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Yeah, it's a real shit show when you get down to actually trying to utilize IPv6 in any scenario that needs legacy IPv4 access in a straight-forward way. I'm s

by brk 3y ago

Yeah, it's a real shit show when you get down to actually trying to utilize IPv6 in any scenario that needs legacy IPv4 access in a straight-forward way. I'm somewhat happy in that I've moved away from being way down at the low-level ISP/network side of things, so I may be missing something, but I don't see how we are ever going to elegantly transition away from IPv4 addresses. Everything just seems hacky and fragile in terms of trying to run a "pure" IPv6 environment, and be connected to the rest of the Internet.

GolDDranks 3y ago
I think that ISP-wide single-stack IPv6 deployments are the key. They throw the legacy IPv4 internet behind a huge NAT, while letting IPv6 internet to function natively. There is an IPv6 address range that represents the totality of the legacy IPv4 addresses, and the IPv4 addresses are translated into that, so from the IPv6 side of the NAT, every IPv6 service looks like it has an IPv6 address. From the IPv4 side, it looks like the your standard carrier-grade NAT, with huge numbers of users sharing IPv4 addresses. That should simplify the network over dual-stack deploys, plus it makes providing services in "native" IPv6 the more attractive choice over NATted-to-death IPv4. There are already some ISPs doing this. In Japan, where I live, one of the big three, NTT Docomo transitioned into a deployment like this just last year.
- toast0 3y ago
  Exactly this. As more ISPs go through this process, service providers are incentivised to provide v6 services or get poor service. As things continue in that pattern, v6 becomes dominant and v4 becomes the afterthought to be neglected on the sideline (like v6 is currently for many ISPs with lots of v4 resources)
- ianburrell 3y ago
  The protocol is called MAP and it is nearly stateless, cause the IPv4 address is in the IPv6 packet, and more efficient than carrier-grade NAT. The downside is that requires special gateway on customer side. The advantage is that ISP can have IPv6 internal network with IPv4 on the edges.
  - GolDDranks 3y ago
    Oh, I was talking about NAT64/DNS64 which is what NTT Docomo is doing. Now I got to read about MAP... But how can the mapping be almost stateless? When packets are sent from IPv6 to IPv4, if there is significant exhaustion, multiple IPv6 address are going to map into a single IPv4 address, unless the ISP has enough for everybody, in which case I don't see the motivation to hasten moving to IPv6? Edit: Ah, uses port numbers as extra bytes to encode the original senders address information. Smart!

by brk 3y ago

GolDDranks 3y ago

I think that ISP-wide single-stack IPv6 deployments are the key. They throw the legacy IPv4 internet behind a huge NAT, while letting IPv6 internet to function natively. There is an IPv6 address range that represents the totality of the legacy IPv4 addresses, and the IPv4 addresses are translated into that, so from the IPv6 side of the NAT, every IPv6 service looks like it has an IPv6 address. From the IPv4 side, it looks like the your standard carrier-grade NAT, with huge numbers of users sharing IPv4 addresses. That should simplify the network over dual-stack deploys, plus it makes providing services in "native" IPv6 the more attractive choice over NATted-to-death IPv4. There are already some ISPs doing this. In Japan, where I live, one of the big three, NTT Docomo transitioned into a deployment like this just last year.

toast0 3y ago
Exactly this. As more ISPs go through this process, service providers are incentivised to provide v6 services or get poor service. As things continue in that pattern, v6 becomes dominant and v4 becomes the afterthought to be neglected on the sideline (like v6 is currently for many ISPs with lots of v4 resources)
ianburrell 3y ago
The protocol is called MAP and it is nearly stateless, cause the IPv4 address is in the IPv6 packet, and more efficient than carrier-grade NAT. The downside is that requires special gateway on customer side. The advantage is that ISP can have IPv6 internal network with IPv4 on the edges.
- GolDDranks 3y ago
  Oh, I was talking about NAT64/DNS64 which is what NTT Docomo is doing. Now I got to read about MAP... But how can the mapping be almost stateless? When packets are sent from IPv6 to IPv4, if there is significant exhaustion, multiple IPv6 address are going to map into a single IPv4 address, unless the ISP has enough for everybody, in which case I don't see the motivation to hasten moving to IPv6? Edit: Ah, uses port numbers as extra bytes to encode the original senders address information. Smart!