6 ms·

IPv6 Excuse Bingo

53 points by greyface- 3y ago

bradley13 3y ago
Too many IoT devices don't support it. Sure, we could probably isolate them in their own little world, but - what a mess that would be. IPv4 still works just fine for our internal network, so...never touch a running system. I taught some networking back in the mid- to late-90s. I remember being all enthusiastic about IPv6, and how it would soon take over the world. Didn't happen. Why? Because it was incredibly stupid not to make IPv6 backwards compatible.
- cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
  Adoption has increased, and will continue to increase, as there is more and more of a need for it to.
  - bradley13 3y ago
    Honestly not sure why my comment is being downvoted. IPv6 became a standard in 1998. If it had been backwards compatible, it would have been adopted in just a few years. Instead, here we are 26 years later, and the adoption rate looks like this: https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6 https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6 That says everything about IPv6 that needs to be said.
    - welterde 3y ago
      Because it gets repeated on every thread on IPv6. IPv6 is perfectly backwards-compatible with IPv4 (you can run an IPv6-only host and still access hosts from the IPv4-internet). The issue however is that IPv4 is not forwards compatible. IPv4-only hosts cannot initiate communication with next gen protocol only hosts by design.
    - viraptor 3y ago
      Because you're saying things like > Because it was incredibly stupid not to make IPv6 backwards compatible. Without providing a non-stupid solution to a problem not solved for decades, and likely not solvable. (Also I assume you meant ipv4 forward compatible, you can name ipv4 hosts on ipv6)
    - _Algernon_ 3y ago
      IPv6 adoption is a monotonously increasing curve (ignoring daily fluctuations): https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html It's only a question of time.
- kps 3y ago
  Thread and Matter are IPv6 only. (They don't need externally routable IPv6, though.)
- Feathercrown 3y ago
  It's not incredibly stupid, because making it backwards compatible is impossible. How could IPv4 devices ever use IPv6 addresses? They simply don't have enough space to store the bits in the address.
  - patmorgan23 3y ago
    Yep, you can't make a 32 bit number contain the same amount of information as a 128 but number. You have to use NAT64 to have the two things talk to each other.
- eqvinox 3y ago
  > Too many IoT devices don't support it. Huh? My thermostats are IPv6 only… (they're on Thread/Zigbee/whatever they call it now) I mean, yeah, sure, there are old IPv4-only devices around. But we're now in a situation where a significant part is in fact IPv6-only. So, > what a mess that would be whatever mess that would be, we are already in it, and the way to fix it is forward.
- kalleboo 3y ago
  > Sure, we could probably isolate them in their own little world, but - what a mess that would No, it's IoT devices being on the public internet that is a mess. The "S" in IoT stands for Security. > how it would soon take over the world. Didn't happen It's at 45% on the public internet and growing. The majority of LAN connections are probably also IPv6 (mediated automatically through zeroconf without people even being aware)
vjfkhigvy 3y ago
[flagged]
otabdeveloper4 3y ago
[flagged]
- cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
  This is what people say when they have nothing legitimate to complain about.
  - otabdeveloper4 3y ago
    [flagged]
donor20 3y ago
Having made some major efforts with ipv6 makes you appreciate ipv4 - a few visionaries built something that worked amazingly well. Kind of mind blowing that the experts out there on committees came up w the dumpster fire of ipv6 - the pain of can be seen everywhere. And I still can’t get a static IPv6 block as easily as an ipv4 block
- blueflow 3y ago
  You get your IPv6 addresses the same way you get IPv4 addresses - from your RIR.
- eqvinox 3y ago
  > the experts out there on committees The IETF does not have a committee process.
- kalleboo 3y ago
  My machines have never been able to get public IPv4 addresses but now they all have public IPv6 addresses and its super handy
marvion 3y ago
Whats the point of that without having arguments against each excuse or offering solutions? or is this just and "you're an idiot for thinking that" sign?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
pierat 3y ago
Biggest "excuse" is usability: IPv6->IPv4 failover where the IPv6 DNS records are busted make a whole lot of sites unusable. Basically, the AAAA record provides some broken IP6 address, and the browser then just "site not found, NXRECORD", even if there's a perfectly valid A record for the same. If a company doesnt have an AAAA record, it works fine. Its when the AAAA record is busted (but present) is where you will see loads of weird and bad stuff.
exabrial 3y ago
* Literally any problem ipv6 has, has already been solved and the solutions work just fine. Here we are. Literally everything is working fine. * Literally offers no upsides to the consumer, only potential downsides * ipv6 enabled devices don't live up the promise of "data center free vacuum robots", even though that's what everyone is screaming is the purpose * Private devices should not be exposed to the internet anyway, nor individually identifiable when they use the internet * IPv6 Privacy protections are less powerful than ipv4 NAT. * Google/Facebook/Everyone pushing ipv6 the hardest has reasons to invade your privacy, therefore I suggest we do the exact opposite of what they want us to do with our personal lives and networks I'm not opposed to new tech, but ipv6 for ipv6's sake is stupid. I just block it everywhere I can and move on with life.
- Arch485 3y ago
  1. This is not true. IPv4 address exhaustion has not been "solved". NAT _works_, but causes tons of problems. 2. Also false. Upsides include more speed (due to ISPs usually having newer infra for IPv6), cheaper addresses (for people who want static ones), and I'm sure there are more benefits I can't think of. 3. This one is true, but I've never heard anyone say that's why we need IPv6 (that could just be me though). 4. Then don't expose them to the internet. Your network is still behind a router/firewall, and the device in question (hopefully) can be configured. 5. I'm not sure what you mean by "less powerful" here - NAT was never good at protecting privacy anyways. Anyone who wants to track you has been doing it without IP for a long time. Further, you can still have a NAT if you want one, and IPv6 offers random/temporary addresses. 6. True! Big tech has a vested interest in undermining our privacy, but please see above. I also think, in this instance, it's genuinely because IPv6 is better than 4.
- xinayder 3y ago
  IPv6 has tons of improvements over IPv4. It seems like you're opposed to v6 because of the work you need to do in your systems to make them v6 ready. Does it cost you anything, really?
- ndriscoll 3y ago
  > Literally offers no upsides to the consumer, only potential downsides Having globally routable addresses is a pretty big upside. For nerdy types, it means you can run web/game servers at home (i.e. without needing a credit card), which is a way for kids to develop their technical interests. For the rest of society, getting rid of NAT is a requirement to allow seamless p2p apps to work without needing to use giant corporations in the surveillance business as an intermediary. Instead of being jerked around with Google moving people onto their 15th video chat app with potato quality, we have the necessary foundation to be able to directly connect with your counterpart. This could be completely seamless with e.g. a DHT to locate your contact's devices (or gossip if you can reach at least one that you already knew about, to maximize privacy) and uPnP or hole punching to their address to open your router's firewall. NAT forces centralization for our foundational ability to communicate, which robs everyone of their autonomy in ways that are so pervasive it's increasingly hard to imagine another world. But that other world is still possible.
oldandboring 3y ago
Admittedly I am new to IPv6 but: when AWS announced they were going to start charging for IPv4 addresses, I set about controlling costs by enabling IPv6 on our instances and then making sure I could reach them at their IPv6 addresses (e.g. via SSH). After some troubleshooting I discovered that IPv6 wasn't enabled on my local office router/gateway; it's about 10 years old (still works great btw). I went into the web-based control panel and found the "IPv6" section and didn't know what any of the settings did. Eventually I stumbled onto a config that allowed me to reach my remote IPv6 destinations without breaking IPv4. I confirmed my results with https://test-ipv6.com https://test-ipv6.com . Then, I used test-ipv6.com from my home network and found, again, that IPv6 wasn't enabled. From my standpoint, it doesn't matter that I, a techie, can get IPv6 working by doing one or two things. The VAST majority of people out there wouldn't know where to start. If it's not enabled in their router by default it's not getting enabled. Maybe newer devices are getting shipped with it enabled by default, I don't know. But LOTS of people have modems and routers that are going to be in the same state as mine, and best I can tell, they won't be able to reach my websites if I turn off IPv4. If I'm misunderstanding the state of things, I would greatly appreciate it if someone could illuminate me.
- ndriscoll 3y ago
  I just checked on xfinitywifi, and see that I get an ipv6 address there, so I assume Comcast has it turned on for customers that are using the ISP provided gateway at least. I don't know how common that setup is, but I'd guess the population that opts to buy their own equipment these days is more likely to be the type to mess around with their settings.
  - oldandboring 3y ago
    I think you're right up to a point. For my office router I'm indeed using my own gateway in front of their modem which is acting as a bridge. But for my home network, it's the default gateway that came with my fiber service ~8 years ago that a ton of people still have. My sense is this transition is going to take another 10+ years to get done. The big web properties where most people spend most of their time have the IPs to maintain IPv4 indefinitely, which will slow it way down. It's the smaller apps who are going to want to deploy IPv6-only who will generate consumer complaints: "I don't understand, why does Google work but this app doesn't? Why does it work from my phone when I'm out and about, or from work, but not from home?" The consumer won't exactly know who to direct these complaints to, the cause is non-obvious to most "tech support" people, and the fix is either too complex for consumers to implement or involves getting new equipment.
ipv666 3y ago
I think this was made in bad faith. Some of those are not excuses, but facts of life. - If your IP transit provider doesn’t support IPv6 there is FA you can do about it. Linking to HE is just a bad joke. Not only are they a bottom of the barrel provider, they also have a very sparse network of POPs. - not all vendors support IPv6 and, yes, there are bugs. - if there is no RoI in moving to IPv6, pouting about it isn’t going to make a difference.

53 points by greyface- 3y ago

Too many IoT devices don't support it. Sure, we could probably isolate them in their own little world, but - what a mess that would be. IPv4 still works just fine for our internal network, so...never touch a running system. I taught some networking back in the mid- to late-90s. I remember being all enthusiastic about IPv6, and how it would soon take over the world. Didn't happen. Why? Because it was incredibly stupid not to make IPv6 backwards compatible.

cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
Adoption has increased, and will continue to increase, as there is more and more of a need for it to.
- bradley13 3y ago
  Honestly not sure why my comment is being downvoted. IPv6 became a standard in 1998. If it had been backwards compatible, it would have been adopted in just a few years. Instead, here we are 26 years later, and the adoption rate looks like this: https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6 https://stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6 That says everything about IPv6 that needs to be said.
  - welterde 3y ago
    Because it gets repeated on every thread on IPv6. IPv6 is perfectly backwards-compatible with IPv4 (you can run an IPv6-only host and still access hosts from the IPv4-internet). The issue however is that IPv4 is not forwards compatible. IPv4-only hosts cannot initiate communication with next gen protocol only hosts by design.
  - viraptor 3y ago
    Because you're saying things like > Because it was incredibly stupid not to make IPv6 backwards compatible. Without providing a non-stupid solution to a problem not solved for decades, and likely not solvable. (Also I assume you meant ipv4 forward compatible, you can name ipv4 hosts on ipv6)
  - _Algernon_ 3y ago
    IPv6 adoption is a monotonously increasing curve (ignoring daily fluctuations): https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html It's only a question of time.
kps 3y ago
Thread and Matter are IPv6 only. (They don't need externally routable IPv6, though.)
Feathercrown 3y ago
It's not incredibly stupid, because making it backwards compatible is impossible. How could IPv4 devices ever use IPv6 addresses? They simply don't have enough space to store the bits in the address.
- patmorgan23 3y ago
  Yep, you can't make a 32 bit number contain the same amount of information as a 128 but number. You have to use NAT64 to have the two things talk to each other.
eqvinox 3y ago
> Too many IoT devices don't support it. Huh? My thermostats are IPv6 only… (they're on Thread/Zigbee/whatever they call it now) I mean, yeah, sure, there are old IPv4-only devices around. But we're now in a situation where a significant part is in fact IPv6-only. So, > what a mess that would be whatever mess that would be, we are already in it, and the way to fix it is forward.
kalleboo 3y ago
> Sure, we could probably isolate them in their own little world, but - what a mess that would No, it's IoT devices being on the public internet that is a mess. The "S" in IoT stands for Security. > how it would soon take over the world. Didn't happen It's at 45% on the public internet and growing. The majority of LAN connections are probably also IPv6 (mediated automatically through zeroconf without people even being aware)

vjfkhigvy 3y ago

[flagged]

otabdeveloper4 3y ago

[flagged]

cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
This is what people say when they have nothing legitimate to complain about.
- otabdeveloper4 3y ago
  [flagged]

donor20 3y ago

Having made some major efforts with ipv6 makes you appreciate ipv4 - a few visionaries built something that worked amazingly well. Kind of mind blowing that the experts out there on committees came up w the dumpster fire of ipv6 - the pain of can be seen everywhere. And I still can’t get a static IPv6 block as easily as an ipv4 block

blueflow 3y ago
You get your IPv6 addresses the same way you get IPv4 addresses - from your RIR.
eqvinox 3y ago
> the experts out there on committees The IETF does not have a committee process.
kalleboo 3y ago
My machines have never been able to get public IPv4 addresses but now they all have public IPv6 addresses and its super handy

marvion 3y ago

Whats the point of that without having arguments against each excuse or offering solutions? or is this just and "you're an idiot for thinking that" sign?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

pierat 3y ago

Biggest "excuse" is usability: IPv6->IPv4 failover where the IPv6 DNS records are busted make a whole lot of sites unusable. Basically, the AAAA record provides some broken IP6 address, and the browser then just "site not found, NXRECORD", even if there's a perfectly valid A record for the same. If a company doesnt have an AAAA record, it works fine. Its when the AAAA record is busted (but present) is where you will see loads of weird and bad stuff.

exabrial 3y ago

* Literally any problem ipv6 has, has already been solved and the solutions work just fine. Here we are. Literally everything is working fine. * Literally offers no upsides to the consumer, only potential downsides * ipv6 enabled devices don't live up the promise of "data center free vacuum robots", even though that's what everyone is screaming is the purpose * Private devices should not be exposed to the internet anyway, nor individually identifiable when they use the internet * IPv6 Privacy protections are less powerful than ipv4 NAT. * Google/Facebook/Everyone pushing ipv6 the hardest has reasons to invade your privacy, therefore I suggest we do the exact opposite of what they want us to do with our personal lives and networks I'm not opposed to new tech, but ipv6 for ipv6's sake is stupid. I just block it everywhere I can and move on with life.

Arch485 3y ago
1. This is not true. IPv4 address exhaustion has not been "solved". NAT _works_, but causes tons of problems. 2. Also false. Upsides include more speed (due to ISPs usually having newer infra for IPv6), cheaper addresses (for people who want static ones), and I'm sure there are more benefits I can't think of. 3. This one is true, but I've never heard anyone say that's why we need IPv6 (that could just be me though). 4. Then don't expose them to the internet. Your network is still behind a router/firewall, and the device in question (hopefully) can be configured. 5. I'm not sure what you mean by "less powerful" here - NAT was never good at protecting privacy anyways. Anyone who wants to track you has been doing it without IP for a long time. Further, you can still have a NAT if you want one, and IPv6 offers random/temporary addresses. 6. True! Big tech has a vested interest in undermining our privacy, but please see above. I also think, in this instance, it's genuinely because IPv6 is better than 4.
xinayder 3y ago
IPv6 has tons of improvements over IPv4. It seems like you're opposed to v6 because of the work you need to do in your systems to make them v6 ready. Does it cost you anything, really?
ndriscoll 3y ago
> Literally offers no upsides to the consumer, only potential downsides Having globally routable addresses is a pretty big upside. For nerdy types, it means you can run web/game servers at home (i.e. without needing a credit card), which is a way for kids to develop their technical interests. For the rest of society, getting rid of NAT is a requirement to allow seamless p2p apps to work without needing to use giant corporations in the surveillance business as an intermediary. Instead of being jerked around with Google moving people onto their 15th video chat app with potato quality, we have the necessary foundation to be able to directly connect with your counterpart. This could be completely seamless with e.g. a DHT to locate your contact's devices (or gossip if you can reach at least one that you already knew about, to maximize privacy) and uPnP or hole punching to their address to open your router's firewall. NAT forces centralization for our foundational ability to communicate, which robs everyone of their autonomy in ways that are so pervasive it's increasingly hard to imagine another world. But that other world is still possible.

oldandboring 3y ago

Admittedly I am new to IPv6 but: when AWS announced they were going to start charging for IPv4 addresses, I set about controlling costs by enabling IPv6 on our instances and then making sure I could reach them at their IPv6 addresses (e.g. via SSH). After some troubleshooting I discovered that IPv6 wasn't enabled on my local office router/gateway; it's about 10 years old (still works great btw). I went into the web-based control panel and found the "IPv6" section and didn't know what any of the settings did. Eventually I stumbled onto a config that allowed me to reach my remote IPv6 destinations without breaking IPv4. I confirmed my results with https://test-ipv6.com https://test-ipv6.com . Then, I used test-ipv6.com from my home network and found, again, that IPv6 wasn't enabled. From my standpoint, it doesn't matter that I, a techie, can get IPv6 working by doing one or two things. The VAST majority of people out there wouldn't know where to start. If it's not enabled in their router by default it's not getting enabled. Maybe newer devices are getting shipped with it enabled by default, I don't know. But LOTS of people have modems and routers that are going to be in the same state as mine, and best I can tell, they won't be able to reach my websites if I turn off IPv4. If I'm misunderstanding the state of things, I would greatly appreciate it if someone could illuminate me.

ndriscoll 3y ago
I just checked on xfinitywifi, and see that I get an ipv6 address there, so I assume Comcast has it turned on for customers that are using the ISP provided gateway at least. I don't know how common that setup is, but I'd guess the population that opts to buy their own equipment these days is more likely to be the type to mess around with their settings.
- oldandboring 3y ago
  I think you're right up to a point. For my office router I'm indeed using my own gateway in front of their modem which is acting as a bridge. But for my home network, it's the default gateway that came with my fiber service ~8 years ago that a ton of people still have. My sense is this transition is going to take another 10+ years to get done. The big web properties where most people spend most of their time have the IPs to maintain IPv4 indefinitely, which will slow it way down. It's the smaller apps who are going to want to deploy IPv6-only who will generate consumer complaints: "I don't understand, why does Google work but this app doesn't? Why does it work from my phone when I'm out and about, or from work, but not from home?" The consumer won't exactly know who to direct these complaints to, the cause is non-obvious to most "tech support" people, and the fix is either too complex for consumers to implement or involves getting new equipment.

ipv666 3y ago

I think this was made in bad faith. Some of those are not excuses, but facts of life. - If your IP transit provider doesn’t support IPv6 there is FA you can do about it. Linking to HE is just a bad joke. Not only are they a bottom of the barrel provider, they also have a very sparse network of POPs. - not all vendors support IPv6 and, yes, there are bugs. - if there is no RoI in moving to IPv6, pouting about it isn’t going to make a difference.