5 ms·

I don't think it's fair to blame the technology. The problem is that the computing industry has changed. The things that IPv6 would enable (direct end-to-end c

I don't think it's fair to blame the technology. The problem is that the computing industry has changed. The things that IPv6 would enable (direct end-to-end connectivity) is now seen as a negative by the industry that has since pivoted on rent-seeking, walled gardens and restricting user's potential. The industry is now even legally making money on many things that would've been considered outright malware just a decade ago. People being able to host things themselves, or local-first apps that communicate directly without the need for any middlemen is a negative for the industry. The industry wants there to be a technical need for a middleman, so they can provide that and seek rent over it. There is no user-level demand for IPv6 because the industry is no longer making any apps/devices/services that would take advantage of end-to-end connectivity (even if it was available now - let's say in a hypothetical world where IPv6 adoption is 100%) since it's more profitable not to, so as a result there is no pressure on ISPs to offer it.

AndreasHae 3y ago
> The industry is now even legally making money on many things that would've been considered outright malware just a decade ago. Sounds a bit over the top. Can you name some examples?
- unethical_ban 3y ago
  Instagram, for one.
- Nextgrid 3y ago
  10 years ago if you made software that uses all kinds of lies and dark patterns to get access to a user's contacts list, uploads it to your server and then you did data mining on it, people would be concerned and consider the software malicious. Likewise with analytics - tracking every single action you do in an app (along with generic metadata such as IP addresses - which often leaks your general location and your relationship with anyone on the same network since you'd be sharing the IP address with them) would have been considered spyware. When there were talks of tracking people for ad targeting in the early days of the internet people (rightfully) freaked out, even though that tracking was really primitive by today's standards. All of those things are now considered legitimate and are routinely done.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    Indeed. When I look at how far things have fallen in this regard, it gets very hard to feel positive or optimistic about the internet.
    - toyg 3y ago
      And the human race. The biggest revolution in communication since Gutenberg, and in less than half a century it's been used almost exclusively for evil purposes.
  - ndriscoll 3y ago
    We also used to have a name for malware that injected ads into your computer: adware. Now ads are just part of Windows.
  - WorldMaker 3y ago
    I remember how often DoubleClick were the villains of tracking and privacy over-reach on early Slashdot, and then Google bought DoubleClick and became worse than DoubleClick ever were as top Slashdot villains and yet Google is still often called the heroes in the adtech space. (Though that sea is somewhat changing again as even more mainstream media catches up to tracking prevention.) It remains such a profound reversal to me.
JohnFen 3y ago
I think that it's fair to blame the specification. I don't think the problem is that the industry has changed, I think it's that there's a huge amount of friction and headache for shifting to it. I think that's because it was too large of a change all at once, combined with the initial specification having some real problems (that did eventually get mitigated in later specs). I suspect that if IPv6 limited itself to just increasing the size of IP addresses, IPv4 would largely be a distant memory by now.
- WorldMaker 3y ago
  "IPv4 with bigger addresses" would never have been backwards compatible and would always have been a compatibility break and would always have a slow rollout. The proposals that seemed backwards compatible were just aggressive CGNAT consolidating even more power in the hands of IPv4 address owners. That doesn't seem like a sustainable fix in the long run.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > "IPv4 with bigger addresses" would never have been backwards compatible and would always have been a compatibility break True, but it would limit that break to a single thing. That's much easier to deal with than the whole basket of things that IPv6 brings with it.
    - WorldMaker 3y ago
      Compatibility breaks are always headaches. There's not "just broke a 'single' thing" when it comes to compatibility breaks. That is why strict semver suggests a major bump no matter how "small" a compatibility break appears to the developer. There is no such thing as a "simple" compatibility break to downstream users. In general, despite the complex vocabulary about most of it, in many ways IPv6 is simpler than IPv4. Its header has fewer fields. Its QoL/QoS fields aren't accidental hacks on top of old debugging fields but intentionally designed fields for that very purpose. SLAAC is a simpler protocol than DHCPv4, though the algorithm sounds more complex at first. (DHCPv6 is basically as complex, but fewer devices and fewer subnets should need DHCPv6 in the first place.) Much of the "basket of things" that IPv6 brings with it are designed to remove complexity that has concreted around IPv4. They ripped the bandaid completely off with the backwards compatibility break that they made with IPv6, and apparently a lot of people loved the cute stickers they had applied on top of the bandaid. But at this point it is probably better for the skin below to heal without the bandaid than to continue to sticker and bandaid over that and let all that unnecessary glue fester in place. (To push such a metaphor almost to its breaking place.)
nottorp 3y ago
> The problem is that the computing industry has changed. Nah, the problem is ipv6 has been designed by a commitee for a lot of enterprise-ish features so the hobbyists have taken a look and postponed setting it up internally for when they have absolutely no choice. I've asked for simple ipv6 tutorials in discussions on HN and elsewhere and whatever I got pointed at was always longer than the article we're discussing and incomplete. Basic set up of ipv4 for a home network can be explained over just one pint. Looks like you need two barrells for ipv6.
- yesco 3y ago
  - https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/ipv6/configuration https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/ipv6/configurati... - https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/routing/examples/routing_with_ipv6 https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/routing/examples... - https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/ipv6_ipv4_transitioning https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/ipv6_ipv4_transi... - https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/ipv6/ipv6_extras https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/ipv6/ipv6_extras
  - nottorp 3y ago
    Yeah right. The summary of the first page already throws around like 4-5 acronyms that each require reading a separate documentation. And that's only for configuring your router, not your local network...
    - yesco 3y ago
      Okay then please provide me the level of documentation you are looking for, but for an IPv4 network. Sounds wonderful, I'd love to share it with new hires.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > I've asked for simple ipv6 tutorials There really does seem to be a lack of good documentation about all of this. The docs that I've seen appear to be aimed at actual network engineers, or are so incomplete as to not be worthwhile. I would be much less stressed by all of this if I could find something good that sits between those two extremes. A part of me, though, suspects that the reason there is no "middle ground" documentation is that it's not possible -- that IPv6 is too complex for that. Not saying that's the actual reality, but it has the whiff of it.

AndreasHae 3y ago

> The industry is now even legally making money on many things that would've been considered outright malware just a decade ago. Sounds a bit over the top. Can you name some examples?

unethical_ban 3y ago
Instagram, for one.
Nextgrid 3y ago
10 years ago if you made software that uses all kinds of lies and dark patterns to get access to a user's contacts list, uploads it to your server and then you did data mining on it, people would be concerned and consider the software malicious. Likewise with analytics - tracking every single action you do in an app (along with generic metadata such as IP addresses - which often leaks your general location and your relationship with anyone on the same network since you'd be sharing the IP address with them) would have been considered spyware. When there were talks of tracking people for ad targeting in the early days of the internet people (rightfully) freaked out, even though that tracking was really primitive by today's standards. All of those things are now considered legitimate and are routinely done.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  Indeed. When I look at how far things have fallen in this regard, it gets very hard to feel positive or optimistic about the internet.
  - toyg 3y ago
    And the human race. The biggest revolution in communication since Gutenberg, and in less than half a century it's been used almost exclusively for evil purposes.
- ndriscoll 3y ago
  We also used to have a name for malware that injected ads into your computer: adware. Now ads are just part of Windows.
- WorldMaker 3y ago
  I remember how often DoubleClick were the villains of tracking and privacy over-reach on early Slashdot, and then Google bought DoubleClick and became worse than DoubleClick ever were as top Slashdot villains and yet Google is still often called the heroes in the adtech space. (Though that sea is somewhat changing again as even more mainstream media catches up to tracking prevention.) It remains such a profound reversal to me.

JohnFen 3y ago

I think that it's fair to blame the specification. I don't think the problem is that the industry has changed, I think it's that there's a huge amount of friction and headache for shifting to it. I think that's because it was too large of a change all at once, combined with the initial specification having some real problems (that did eventually get mitigated in later specs). I suspect that if IPv6 limited itself to just increasing the size of IP addresses, IPv4 would largely be a distant memory by now.

WorldMaker 3y ago
"IPv4 with bigger addresses" would never have been backwards compatible and would always have been a compatibility break and would always have a slow rollout. The proposals that seemed backwards compatible were just aggressive CGNAT consolidating even more power in the hands of IPv4 address owners. That doesn't seem like a sustainable fix in the long run.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > "IPv4 with bigger addresses" would never have been backwards compatible and would always have been a compatibility break True, but it would limit that break to a single thing. That's much easier to deal with than the whole basket of things that IPv6 brings with it.
  - WorldMaker 3y ago
    Compatibility breaks are always headaches. There's not "just broke a 'single' thing" when it comes to compatibility breaks. That is why strict semver suggests a major bump no matter how "small" a compatibility break appears to the developer. There is no such thing as a "simple" compatibility break to downstream users. In general, despite the complex vocabulary about most of it, in many ways IPv6 is simpler than IPv4. Its header has fewer fields. Its QoL/QoS fields aren't accidental hacks on top of old debugging fields but intentionally designed fields for that very purpose. SLAAC is a simpler protocol than DHCPv4, though the algorithm sounds more complex at first. (DHCPv6 is basically as complex, but fewer devices and fewer subnets should need DHCPv6 in the first place.) Much of the "basket of things" that IPv6 brings with it are designed to remove complexity that has concreted around IPv4. They ripped the bandaid completely off with the backwards compatibility break that they made with IPv6, and apparently a lot of people loved the cute stickers they had applied on top of the bandaid. But at this point it is probably better for the skin below to heal without the bandaid than to continue to sticker and bandaid over that and let all that unnecessary glue fester in place. (To push such a metaphor almost to its breaking place.)

nottorp 3y ago

> The problem is that the computing industry has changed. Nah, the problem is ipv6 has been designed by a commitee for a lot of enterprise-ish features so the hobbyists have taken a look and postponed setting it up internally for when they have absolutely no choice. I've asked for simple ipv6 tutorials in discussions on HN and elsewhere and whatever I got pointed at was always longer than the article we're discussing and incomplete. Basic set up of ipv4 for a home network can be explained over just one pint. Looks like you need two barrells for ipv6.

yesco 3y ago
- https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/ipv6/configuration https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/ipv6/configurati... - https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/routing/examples/routing_with_ipv6 https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/routing/examples... - https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/ipv6_ipv4_transitioning https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/ipv6_ipv4_transi... - https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/ipv6/ipv6_extras https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/ipv6/ipv6_extras
- nottorp 3y ago
  Yeah right. The summary of the first page already throws around like 4-5 acronyms that each require reading a separate documentation. And that's only for configuring your router, not your local network...
  - yesco 3y ago
    Okay then please provide me the level of documentation you are looking for, but for an IPv4 network. Sounds wonderful, I'd love to share it with new hires.
JohnFen 3y ago
> I've asked for simple ipv6 tutorials There really does seem to be a lack of good documentation about all of this. The docs that I've seen appear to be aimed at actual network engineers, or are so incomplete as to not be worthwhile. I would be much less stressed by all of this if I could find something good that sits between those two extremes. A part of me, though, suspects that the reason there is no "middle ground" documentation is that it's not possible -- that IPv6 is too complex for that. Not saying that's the actual reality, but it has the whiff of it.