5 ms·

What changes exactly makes it orders of magnitudes more difficult?

JohnFen 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y ago
  I have a really hard time imagine a system that does not have those problems and provides the larger address space IPv6 provides. What would be your solution thats orders of magnitude easier to implement?
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    One that is backwards compatible with IPv4 would have eliminated a very large part of the friction here. I really think that if that were a feature of IPv6, we'd be at nearly 100% adoption by now, and IPv4 would be largely a dim memory.
    - bauruine 4y ago
      IPv6 has backwards compatibility thats how the IPv6 only mobile networks work. If you think the other way around then my question is how?
      - JohnFen 4y ago
        I think we're talking about different things with "backwards compatibility". What I mean is the ability for IPv4-only software and hardware to be able to basically function on an IPv6 network. Maybe more slowly, certainly without any of the IPv6 features, but able to basically work.
        bauruine 4y ago
        Thats what I meant with the other way around. That would be awesome but how? Are there any protocolls that could do that? Any research? A paper? Because for my simple mind it seems impossible.
        JohnFen 4y ago
        I'm no network engineer, but I can think of a few naive approaches. For instance, IPv6 could include IPv4 addresses inside its address scope, and provide for handling both IPv4 and IPv6 packets. Distinguishing between the two wouldn't be hard. In reading the discussions leading up to IPv6, it was clear that the actual experts involved saw a few ways to maintain such compatibility. It was decided not to do that, though, because tradeoffs are (as always) involved. There are features they wanted to include that wouldn't have been possible while maintaining compatibility, and it was thought that a breaking change was worthwhile now as long as the IPv6 protocol was good enough that no breaking change would be required in the future.
- justsomehnguy 4y ago
  > that is, you have to learn an entirely new system whole hog rather than a piece at a time Every time IPv6 negativists come to the thread they make it look like you need to be a rocket scientist to configure two hosts for IPv6. > You can't incrementally shift toward IPv6 Yes, you can, you don't need to throw out your lovely IPv4 networks and addresses. Yes, it's dual-stack. > you have to run [..] tunnel, which adds at least another layer of complexity to everything No more complexity than running a PPPoE/PPTP tunnel to get IPv4 connectivity. > And that's not even beginning to talk about supporting services such as RA, etc. Oh God! You need to read another 20 pages on top of the previous 20 pages you read to understand IPv6! So, so hard! BTW you obviously forgot what there was a time when you didn't know nothing about IPv4, including what is the default router, what is ARP, what is CIDR, netmask, routing etc, etc. Yet somehow you know that now. Same applies to IPv6. You had 20 years to learn it, yet in 2023 you still complaining what to use a technology you need to learn.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    Your odd hostility is misplaced here. You seem to think I'm opposed to changing to IPv6, but I'm really not. I'm describing various reasons why there is such slow adoption of IPv6. Ridiculing and being mad at people for avoiding it isn't likely to make them feel any differently. Understanding the resistance might be helpful in terms of getting people over that hump.
    - justsomehnguy 3y ago
      > Your odd hostility is misplaced here. You seem to think I'm opposed to changing to IPv6, but I'm really not. You are not a devil's advocate nor a public defender, yet you defend those people, using the same nonsense reasons they use to defend their position. > I'm describing various reasons why there is such slow adoption of IPv6. For the most part those reasons boils down to 'I have my way and don't do a shit to learn something new'. > Ridiculing Yes, they deserve it. > and being mad at people A grown-ass person who can't find the reason and time to learn something new? I'm not mad at them, but I don't like when people defend them. > Understanding the resistance might be helpful in terms of getting people over that hump. See 'I have my way' part above.

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 4y 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 4y 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 4y ago
I have a really hard time imagine a system that does not have those problems and provides the larger address space IPv6 provides. What would be your solution thats orders of magnitude easier to implement?
- JohnFen 4y ago
  One that is backwards compatible with IPv4 would have eliminated a very large part of the friction here. I really think that if that were a feature of IPv6, we'd be at nearly 100% adoption by now, and IPv4 would be largely a dim memory.
  - bauruine 4y ago
    IPv6 has backwards compatibility thats how the IPv6 only mobile networks work. If you think the other way around then my question is how?
    - JohnFen 4y ago
      I think we're talking about different things with "backwards compatibility". What I mean is the ability for IPv4-only software and hardware to be able to basically function on an IPv6 network. Maybe more slowly, certainly without any of the IPv6 features, but able to basically work.
      - bauruine 4y ago
        Thats what I meant with the other way around. That would be awesome but how? Are there any protocolls that could do that? Any research? A paper? Because for my simple mind it seems impossible.
        JohnFen 4y ago
        I'm no network engineer, but I can think of a few naive approaches. For instance, IPv6 could include IPv4 addresses inside its address scope, and provide for handling both IPv4 and IPv6 packets. Distinguishing between the two wouldn't be hard. In reading the discussions leading up to IPv6, it was clear that the actual experts involved saw a few ways to maintain such compatibility. It was decided not to do that, though, because tradeoffs are (as always) involved. There are features they wanted to include that wouldn't have been possible while maintaining compatibility, and it was thought that a breaking change was worthwhile now as long as the IPv6 protocol was good enough that no breaking change would be required in the future.
justsomehnguy 4y ago
> that is, you have to learn an entirely new system whole hog rather than a piece at a time Every time IPv6 negativists come to the thread they make it look like you need to be a rocket scientist to configure two hosts for IPv6. > You can't incrementally shift toward IPv6 Yes, you can, you don't need to throw out your lovely IPv4 networks and addresses. Yes, it's dual-stack. > you have to run [..] tunnel, which adds at least another layer of complexity to everything No more complexity than running a PPPoE/PPTP tunnel to get IPv4 connectivity. > And that's not even beginning to talk about supporting services such as RA, etc. Oh God! You need to read another 20 pages on top of the previous 20 pages you read to understand IPv6! So, so hard! BTW you obviously forgot what there was a time when you didn't know nothing about IPv4, including what is the default router, what is ARP, what is CIDR, netmask, routing etc, etc. Yet somehow you know that now. Same applies to IPv6. You had 20 years to learn it, yet in 2023 you still complaining what to use a technology you need to learn.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  Your odd hostility is misplaced here. You seem to think I'm opposed to changing to IPv6, but I'm really not. I'm describing various reasons why there is such slow adoption of IPv6. Ridiculing and being mad at people for avoiding it isn't likely to make them feel any differently. Understanding the resistance might be helpful in terms of getting people over that hump.
  - justsomehnguy 3y ago
    > Your odd hostility is misplaced here. You seem to think I'm opposed to changing to IPv6, but I'm really not. You are not a devil's advocate nor a public defender, yet you defend those people, using the same nonsense reasons they use to defend their position. > I'm describing various reasons why there is such slow adoption of IPv6. For the most part those reasons boils down to 'I have my way and don't do a shit to learn something new'. > Ridiculing Yes, they deserve it. > and being mad at people A grown-ass person who can't find the reason and time to learn something new? I'm not mad at them, but I don't like when people defend them. > Understanding the resistance might be helpful in terms of getting people over that hump. See 'I have my way' part above.