5 ms·

So I have a tiny personal website hosted on ec2. Right now the DNS points to the server's public IPv4 address. But I don't really want to pay $40+/year for an I

So I have a tiny personal website hosted on ec2. Right now the DNS points to the server's public IPv4 address. But I don't really want to pay $40+/year for an IPv4 for my personal project. Does anyone have experience switching a small personal site to IPv6 only in 2023? I'm guessing the vast majority of my (North American/European-based) friends and visitors can probably connect just fine to an IPv6 address. I wish I knew what percentage it is. I guess I could add an AAAA record and check what percentage of traffic actually uses it.

capableweb 3y ago
According to Google (https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html), 60% of word-wide users wouldn't be able to visit your website. In the US, it would be about ~50% of users, while in Europe it's ranging from 30% (France) to 98% (Spain) who wouldn't be able to visit the website. But yeah, I'd do what you say in the bottom of your comment. Add AAAA records and then see how many people uses ipv6 compared to ipv4 and then decide.
- decasia 3y ago
  Sigh, so basically it's impossible to switch without shredding an already tiny audience. I'm sure it won't be a nice UX either to have a "can't connect to this IP" error in someone's browser. IPv6 has been around for so long now, I'm disappointed it doesn't have a little bit higher adoption.
  - smileybarry 3y ago
    And if all else fails, you can put something like Cloudflare in front of it to handle IPv4 traffic.
    - doublerabbit 3y ago
      Which than you're back to paying $40+/year to ensure you don't get wiped from their "free" tier when they feel like it. Nothing is free forever.
      - asynchronous 3y ago
        True, it is a temporary solution though to how long Cloudflare offers it.
      - godzillabrennus 3y ago
        They have had a free tier since they launched over a decade ago. I think they’ve found a way to monetize that traffic or at least the data they collect on the sites they proxy because it’s survived so long.
        sznio 3y ago
        I think it's the same model as free antivirus. Free customers provide a lot of data to analyze and detect threats, which translates into increased value of the product to the paying customers. Also gives you a lot of traffic which you can use to test new deployments without disrupting paying customers.
      - smileybarry 3y ago
        I've been on their free tier since launch. Granted, it's nothing high-traffic, but a personal website shouldn't reach any "please upgrade" thresholds.
  - abdullahkhalids 3y ago
    Might be a good idea to make a hidden request from your homepage to an ipv6 only resource. Then log how many of your visitors actually fail.
  - GoblinSlayer 3y ago
    It's a chicken and egg problem: as long as sites are available through ip4, ISPs have no incentive to provide ip6, and since ISPs often don't provide ip6, sites can't go ip6-only. One possible solution would be to provide both and throttle ip4 traffic, then better speed can provide incentive to upgrade to ip6.
- KAMSPioneer 3y ago
  I understand that Movistar, the largest Spanish ISP, is currently deploying IPv6 in beta at the moment. I expect that will trickle down to the various resellers of Movistar's network shortly after. Hopefully that will get that 98% down in the near future. :(
- mr_toad 3y ago
  So if a domain only has a AAAA record, and for whatever reason a user can’t use IPv6, what sort of error message would the user see?
  - strbean 3y ago
    Found https://test-ipv6.com https://test-ipv6.com and: https://ipv6.ams2.test-ipv6.com/ip/?callback=?&testdomain=test-ipv6.com&testname=test_aaaa https://ipv6.ams2.test-ipv6.com/ip/?callback=?&testdomain=te... I get the following from Chrome: > This site can’t be reached > Check if there is a typo in ipv6.ams2.test-ipv6.com. >DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN
    - miyuru 3y ago
      >>DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN This is because your OS is not querying AAAA records. I am gonna guess that your using macos. The most common error would be a "connection time out".
      - strbean 3y ago
        I'm not sure, but I believe I was on Windows 10 at the time. Shortly after this, I checked the appropriate boxes on my router (UDM-PRO) and my home network now supports IPv6. Passed all the tests on that website at least.
  - pravus 3y ago
    The client shouldn't even attempt to get an AAAA record unless they have an IPv6 stack available. In that case, their client should try to look up an A record and get an NXDOMAIN error which the browser usually shows as "IP address could not be found". If the client does attempt IPv6, you'll get a stack error when trying to connect to the remote host because the kernel will reject the address family and you'll get something like "network is unreachable". Some clients will also degrade from AAAA to A on error so you'll get the NXDOMAIN error as above.
    - MayeulC 3y ago
- LeafItAlone 3y ago
  I think there’s a difference between “don’t” and “can’t”. It’s not clear to me on that page how it describes “can’t”, other than ambiguous (to me) graph labels. Is there more info elsewhere that describes the “can’t”?
  - GoblinSlayer 3y ago
    Chrome connects to google through ip6, if it succeeds, then ip6 is available, thus they gather statistics.
avereveard 3y ago
How about removing the public IP and receiving connection from cloudfront? Or have it hosted in apprunner. Then you cname your domain to the services' domain, and skip the cost.
- decasia 3y ago
  Yep I think that's plan B, thanks.
pfych 3y ago
Throwing the VPC behind cloudfront is probably the best course of action, if your site is static I'd recommend looking into S3 + Cloudfront for hosting it. It's basically free, and great if your site is mostly static. I run a few scheduled jobs on Lambda to pull some data for my site and it comes out at basically $0 every month.
toomim 3y ago
Switch to linode.
- decasia 3y ago
  So I used to use DigitalOcean for around the same intro price point, but after a while I realized that I could pay $22/year for a t4g.nano ec2 instance instead of $72 for the cheap DigitalOcean VPS. I guess in the end, the $22/year was too good to be true and the DO/Linode pricing effectively bundles in the price of the IPv4 address.
- webworker 3y ago
  Linode was too slow and had outages in my experience. Used them for years. Replaced them with lightsail and don’t have any of those problems, plus I can pick FreeBSD.
wuming2 3y ago
For a small personal website I suggest to look at alwaysdata.com. In France so ipv6 support is a given.
ThatPlayer 3y ago
Cloudflare's gateway supports IPv6 and will serve over IPv4 if you want to use that.
Saris 3y ago
Why not switch to a different provider? AWS is really pricey for what you get
red_trumpet 3y ago
That's a high price tag! On my Hetzner instance I pay 0.5€ per month and IPv4 adress, so 6€ per year.
sgjohnson 3y ago
> Does anyone have experience switching a small personal site to IPv6 only in 2023? Trivial. Just put Cloudflare in front of it.
drbscl 3y ago
> tiny personal website I'd recommend just migrating to cloudflare pages or github pages; they're both free
webworker 3y ago
EC2 stack is overpriced for small and hobby websites. Lightsail is far more appropriately priced.

capableweb 3y ago

According to Google (https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html), 60% of word-wide users wouldn't be able to visit your website. In the US, it would be about ~50% of users, while in Europe it's ranging from 30% (France) to 98% (Spain) who wouldn't be able to visit the website. But yeah, I'd do what you say in the bottom of your comment. Add AAAA records and then see how many people uses ipv6 compared to ipv4 and then decide.

decasia 3y ago
Sigh, so basically it's impossible to switch without shredding an already tiny audience. I'm sure it won't be a nice UX either to have a "can't connect to this IP" error in someone's browser. IPv6 has been around for so long now, I'm disappointed it doesn't have a little bit higher adoption.
- smileybarry 3y ago
  And if all else fails, you can put something like Cloudflare in front of it to handle IPv4 traffic.
  - doublerabbit 3y ago
    Which than you're back to paying $40+/year to ensure you don't get wiped from their "free" tier when they feel like it. Nothing is free forever.
    - asynchronous 3y ago
      True, it is a temporary solution though to how long Cloudflare offers it.
    - godzillabrennus 3y ago
      They have had a free tier since they launched over a decade ago. I think they’ve found a way to monetize that traffic or at least the data they collect on the sites they proxy because it’s survived so long.
      - sznio 3y ago
        I think it's the same model as free antivirus. Free customers provide a lot of data to analyze and detect threats, which translates into increased value of the product to the paying customers. Also gives you a lot of traffic which you can use to test new deployments without disrupting paying customers.
    - smileybarry 3y ago
      I've been on their free tier since launch. Granted, it's nothing high-traffic, but a personal website shouldn't reach any "please upgrade" thresholds.
- abdullahkhalids 3y ago
  Might be a good idea to make a hidden request from your homepage to an ipv6 only resource. Then log how many of your visitors actually fail.
- GoblinSlayer 3y ago
  It's a chicken and egg problem: as long as sites are available through ip4, ISPs have no incentive to provide ip6, and since ISPs often don't provide ip6, sites can't go ip6-only. One possible solution would be to provide both and throttle ip4 traffic, then better speed can provide incentive to upgrade to ip6.
KAMSPioneer 3y ago
I understand that Movistar, the largest Spanish ISP, is currently deploying IPv6 in beta at the moment. I expect that will trickle down to the various resellers of Movistar's network shortly after. Hopefully that will get that 98% down in the near future. :(
mr_toad 3y ago
So if a domain only has a AAAA record, and for whatever reason a user can’t use IPv6, what sort of error message would the user see?
- strbean 3y ago
  Found https://test-ipv6.com https://test-ipv6.com and: https://ipv6.ams2.test-ipv6.com/ip/?callback=?&testdomain=test-ipv6.com&testname=test_aaaa https://ipv6.ams2.test-ipv6.com/ip/?callback=?&testdomain=te... I get the following from Chrome: > This site can’t be reached > Check if there is a typo in ipv6.ams2.test-ipv6.com. >DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN
  - miyuru 3y ago
    >>DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN This is because your OS is not querying AAAA records. I am gonna guess that your using macos. The most common error would be a "connection time out".
    - strbean 3y ago
      I'm not sure, but I believe I was on Windows 10 at the time. Shortly after this, I checked the appropriate boxes on my router (UDM-PRO) and my home network now supports IPv6. Passed all the tests on that website at least.
- pravus 3y ago
  The client shouldn't even attempt to get an AAAA record unless they have an IPv6 stack available. In that case, their client should try to look up an A record and get an NXDOMAIN error which the browser usually shows as "IP address could not be found". If the client does attempt IPv6, you'll get a stack error when trying to connect to the remote host because the kernel will reject the address family and you'll get something like "network is unreachable". Some clients will also degrade from AAAA to A on error so you'll get the NXDOMAIN error as above.
  - MayeulC 3y ago
LeafItAlone 3y ago
I think there’s a difference between “don’t” and “can’t”. It’s not clear to me on that page how it describes “can’t”, other than ambiguous (to me) graph labels. Is there more info elsewhere that describes the “can’t”?
- GoblinSlayer 3y ago
  Chrome connects to google through ip6, if it succeeds, then ip6 is available, thus they gather statistics.

avereveard 3y ago

How about removing the public IP and receiving connection from cloudfront? Or have it hosted in apprunner. Then you cname your domain to the services' domain, and skip the cost.

decasia 3y ago
Yep I think that's plan B, thanks.

pfych 3y ago

Throwing the VPC behind cloudfront is probably the best course of action, if your site is static I'd recommend looking into S3 + Cloudfront for hosting it. It's basically free, and great if your site is mostly static. I run a few scheduled jobs on Lambda to pull some data for my site and it comes out at basically $0 every month.

toomim 3y ago

Switch to linode.

decasia 3y ago
So I used to use DigitalOcean for around the same intro price point, but after a while I realized that I could pay $22/year for a t4g.nano ec2 instance instead of $72 for the cheap DigitalOcean VPS. I guess in the end, the $22/year was too good to be true and the DO/Linode pricing effectively bundles in the price of the IPv4 address.
webworker 3y ago
Linode was too slow and had outages in my experience. Used them for years. Replaced them with lightsail and don’t have any of those problems, plus I can pick FreeBSD.

wuming2 3y ago

For a small personal website I suggest to look at alwaysdata.com. In France so ipv6 support is a given.

ThatPlayer 3y ago

Cloudflare's gateway supports IPv6 and will serve over IPv4 if you want to use that.

Saris 3y ago

Why not switch to a different provider? AWS is really pricey for what you get

red_trumpet 3y ago

That's a high price tag! On my Hetzner instance I pay 0.5€ per month and IPv4 adress, so 6€ per year.

sgjohnson 3y ago

> Does anyone have experience switching a small personal site to IPv6 only in 2023? Trivial. Just put Cloudflare in front of it.

drbscl 3y ago

> tiny personal website I'd recommend just migrating to cloudflare pages or github pages; they're both free

webworker 3y ago

EC2 stack is overpriced for small and hobby websites. Lightsail is far more appropriately priced.