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IPv6 is such a mess. If I could go back in time to 1995 I would kick some people at IETF meetings. All they had to do was increase the number of octets from 32

IPv6 is such a mess. If I could go back in time to 1995 I would kick some people at IETF meetings. All they had to do was increase the number of octets from 32 to 64. Instead they redesigned almost everything about how IP works and IMHO made things much more complicated than they needed to be.

viraptor 4y ago
We'd likely be in the same situation right now, just with fewer extra features which are actually good. The C API would have to change in almost the same way. The network hardware would have to have separate paths anyway. Rules would still have to cover both cases separately. Sure, we'd save a little bit of time from the extra features, but I don't see how anyone's deployment approach would be different.
eqvinox 4y ago
So… you have learned from this and are now actively monitoring and participating at the IETF, so your expertise can be taken into account to prevent similar messes in the future? (An octet is a byte btw, so it'd be an increase from 4 to 8.)
icedchai 4y ago
So any increase in address size meant updates on all hosts and routers. If you're going to do a huge, global infrastructure update, it better be worth it. The changes made with IPv6 actually simplified deployment compared to IPv4.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > If you're going to do a huge, global infrastructure update, it better be worth it. But if you've changed things so radically that it discourages moving to the replacement protocol, isn't that a problem? > The changes made with IPv6 actually simplified deployment compared to IPv4. Perhaps, but they also make transitioning from IPv4 to IPv6 orders of magnitude more difficult.
  - bauruine 3y ago
    What changes exactly makes it orders of magnitudes more difficult?
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      You can't incrementally shift toward IPv6 -- that is, you have to learn an entirely new system whole hog rather than a piece at a time, you have to touch every machine on your network, and if you want to approximate an incremental change to IPv6, you have to run dual-stack or tunnel, which adds at least another layer of complexity to everything. And that's not even beginning to talk about supporting services such as RA, etc.
      - icedchai 3y ago
        There is some truth to what you say, but I believe incremental deployment is possible. You could roll it out to end users in phases, a VLAN at a time. Same with the server side: migrate only a specific app to V6, perhaps just starting with a front end load balancer, adding external support to make it dual stack. IPv6 has been available much longer than IPv4 was when the Internet went mainstream in the mid 90's. Yes, it's work to deploy. You might need to even upgrade to a router built in the past 10 years. Organizations have had decades to learn about it and deploy it. People just don't like change... especially corporate IT departments.
        JohnFen 3y ago
        > People just don't like change... especially corporate IT departments. Well, all change causes pain. People don't like change when there isn't an obvious benefit to offset the pain it brings. When they do see the benefit, though, they tend to embrace change. I think the mistake that was made with IPv6 was a social one: it's a huge amount of change (pain) for a benefit that is invisible or irrelevant to a whole lot of people. IT departments, like most departments, dislike expense more than they dislike change.
      - bauruine 3y ago
AnIdiotOnTheNet 3y ago
Hindsight is 20/20. It is easy to see now all the reasons IPv6 is not widely adopted, but back then they probably figured that adding more features would make it more attractive or something. If I had a time machine and had to take a relatively naive crack at the problem, I'd make IPv6 really really simple: it'd just be IP-in-IP. On the internet you're routed with an outer address, and the local router forwards it using the inner address. Speaking v6 over v4 is free because v4 routers ignore the inner packet. Speaking v4 over v6 just doesn't include the inner packet. Other local hosts are just contacted through v4.
- Dagger2 3y ago
  Isn't this just 6to4? We already have that, and it doesn't seem to have worked out how you're imagining.
teddyh 3y ago
> IPv6 is such a mess. Maybe. > If I could go back in time to 1995 I would kick some people at IETF meetings. Sure. But how is any of that relevant enough to bring up today? Now, IPv6 is what we have, and the standards are what they are, flaws and all. The only reason I can think of is psychological: People don’t want to learn new things, so they find reasons to dislike the new thing to be able to pretend they don’t need to learn it. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29594017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29594017 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11137430 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11137430
- magicalhippo 3y ago
  But that's the thing. I don't want to be a network engineer. I just want my devices connected. Yet IPv6 is very complex with tons of moving parts compared to IPv4, and a lot of it works very differently so I can't rely on my existing IPv4 knowledge. In fact it frequently a hinderance.
  - bauruine 3y ago
    >I just want my devices connected. Which IPv6 does pretty well even if you aren't a network engineer. More than 40% of all requests to google are from IPv6 and the vast majority of those connections are from people that never heard of IPv6.
    - magicalhippo 3y ago
      Well I had to do some deep dives to get IPv6 working, and it really didn't work until I got rid of pfSense and switched to OpenWRT. I'm not just talking about connected to Google, I mean to each other. So ULA, DNS, DHCPv6 vs SLAAC etc is in play.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      > Which IPv6 does pretty well even if you aren't a network engineer. Outside of smartphones (in the US, apparently), moving from IPv4 to IPv6 is genuinely painful and often requires deeper knowledge of networking to accomplish. Yes, if you're using a smartphone or your needs are otherwise trivial (for instance, you don't have a real network at home but just have one or two devices connected to your modem), then none of this is a big deal. But outside of that, things can be very different.

viraptor 4y ago

We'd likely be in the same situation right now, just with fewer extra features which are actually good. The C API would have to change in almost the same way. The network hardware would have to have separate paths anyway. Rules would still have to cover both cases separately. Sure, we'd save a little bit of time from the extra features, but I don't see how anyone's deployment approach would be different.

eqvinox 4y ago

So… you have learned from this and are now actively monitoring and participating at the IETF, so your expertise can be taken into account to prevent similar messes in the future? (An octet is a byte btw, so it'd be an increase from 4 to 8.)

icedchai 4y ago

So any increase in address size meant updates on all hosts and routers. If you're going to do a huge, global infrastructure update, it better be worth it. The changes made with IPv6 actually simplified deployment compared to IPv4.

JohnFen 3y ago
> If you're going to do a huge, global infrastructure update, it better be worth it. But if you've changed things so radically that it discourages moving to the replacement protocol, isn't that a problem? > The changes made with IPv6 actually simplified deployment compared to IPv4. Perhaps, but they also make transitioning from IPv4 to IPv6 orders of magnitude more difficult.
- bauruine 3y ago
  What changes exactly makes it orders of magnitudes more difficult?
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    You can't incrementally shift toward IPv6 -- that is, you have to learn an entirely new system whole hog rather than a piece at a time, you have to touch every machine on your network, and if you want to approximate an incremental change to IPv6, you have to run dual-stack or tunnel, which adds at least another layer of complexity to everything. And that's not even beginning to talk about supporting services such as RA, etc.
    - icedchai 3y ago
      There is some truth to what you say, but I believe incremental deployment is possible. You could roll it out to end users in phases, a VLAN at a time. Same with the server side: migrate only a specific app to V6, perhaps just starting with a front end load balancer, adding external support to make it dual stack. IPv6 has been available much longer than IPv4 was when the Internet went mainstream in the mid 90's. Yes, it's work to deploy. You might need to even upgrade to a router built in the past 10 years. Organizations have had decades to learn about it and deploy it. People just don't like change... especially corporate IT departments.
      - JohnFen 3y ago
        > People just don't like change... especially corporate IT departments. Well, all change causes pain. People don't like change when there isn't an obvious benefit to offset the pain it brings. When they do see the benefit, though, they tend to embrace change. I think the mistake that was made with IPv6 was a social one: it's a huge amount of change (pain) for a benefit that is invisible or irrelevant to a whole lot of people. IT departments, like most departments, dislike expense more than they dislike change.
    - bauruine 3y ago

AnIdiotOnTheNet 3y ago

Hindsight is 20/20. It is easy to see now all the reasons IPv6 is not widely adopted, but back then they probably figured that adding more features would make it more attractive or something. If I had a time machine and had to take a relatively naive crack at the problem, I'd make IPv6 really really simple: it'd just be IP-in-IP. On the internet you're routed with an outer address, and the local router forwards it using the inner address. Speaking v6 over v4 is free because v4 routers ignore the inner packet. Speaking v4 over v6 just doesn't include the inner packet. Other local hosts are just contacted through v4.

Dagger2 3y ago
Isn't this just 6to4? We already have that, and it doesn't seem to have worked out how you're imagining.

teddyh 3y ago

> IPv6 is such a mess. Maybe. > If I could go back in time to 1995 I would kick some people at IETF meetings. Sure. But how is any of that relevant enough to bring up today? Now, IPv6 is what we have, and the standards are what they are, flaws and all. The only reason I can think of is psychological: People don’t want to learn new things, so they find reasons to dislike the new thing to be able to pretend they don’t need to learn it. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29594017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29594017 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11137430 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11137430

magicalhippo 3y ago
But that's the thing. I don't want to be a network engineer. I just want my devices connected. Yet IPv6 is very complex with tons of moving parts compared to IPv4, and a lot of it works very differently so I can't rely on my existing IPv4 knowledge. In fact it frequently a hinderance.
- bauruine 3y ago
  >I just want my devices connected. Which IPv6 does pretty well even if you aren't a network engineer. More than 40% of all requests to google are from IPv6 and the vast majority of those connections are from people that never heard of IPv6.
  - magicalhippo 3y ago
    Well I had to do some deep dives to get IPv6 working, and it really didn't work until I got rid of pfSense and switched to OpenWRT. I'm not just talking about connected to Google, I mean to each other. So ULA, DNS, DHCPv6 vs SLAAC etc is in play.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > Which IPv6 does pretty well even if you aren't a network engineer. Outside of smartphones (in the US, apparently), moving from IPv4 to IPv6 is genuinely painful and often requires deeper knowledge of networking to accomplish. Yes, if you're using a smartphone or your needs are otherwise trivial (for instance, you don't have a real network at home but just have one or two devices connected to your modem), then none of this is a big deal. But outside of that, things can be very different.