4 ms·

> There's only a 32 bit field in the protocol IPv6 is 128 bits... so we already made a change. Why can IPv7 not be 128 bits as well, but vastly more readable/r

by Alupis 3y ago

> There's only a 32 bit field in the protocol IPv6 is 128 bits... so we already made a change. Why can IPv7 not be 128 bits as well, but vastly more readable/recognizable than IPv6. Hex is hard on the eyes, especially for those who don't stare at it all day.

NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
> Hex is hard on the eyes Thankfully there is near-100% compliance with PTR reverse-dns for IPv6 addresses and networks. /s
Macha 3y ago
The move to hex is to avoid people having to memorise all these offhands like "so a /27 is x.x.x.0-31". Instead every "4" in the subnet is another digit. But also do you think 24414.64517.21200.44298.46574.49887.23623.7394 is really that much easier to type? Or 231.22.96.68.14.229.38.41.242.44.72.220.156.50.232.95 if you keep to 8 bit octets?
- Alupis 3y ago
  Maybe I'm weird, but I do in fact think that is easier. People memorize long numbers all the time, such as SSN, phone numbers, account numbers, credit card numbers, etc. People are not very good at memorizing lengthy alphanumeric sequences such as randomized passwords. I don't know why, but it "just is". But - > The move to hex is to avoid people having to memorise all these offhands Point taken. It does seem in practice though people will still have a need to memorize/recognize addresses for various purposes, such as administration/dns/etc.
  - nottorp 3y ago
    > People memorize long numbers all the time, such as SSN, phone numbers, account numbers, credit card numbers, etc. People are not very good at memorizing lengthy alphanumeric sequences such as randomized passwords. It's easy. Long sequence of 10 possible tokens that we're always used to seeing together. Easier to memorize because you subconsciously use any patterns you notice, and with just 10 possibilities the patterns are there. And you've been reading sequences of digits since you were old enough to get given pocket money. Vs long sequence of 16 possible tokens, of which 10 belong in one cognitive group and 6 in another. The extra 6 you've never memorized before in random order because they're for representing your language and that has other ingrained patterns. Let's not forget they admitted ipv6 addresses are too long and allow you to skip parts of it so now you have to count the colons carefully...
    - Macha 3y ago
      You don't understand why a sequence of 39 digits might be harder to memorise than sequences of 10? 16 is longest of the examples that people actually memorise (no, people are not memorising their bitlocker keys), and even then they have 1 example that lasts at least 5 years to deal with, instead of however many IP addresses they have to deal with. Also many of my account numbers and my nations equivalent of a SSN are alphanumeric so 36 vs 16 choices.
  - dubcanada 3y ago
    I could be wrong, but I do not think it's easier to remember 45465465464938259 then it is to remember the lyrics to a popular song. Now I assume there is some sort of brain difference playing here. But while looking it up most popular memorization strategies are either ram it into your head with repetition or converting it to songs, rhymes, poems, or other word phrases. It's quite easy to remember things like "Mmm-mmm, went the little green frog one day".
- kazinator 3y ago
  Speaking of which, the slash notation has not gone away in IPv6 notation.
  - ghshephard 3y ago
    At least the user networks are /64s, so, to some degree, CIDR notation isn't relevant for someone just trying to set up their system - netmask is now always 64 bits. And sure, ISP/Network Engineers still care about /56, /48, /32, etc... but that's their day, and takes about a week to have it ingrained in a way that you almost never could with IPv4.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  > But also do you think is 24414.64517.21200.44298.46574.49887.23623.7394 is really that much easier to type? Or 231.22.96.68.14.229.38.41.242.44.72.220.156.50.232.95 if you keep to 8 bit octets? I mean... yes, actually; I can type those blindly on a normal numpad. I'm sure somebody somewhere has made a hex number pad, but realistically on any normal keyboard entering hex means going back and forth between number and letter keys.
  - krallja 3y ago
    On QWERTY layouts, you can type ABCDEF with your left hand and 0123456789 with your right hand on the num pad.
    - p1mrx 3y ago
      That would be really convenient if : weren't in the middle of the keyboard. Maybe hardcore IP typists need an alternate keyboard layout where * maps to :
- epakai 3y ago
  Microsoft did. The first example is pretty much what bitlocker recovery keys are.
deadbunny 3y ago
Because 99.99% of people never see an IP address let alone interact with them.
chungy 3y ago
If you'd like to figure out a nicer representation for IPv6 addresses, go for it. You needn't break any compatibility for it, just invent a new representation. I'd argue that the most common format such as 2001:db8::f00f is already pretty darn readable, and not hard to copy+paste when you need bare addresses. Base85 is an alternative if you'd like something that's purely optimized for fewer characters, but it only really helps with exceptionally long addresses like 2001:db8:424b:b4ff:fcb5:b643:f721:b703 becoming 9R}vSk6QzV!G$<lwB;|~
- nottorp 3y ago
  > 2001:db8:424b:b4ff:fcb5:b643:f721:b703 becoming 9R}vSk6QzV!G$<lwB;|~ Memorize that :) Then try to tell it over the phone.
  - chungy 3y ago
    That's a totally contrived address just to get as long of a hex representation as possible, it's pretty far from a likely situation. That being said, telling an address over the phone (another unlikely situation, to be honest) wouldn't be that hard in hexadecimal form.
    - nottorp 3y ago
      > it's pretty far from a likely situation. I don't know, I just checked my linux box that takes ipv6 from one of my routers and it's the full 16 bytes, no zeros to skip. I suppose example.com has a lot of consecutive zeros and is shorter to type... > (another unlikely situation, to be honest) Kid calls you when you're out and asks where in your local network the minecraft server is running. Or on which samba server the mod archives are. Real story.
tjohns 3y ago
You're more than welcome to represent an IPv6 address in some other format. That's just a implementation detail in the UI. You don't need a new wire protocol to do that. (There's already at least 4 different ways you can write an IPv4 address, and your OS is happy to accept any of them.)
kazinator 3y ago
You gotta love how they decided to use colons as part of the notation! But, oops, that is also used for port number notations. Solution? Square brackets: [ff00:abcd::0]:1234
- tomxor 3y ago
  Yeah it's annoying, I've come across numerous address parsing bugs because of this. I think the reason they needed to use a different delimiter is because IPv6 addresses can also omit entire portions of zeros as a convenience feature to shorten addresses, which means there are a subset of shortened addresses that look exactly like IPv4 if not for the delimiter.
  - kazinator 3y ago
    > I've come across numerous address parsing bugs because of this. To prevent that, you can write tons of test cases. IPv6 notation parsing and generating test cases are oodles of fun.
akira2501 3y ago
I think two major problems that IPv6 failed to account for are the unreasonable ambiguity and "global registry" proposed by the Unique Local Address range, e.g. fc00::/7. This was even after having the opportunity to fix the previous mistakes in the fec0::/10 range. It was entirely inappropriate for small scale personal networking and assumed an "administrative scope" that's too cumbersome and without purpose for most implementations. I wonder if a dedicated "local" network prefix with a fixed /64 mask and an operating system recognized "alias" would have been a good mechanism to introduce. Something like fec0::/64 with an option to call it "local::". Then you might be able to more easily move from a world of 192.168.10.1, 192.168.10.2 to a world of local::1, local::2, that being translated to fec0::1 and fec0::2.
- orangeboats 3y ago
  What do you mean by global registry? ULAs do have a local bit, by setting it to 1 (i.e., fd00::/8) you can have your own ULA range. I am using ULA in my own home network.
  - akira2501 3y ago
    Right, and the local bit being 0 is currently undefined, but the original and lasting idea (apparently) is to create a central registry for it, so that in some future case where you have to merge corporate networks with their own ULAs there is zero chance that there would ever be a collision between the two. Even in so far as the local bit being 1, there have been at least two attempts to create a "voluntary global registry" for your randomly generated prefix, mostly for the same "collision avoidance" stated above. In either case, somewhat unintuitively, those are still _global_ addresses, and don't have the same level of "non local routing" restrictions that the RFC1918 address space explicitly gained. It's been a mess, and at some point, the IETF just seems to have given up on it.
    - burnerthrow008 3y ago
      > Even in so far as the local bit being 1, there have been at least two attempts to create a "voluntary global registry" for your randomly generated prefix, mostly for the same "collision avoidance" stated above. Like most things people don't like about IPv6, you don't like this because you misunderstand how it's supposed to work. There is no need for a ULA registry because you're supposed to pick a random prefix within the ULA space. The ULA space has 7 bits already defined, so you're picking a random prefix from a space 57 bits big. The chance that you will pick the same prefix as some other specific person is effectively zero. (the birthday paradox does not apply because we don't care if your prefix matches anyone else on earth, just the one specific person/organization that you want to merge networks with). > In either case, somewhat unintuitively, those are still _global_ addresses, and don't have the same level of "non local routing" restrictions that the RFC1918 address space explicitly gained. Err, what? ULAs are routable and "global" addresses in exactly the same way that RFC1918 addresses are routable and global. They are valid addresses within the address space and the only thing that makes them "not globally routable" is that all routers have certain prefixes baked into the firmware as non-routable. If you don't trust your router not to route them for IPv6, why do you trust it for IPv4?

by Alupis 3y ago

NoZebra120vClip 3y ago

> Hex is hard on the eyes Thankfully there is near-100% compliance with PTR reverse-dns for IPv6 addresses and networks. /s

Macha 3y ago

The move to hex is to avoid people having to memorise all these offhands like "so a /27 is x.x.x.0-31". Instead every "4" in the subnet is another digit. But also do you think 24414.64517.21200.44298.46574.49887.23623.7394 is really that much easier to type? Or 231.22.96.68.14.229.38.41.242.44.72.220.156.50.232.95 if you keep to 8 bit octets?

Alupis 3y ago
Maybe I'm weird, but I do in fact think that is easier. People memorize long numbers all the time, such as SSN, phone numbers, account numbers, credit card numbers, etc. People are not very good at memorizing lengthy alphanumeric sequences such as randomized passwords. I don't know why, but it "just is". But - > The move to hex is to avoid people having to memorise all these offhands Point taken. It does seem in practice though people will still have a need to memorize/recognize addresses for various purposes, such as administration/dns/etc.
- nottorp 3y ago
  > People memorize long numbers all the time, such as SSN, phone numbers, account numbers, credit card numbers, etc. People are not very good at memorizing lengthy alphanumeric sequences such as randomized passwords. It's easy. Long sequence of 10 possible tokens that we're always used to seeing together. Easier to memorize because you subconsciously use any patterns you notice, and with just 10 possibilities the patterns are there. And you've been reading sequences of digits since you were old enough to get given pocket money. Vs long sequence of 16 possible tokens, of which 10 belong in one cognitive group and 6 in another. The extra 6 you've never memorized before in random order because they're for representing your language and that has other ingrained patterns. Let's not forget they admitted ipv6 addresses are too long and allow you to skip parts of it so now you have to count the colons carefully...
  - Macha 3y ago
    You don't understand why a sequence of 39 digits might be harder to memorise than sequences of 10? 16 is longest of the examples that people actually memorise (no, people are not memorising their bitlocker keys), and even then they have 1 example that lasts at least 5 years to deal with, instead of however many IP addresses they have to deal with. Also many of my account numbers and my nations equivalent of a SSN are alphanumeric so 36 vs 16 choices.
- dubcanada 3y ago
  I could be wrong, but I do not think it's easier to remember 45465465464938259 then it is to remember the lyrics to a popular song. Now I assume there is some sort of brain difference playing here. But while looking it up most popular memorization strategies are either ram it into your head with repetition or converting it to songs, rhymes, poems, or other word phrases. It's quite easy to remember things like "Mmm-mmm, went the little green frog one day".
kazinator 3y ago
Speaking of which, the slash notation has not gone away in IPv6 notation.
- ghshephard 3y ago
  At least the user networks are /64s, so, to some degree, CIDR notation isn't relevant for someone just trying to set up their system - netmask is now always 64 bits. And sure, ISP/Network Engineers still care about /56, /48, /32, etc... but that's their day, and takes about a week to have it ingrained in a way that you almost never could with IPv4.
yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
> But also do you think is 24414.64517.21200.44298.46574.49887.23623.7394 is really that much easier to type? Or 231.22.96.68.14.229.38.41.242.44.72.220.156.50.232.95 if you keep to 8 bit octets? I mean... yes, actually; I can type those blindly on a normal numpad. I'm sure somebody somewhere has made a hex number pad, but realistically on any normal keyboard entering hex means going back and forth between number and letter keys.
- krallja 3y ago
  On QWERTY layouts, you can type ABCDEF with your left hand and 0123456789 with your right hand on the num pad.
  - p1mrx 3y ago
    That would be really convenient if : weren't in the middle of the keyboard. Maybe hardcore IP typists need an alternate keyboard layout where * maps to :
epakai 3y ago
Microsoft did. The first example is pretty much what bitlocker recovery keys are.

deadbunny 3y ago

Because 99.99% of people never see an IP address let alone interact with them.

chungy 3y ago

If you'd like to figure out a nicer representation for IPv6 addresses, go for it. You needn't break any compatibility for it, just invent a new representation. I'd argue that the most common format such as 2001:db8::f00f is already pretty darn readable, and not hard to copy+paste when you need bare addresses. Base85 is an alternative if you'd like something that's purely optimized for fewer characters, but it only really helps with exceptionally long addresses like 2001:db8:424b:b4ff:fcb5:b643:f721:b703 becoming 9R}vSk6QzV!G$<lwB;|~

nottorp 3y ago
> 2001:db8:424b:b4ff:fcb5:b643:f721:b703 becoming 9R}vSk6QzV!G$<lwB;|~ Memorize that :) Then try to tell it over the phone.
- chungy 3y ago
  That's a totally contrived address just to get as long of a hex representation as possible, it's pretty far from a likely situation. That being said, telling an address over the phone (another unlikely situation, to be honest) wouldn't be that hard in hexadecimal form.
  - nottorp 3y ago
    > it's pretty far from a likely situation. I don't know, I just checked my linux box that takes ipv6 from one of my routers and it's the full 16 bytes, no zeros to skip. I suppose example.com has a lot of consecutive zeros and is shorter to type... > (another unlikely situation, to be honest) Kid calls you when you're out and asks where in your local network the minecraft server is running. Or on which samba server the mod archives are. Real story.

tjohns 3y ago

You're more than welcome to represent an IPv6 address in some other format. That's just a implementation detail in the UI. You don't need a new wire protocol to do that. (There's already at least 4 different ways you can write an IPv4 address, and your OS is happy to accept any of them.)

kazinator 3y ago

You gotta love how they decided to use colons as part of the notation! But, oops, that is also used for port number notations. Solution? Square brackets: [ff00:abcd::0]:1234

tomxor 3y ago
Yeah it's annoying, I've come across numerous address parsing bugs because of this. I think the reason they needed to use a different delimiter is because IPv6 addresses can also omit entire portions of zeros as a convenience feature to shorten addresses, which means there are a subset of shortened addresses that look exactly like IPv4 if not for the delimiter.
- kazinator 3y ago
  > I've come across numerous address parsing bugs because of this. To prevent that, you can write tons of test cases. IPv6 notation parsing and generating test cases are oodles of fun.

akira2501 3y ago

I think two major problems that IPv6 failed to account for are the unreasonable ambiguity and "global registry" proposed by the Unique Local Address range, e.g. fc00::/7. This was even after having the opportunity to fix the previous mistakes in the fec0::/10 range. It was entirely inappropriate for small scale personal networking and assumed an "administrative scope" that's too cumbersome and without purpose for most implementations. I wonder if a dedicated "local" network prefix with a fixed /64 mask and an operating system recognized "alias" would have been a good mechanism to introduce. Something like fec0::/64 with an option to call it "local::". Then you might be able to more easily move from a world of 192.168.10.1, 192.168.10.2 to a world of local::1, local::2, that being translated to fec0::1 and fec0::2.

orangeboats 3y ago
What do you mean by global registry? ULAs do have a local bit, by setting it to 1 (i.e., fd00::/8) you can have your own ULA range. I am using ULA in my own home network.
- akira2501 3y ago
  Right, and the local bit being 0 is currently undefined, but the original and lasting idea (apparently) is to create a central registry for it, so that in some future case where you have to merge corporate networks with their own ULAs there is zero chance that there would ever be a collision between the two. Even in so far as the local bit being 1, there have been at least two attempts to create a "voluntary global registry" for your randomly generated prefix, mostly for the same "collision avoidance" stated above. In either case, somewhat unintuitively, those are still _global_ addresses, and don't have the same level of "non local routing" restrictions that the RFC1918 address space explicitly gained. It's been a mess, and at some point, the IETF just seems to have given up on it.
  - burnerthrow008 3y ago
    > Even in so far as the local bit being 1, there have been at least two attempts to create a "voluntary global registry" for your randomly generated prefix, mostly for the same "collision avoidance" stated above. Like most things people don't like about IPv6, you don't like this because you misunderstand how it's supposed to work. There is no need for a ULA registry because you're supposed to pick a random prefix within the ULA space. The ULA space has 7 bits already defined, so you're picking a random prefix from a space 57 bits big. The chance that you will pick the same prefix as some other specific person is effectively zero. (the birthday paradox does not apply because we don't care if your prefix matches anyone else on earth, just the one specific person/organization that you want to merge networks with). > In either case, somewhat unintuitively, those are still _global_ addresses, and don't have the same level of "non local routing" restrictions that the RFC1918 address space explicitly gained. Err, what? ULAs are routable and "global" addresses in exactly the same way that RFC1918 addresses are routable and global. They are valid addresses within the address space and the only thing that makes them "not globally routable" is that all routers have certain prefixes baked into the firmware as non-routable. If you don't trust your router not to route them for IPv6, why do you trust it for IPv4?