9 ms·

Question for the networking folk here. How can the rest of us help move things over to ipv6?

irrational 3y ago
I’ve been hearing about ipv4 running out and the need to move to ipv6 for so many years/decades, but it keeps not happening. I’m wondering if anything will change in my lifetime.
- kmeisthax 3y ago
  IPv4 ran out a decade ago, the only reason why it continues to work at all is because of two things: - Compatibility bridges for v6-only hosts to connect to v4 servers - The IP address market encouraging old v4 allocation owners to sell off their space (at the expense of a bloated routing table) In 2009, IANA and the RIRs created a process for buying and selling IP addresses. Which is something they never wanted to allow, but their hand was forced by the abysmal levels of v6 adoption back then. Two years later IANA would allocate the last /8s, and the RIRs that got those allocations would exhaust them in the years following[1]. The only virgin v4 address space remaining is reserved specifically for ISPs setting up v4 compatibility for native v6 networks. You did not notice this because the v6 transition has already happened, and it was boring. In 2023, Google reports 40-45% v6 adoption[0]. This is largely due to LTE making v6 a mandatory feature. Had we kept mobile traffic on v4, networks would've adopted shedloads of CGNAT, and even then that hits a wall when you start running out of ephemeral ports to disguise addressing information inside of. This would have resulted in significantly worse behavior for smartphone users, especially in heavily populated countries like India (which have far higher v6 utilization). [0] https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=ipv6-adoption https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=ipv6... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4_address_exhaustion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4_address_exhaustion
- sambazi 3y ago
  ipv6 is _the_ mobile and india internet, mostly. iphones are v6 only as are indian consumer connections.
  - codetrotter 3y ago
    > iphones are v6 only Are you sure about this? Do you have a link with details? If I disconnect from WiFi and use the SIM card currently in my iPhone, and I go to one of the websites that tell me my public IPv4 and IPv6 address it shows that the mobile internet connection I have with this SIM card is IPv4 only. iPhone 14 Pro
    - sambazi 3y ago
      just checked again on an iphone se, 1st-gen, ios 15.x on t-mobile reseller in germany: actually there is a v4 default route on the wwan-interface that appears to be a p2p link (192/32) probably to a cgnat. besides 127/8, there are a only v6 routes, a lot of them.
      - SSLy 3y ago
        how do you check the routing table from the iphone? a jailbreak? some app?
        erinnh 3y ago
        Hurricane Electric Network Tools can do it. Its an app.
        sambazi 3y ago
        kind of brings up the question if all apps can do this
        codetrotter 3y ago
        Here’s the routing table that the HE.net Network Tools shows for my cellular connection shortly after I’ve turned off WiFi on my iPhone 14 Pro. None of the entries in the cellular routing table is IPv6 with my current SIM card. So I am doubting more and more the claim that iPhone is somehow IPv6 only. Seems more like some people have carriers that choose to provide them IPv6 only, and because of that they think that it has to do with the iPhone itself. PDP_IPO (CELLULAR DATA) default via 10.10.67.87 UGSC 10.10.67.87 via 10.10.67.87 UHr 10.10.67.87/32 via link#3 UCS 10.255.91.156 via 10.10.67.87 UGHWli 17.57.144.87 via 10.10.67.87 UGHWli 224.0.0/4 via link#3 UmCS 255.255.255.255/32 via link#3 UCS
- antientropic 3y ago
  > but it keeps not happening The article you're responding to is a dramatic demonstration that it has happened: Amazon's IPs would not be worth $4.5B if we hadn't run out. It requires us all to ration a resource (namely numbers) that should be near-infinite and essentially free.
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    > It requires us all to ration a resource (namely numbers) that should be near-infinite and essentially free. There can only be ~4.3 billion IPv4 addresses, which means that mathematically IP addresses are severely limited - you can't assign even one single globally routable IPv4 address per human. That's why we have NAT and its evolution CGNAT in the first place.
    - circuit10 3y ago
      That’s their point, if there were more addresses we wouldn’t need to
      - mschuster91 3y ago
        Back when the Internet was conceived, as a network of militaries, universities and large corporations, it was in no way foreseeable just how much resources humanity would need - and it was thought that the system would adapt. However we got layers upon layers of closed-source middleboxes and everything ossified as a result.
        dumbfounder 3y ago
        But from the perspective of anyone that isn't a networking expert, there is no real problem, things just work and there are no real issues. Networking folks found ways to extend the runway and all other tech people see is the occasional article like this and then they forget about it again five minutes later. I don't even see the effects of the cost of an IP anywhere. I guess it's there, but I don't notice. No regular person even knows what ipv6 is.
wmf 3y ago
Just wait. The people who don't already support IPv6 can't really be influenced.
CameronNemo 3y ago
NAT64 and DNS64 can help your v6-only hosts cope with the ubiquity of v4-only hosts.
preisschild 3y ago
Make sure your ISP already configures IPv6 correctly and if not write them.
- SSLy 3y ago
  My ISP (Liberty Global) did configure IPv6 but then made your IPv4 to be a CGNAT ending in next state over. Sigh
viraptor 3y ago
If your ISP provides the ipv6 option but doesn't turn it on by default, turn in on. If they don't call them periodically and ask for IPv6 support. If you run only online service, enable ipv6 on it. Basically, help move the needle on the chicken and egg issue of adoption. Move more traffic to v6 as much as you have control over.
- jiggawatts 3y ago
  To add to this: Most content distribution networks (CDNs) support IPv6 even if the back-end is IPv4. For most web sites, a CDN is a good idea in general, so just use one. For developers: don't hard-code IPv4 as an assumption. E.g.: don't validate network addresses with an IPv4-only regex, and don't store addresses into a 32-bit unsigned integer. Most SDKs and APIs have supported IPv4/IPv6 dual-mode addresses for like... two decades by default. Just don't... undo... all that effort! Generally: Use DNS instead of IP addresses. Do it properly by respecting TTLs and using multiple upstream DNS servers in a fast failover configuration. This is not the default in many systems, especially Linux distros used in servers. Many admins "prefer" raw IP addresses because they think "DNS is unreliable". It isn't, it's just the default config that's poor.
yyyk 3y ago
There's no reason for the 'rest of us' to do anything. Prices will move enough users out to ipv6 so that the ipv4 market will always be in equilibrium. Due to particular reasons (specific design of ipv6, human population maxing out at about 10bil, main users getting their own ipv4 addresses already) ipv4 will never entirely go away - which is not something we should care about.

I’ve been hearing about ipv4 running out and the need to move to ipv6 for so many years/decades, but it keeps not happening. I’m wondering if anything will change in my lifetime.

kmeisthax 3y ago
IPv4 ran out a decade ago, the only reason why it continues to work at all is because of two things: - Compatibility bridges for v6-only hosts to connect to v4 servers - The IP address market encouraging old v4 allocation owners to sell off their space (at the expense of a bloated routing table) In 2009, IANA and the RIRs created a process for buying and selling IP addresses. Which is something they never wanted to allow, but their hand was forced by the abysmal levels of v6 adoption back then. Two years later IANA would allocate the last /8s, and the RIRs that got those allocations would exhaust them in the years following[1]. The only virgin v4 address space remaining is reserved specifically for ISPs setting up v4 compatibility for native v6 networks. You did not notice this because the v6 transition has already happened, and it was boring. In 2023, Google reports 40-45% v6 adoption[0]. This is largely due to LTE making v6 a mandatory feature. Had we kept mobile traffic on v4, networks would've adopted shedloads of CGNAT, and even then that hits a wall when you start running out of ephemeral ports to disguise addressing information inside of. This would have resulted in significantly worse behavior for smartphone users, especially in heavily populated countries like India (which have far higher v6 utilization). [0] https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=ipv6-adoption https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=ipv6... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4_address_exhaustion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4_address_exhaustion
sambazi 3y ago
ipv6 is _the_ mobile and india internet, mostly. iphones are v6 only as are indian consumer connections.
- codetrotter 3y ago
  > iphones are v6 only Are you sure about this? Do you have a link with details? If I disconnect from WiFi and use the SIM card currently in my iPhone, and I go to one of the websites that tell me my public IPv4 and IPv6 address it shows that the mobile internet connection I have with this SIM card is IPv4 only. iPhone 14 Pro
  - sambazi 3y ago
    just checked again on an iphone se, 1st-gen, ios 15.x on t-mobile reseller in germany: actually there is a v4 default route on the wwan-interface that appears to be a p2p link (192/32) probably to a cgnat. besides 127/8, there are a only v6 routes, a lot of them.
    - SSLy 3y ago
      how do you check the routing table from the iphone? a jailbreak? some app?
      - erinnh 3y ago
        Hurricane Electric Network Tools can do it. Its an app.
        sambazi 3y ago
        kind of brings up the question if all apps can do this
        codetrotter 3y ago
        Here’s the routing table that the HE.net Network Tools shows for my cellular connection shortly after I’ve turned off WiFi on my iPhone 14 Pro. None of the entries in the cellular routing table is IPv6 with my current SIM card. So I am doubting more and more the claim that iPhone is somehow IPv6 only. Seems more like some people have carriers that choose to provide them IPv6 only, and because of that they think that it has to do with the iPhone itself. PDP_IPO (CELLULAR DATA) default via 10.10.67.87 UGSC 10.10.67.87 via 10.10.67.87 UHr 10.10.67.87/32 via link#3 UCS 10.255.91.156 via 10.10.67.87 UGHWli 17.57.144.87 via 10.10.67.87 UGHWli 224.0.0/4 via link#3 UmCS 255.255.255.255/32 via link#3 UCS
antientropic 3y ago
> but it keeps not happening The article you're responding to is a dramatic demonstration that it has happened: Amazon's IPs would not be worth $4.5B if we hadn't run out. It requires us all to ration a resource (namely numbers) that should be near-infinite and essentially free.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  > It requires us all to ration a resource (namely numbers) that should be near-infinite and essentially free. There can only be ~4.3 billion IPv4 addresses, which means that mathematically IP addresses are severely limited - you can't assign even one single globally routable IPv4 address per human. That's why we have NAT and its evolution CGNAT in the first place.
  - circuit10 3y ago
    That’s their point, if there were more addresses we wouldn’t need to
    - mschuster91 3y ago
      Back when the Internet was conceived, as a network of militaries, universities and large corporations, it was in no way foreseeable just how much resources humanity would need - and it was thought that the system would adapt. However we got layers upon layers of closed-source middleboxes and everything ossified as a result.
      - dumbfounder 3y ago
        But from the perspective of anyone that isn't a networking expert, there is no real problem, things just work and there are no real issues. Networking folks found ways to extend the runway and all other tech people see is the occasional article like this and then they forget about it again five minutes later. I don't even see the effects of the cost of an IP anywhere. I guess it's there, but I don't notice. No regular person even knows what ipv6 is.

wmf 3y ago

Just wait. The people who don't already support IPv6 can't really be influenced.

CameronNemo 3y ago

NAT64 and DNS64 can help your v6-only hosts cope with the ubiquity of v4-only hosts.

preisschild 3y ago

Make sure your ISP already configures IPv6 correctly and if not write them.

SSLy 3y ago
My ISP (Liberty Global) did configure IPv6 but then made your IPv4 to be a CGNAT ending in next state over. Sigh

viraptor 3y ago

If your ISP provides the ipv6 option but doesn't turn it on by default, turn in on. If they don't call them periodically and ask for IPv6 support. If you run only online service, enable ipv6 on it. Basically, help move the needle on the chicken and egg issue of adoption. Move more traffic to v6 as much as you have control over.

jiggawatts 3y ago
To add to this: Most content distribution networks (CDNs) support IPv6 even if the back-end is IPv4. For most web sites, a CDN is a good idea in general, so just use one. For developers: don't hard-code IPv4 as an assumption. E.g.: don't validate network addresses with an IPv4-only regex, and don't store addresses into a 32-bit unsigned integer. Most SDKs and APIs have supported IPv4/IPv6 dual-mode addresses for like... two decades by default. Just don't... undo... all that effort! Generally: Use DNS instead of IP addresses. Do it properly by respecting TTLs and using multiple upstream DNS servers in a fast failover configuration. This is not the default in many systems, especially Linux distros used in servers. Many admins "prefer" raw IP addresses because they think "DNS is unreliable". It isn't, it's just the default config that's poor.

yyyk 3y ago

There's no reason for the 'rest of us' to do anything. Prices will move enough users out to ipv6 so that the ipv4 market will always be in equilibrium. Due to particular reasons (specific design of ipv6, human population maxing out at about 10bil, main users getting their own ipv4 addresses already) ipv4 will never entirely go away - which is not something we should care about.