causing problems? They probably work off of a ~3-5 year support cycle like phones but are updated even more infrequently by endusers (why should they if it's still working for them?).
- totallyunknown 4y agoAll other streams are made with 11.5 - which is the official latest version.
- at_a_remove 4y agoI have a Roku 3 (these came out in 2013) which I regularly update. The support cycle is fairly long. I think they did stop supporting some Roku 2s at one point due to a new feature the old hardware just couldn't support.
- throitallaway 4y agoI believe Rokus auto-update frequently. All of my devices are up to date on version 11.5.
- zamadatix 4y agoRelease notes don't say anything about that change but it wouldn't surprise me if it was left out.
- michh 4y agoWhat I don’t understand is why. Their OS is built on a linux kernel from at most a couple of years ago. I’m assuming the same goes for the libraries and the parts of the userland they didn’t make themselves. On any linux kernel not from the 90s it’s more effort not to support IPv6. Unless they rolled their own, which would be a tremendously stupid thing to do.
- tpmx 4y agoPerhaps they have a limited development team and chose to focus on matters that bring in the most dough and/or make their average customer the happiest.
- frankreyes 4y agoThere's no ipv4 nat for IPv6?
- zamadatix 4y agoThere is but it'd require a special device at each customer location. CG-NAT (a.k.a. double NAT) is probably what they did because it only requires a couple of centralized boxes then the rest is deployed like a normal dual stack network and your average home Netgear router works with it out of the box. NAT in the other direction (i.e. IPv6 local client, IPv4 remote host) is easier, and I'd be very surprised if they didn't already have that given the number of v4 only sites, but doesn't really help the v4 only devices.
- frankreyes 4y agoSorry flop the numbers. I meant public V6, private V4 nat.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- JohnFen 4y agoI think that's what NAT64 is for.
- hugoromano 4y agoThe recent Netflix password-sharing cracking may create some Roku victims. The other day, I reviewed the devices logging into my account, all inside my house. However, there was one caveat: two Apple TVs in IPv6 and one Roku in IPV4, with different ASNs, showing as two separate networks 900 km apart. I didn’t receive any Netflix notice so far.
- skee8383 4y agoNo one cares about ipv6. not even VPS providers, it's always turned off by default unless you want to go through the pain of enabling with commands. no thanks.
- GoofballJones 4y ago"First off I despise both Apple and that other evil empire (house of mouse) I want nothing to do with either of them." So they decide to go with a company/device that has the absolute worst record of spying on their users? Roku is terrible. But if they're okay with it looking over their shoulder at everything they watch, then go for it.
- cramjabsyn 4y agoNo, the absurdly poor migration path to IPv6 is costing the tech community as a whole.
- guilhas 4y agoMost consumers don't care, and home routers don't support it well Most ISPs don't support it well, and will still give you a dynamic IP Companies don't want to bet their reliability on something that fails as much, with an alternative that is working, and invest to maintain both and troubleshoot them I will worry with IPV6 when I can safely disable IPV4, until then I disable IPV6