7 ms·

> With IPv6 hell knows what their hex-colon monstrosities would be. You would know exactly, because every IPv6-enabled interface has a link-local predictable I

> With IPv6 hell knows what their hex-colon monstrosities would be. You would know exactly, because every IPv6-enabled interface has a link-local predictable IPv6 address derived from its MAC address.

dheera 4y ago
And so now I have to stick stickers on every light bulb with a huge address on it and then get up on a chair several times per bulb while I transfer chunks of its address from the sticker to my terminal? The reality is with IPv4 I can memorize all of the IPv4 addresses of every light bulb, every robot, every thermostat, every plant watering device in my residence, and I can hammer out CURL commands to control everything almost from muscle memory in the event of a DNS hijacking.
- xnyanta 4y ago
  Why do you need stickers? You can just log into your router/switch and inspect the arp/nd table. You could just just use DNS records the first time you set a widget up and never have to remember an address again. Your router likely already does this automatically for you in IPv4 land via the DHCP server's database. The reality is that remembering IP addresses to access things has always been a band-aid fix. When's the last time you typed the IP address of hacker news into your browser's url bar? Using link-local addresses is usually a last-resort kind of scenario where you're glad it exists to save you some headache.
  - dheera 4y ago
    > router likely already does this automatically Yes but my phone hijacked all the LAN DNS when I plugged it into a USB port for tethering when Comcrap went down for a few hours Also separately, when Comcrap is working, my phone on Wi-Fi refuses to ever use the router DNS, http://xyz.local http://xyz.local addresses are only available on desktops/laptops and not phones, therefore IPv4 addresses it is when trying to visit a LAN site on a phone.
Dalewyn 4y ago
"Yes you would know exactly, because every hex-colon monstrosity has a predictable hex-colon monstrosity derived from its hex-colon monstrosity." If the problem wasn't obvious, the problem is that IPv6 addresses (and also MAC addresses) are not human readable. IPv4 addresses, on the other hand, are. IPv6 adoption might be farther along if the addresses were human readable instead of eye-rolling machinations of a small subset of people who speak strictly in hexes.
- xnyanta 4y ago
  Adding A-F to the 0-9 existing digits in ip addresses makes them non-human readable? Give me a break. We've had something human-readable since the dawn of the internet: it's called DNS and works with both IP families.
  - Dalewyn 4y ago
    Tell me Google DNS's IPv6 addresses without looking them up. I won't wait. Sometimes we need to deal with raw IP addresses instead of abstraction layers, and IPv6 fails hilariously because it clearly goes beyond the realm of direct human consumption. You saying a non-human readable thing is human readable if it's passed through an abstraction layer to make something human readable only reinforces the argument IPv6 is not human readable.
    - noipv6 4y ago
      [dead]
    - bert64 4y ago
      The way you see legacy IP addresses is also an abstraction layer, their actual form is as a 32bit integer.
somerandomqaguy 4y ago
.... ? Windows and many Linux distros by default enable the privacy extensions on the link local address; it's randomized for a period of time. This is right off a Windows 10 VM: ipconfig: Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::9aaf:a280:d593:db1%2 Notice that there's no ff:fe in the middle of the address? RHEL 9: [user@localhost ~]# ip addr | grep fe80 inet6 fe80::3544:fe14:5cf:5ad9/64 scope link noprefixroute Fedora Core 35: [user@fedora ~]$ ip addr | grep fe80 inet6 fe80::7752:d2c6:82c3:482c/64 scope link noprefixroute Ubuntu 22.04: user@ubuntu:~# ip addr | grep fe80 inet6 fe80::5ffe:c565:9de2:58f8/64 scope link noprefixroute I don't have a Debian right on hand but IIRC they do the same thing. Alpine uses EUI64 I think though.
- xnyanta 4y ago
  Well, that is unfortunate because it invalidates a lot of the benefit of the link-local address while providing "pivacy" over the local link scope... I have not encountered any equipment in the wild that does this, thankfully. The only distros I use (NixOS and VyOS) do not have this behaviour by default so this was news to me.
- bert64 4y ago
  The link-local address is generated when you first enable the interface (ie when you load the drivers for your NIC), it won't change unless you manually force it to. Linux will use EUI-64 if left to its own devices, or privacy extensions if you're using something like networkmanager. This makes sense because a desktop oriented distro will typically use networkmanager while a server oriented distro will not, and having a predictable eui-64 address is usually beneficial for a server.

dheera 4y ago

And so now I have to stick stickers on every light bulb with a huge address on it and then get up on a chair several times per bulb while I transfer chunks of its address from the sticker to my terminal? The reality is with IPv4 I can memorize all of the IPv4 addresses of every light bulb, every robot, every thermostat, every plant watering device in my residence, and I can hammer out CURL commands to control everything almost from muscle memory in the event of a DNS hijacking.

xnyanta 4y ago
Why do you need stickers? You can just log into your router/switch and inspect the arp/nd table. You could just just use DNS records the first time you set a widget up and never have to remember an address again. Your router likely already does this automatically for you in IPv4 land via the DHCP server's database. The reality is that remembering IP addresses to access things has always been a band-aid fix. When's the last time you typed the IP address of hacker news into your browser's url bar? Using link-local addresses is usually a last-resort kind of scenario where you're glad it exists to save you some headache.
- dheera 4y ago
  > router likely already does this automatically Yes but my phone hijacked all the LAN DNS when I plugged it into a USB port for tethering when Comcrap went down for a few hours Also separately, when Comcrap is working, my phone on Wi-Fi refuses to ever use the router DNS, http://xyz.local http://xyz.local addresses are only available on desktops/laptops and not phones, therefore IPv4 addresses it is when trying to visit a LAN site on a phone.

Dalewyn 4y ago

"Yes you would know exactly, because every hex-colon monstrosity has a predictable hex-colon monstrosity derived from its hex-colon monstrosity." If the problem wasn't obvious, the problem is that IPv6 addresses (and also MAC addresses) are not human readable. IPv4 addresses, on the other hand, are. IPv6 adoption might be farther along if the addresses were human readable instead of eye-rolling machinations of a small subset of people who speak strictly in hexes.

xnyanta 4y ago
Adding A-F to the 0-9 existing digits in ip addresses makes them non-human readable? Give me a break. We've had something human-readable since the dawn of the internet: it's called DNS and works with both IP families.
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  Tell me Google DNS's IPv6 addresses without looking them up. I won't wait. Sometimes we need to deal with raw IP addresses instead of abstraction layers, and IPv6 fails hilariously because it clearly goes beyond the realm of direct human consumption. You saying a non-human readable thing is human readable if it's passed through an abstraction layer to make something human readable only reinforces the argument IPv6 is not human readable.
  - noipv6 4y ago
    [dead]
  - bert64 4y ago
    The way you see legacy IP addresses is also an abstraction layer, their actual form is as a 32bit integer.

somerandomqaguy 4y ago

.... ? Windows and many Linux distros by default enable the privacy extensions on the link local address; it's randomized for a period of time. This is right off a Windows 10 VM: ipconfig: Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::9aaf:a280:d593:db1%2 Notice that there's no ff:fe in the middle of the address? RHEL 9: [user@localhost ~]# ip addr | grep fe80 inet6 fe80::3544:fe14:5cf:5ad9/64 scope link noprefixroute Fedora Core 35: [user@fedora ~]$ ip addr | grep fe80 inet6 fe80::7752:d2c6:82c3:482c/64 scope link noprefixroute Ubuntu 22.04: user@ubuntu:~# ip addr | grep fe80 inet6 fe80::5ffe:c565:9de2:58f8/64 scope link noprefixroute I don't have a Debian right on hand but IIRC they do the same thing. Alpine uses EUI64 I think though.

xnyanta 4y ago
Well, that is unfortunate because it invalidates a lot of the benefit of the link-local address while providing "pivacy" over the local link scope... I have not encountered any equipment in the wild that does this, thankfully. The only distros I use (NixOS and VyOS) do not have this behaviour by default so this was news to me.
bert64 4y ago
The link-local address is generated when you first enable the interface (ie when you load the drivers for your NIC), it won't change unless you manually force it to. Linux will use EUI-64 if left to its own devices, or privacy extensions if you're using something like networkmanager. This makes sense because a desktop oriented distro will typically use networkmanager while a server oriented distro will not, and having a predictable eui-64 address is usually beneficial for a server.