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> IPv6 is a full protocol rev which takes a lot longer to accomplish And maybe will never happen. There are alternatives for a lot of what you get from IPv6, s

> IPv6 is a full protocol rev which takes a lot longer to accomplish And maybe will never happen. There are alternatives for a lot of what you get from IPv6, such as NAT (terrible but works for most people's needs) and SNI routing (I'm more bullish on this). Are there any examples of protocols that took a similarly long time to achieve adoption but eventually did saturate the market? That would be hopeful.

bombcar 3y ago
> Are there any examples of protocols that took a similarly long time to achieve adoption but eventually did saturate the market? That would be hopeful. There are quite a few, but people probably haven't heard of them, because either they were involved below the Internet (think: physical links) or were used for things like telephony or other interconnects. There are also other interfaces that involve communication but aren't Internet or telephone like (think things like ic2 or canbus, etc).
dehrmann 3y ago
If it's still not adopted more in 5-10 years, I wonder if they'll make what everyone wanted all along: IPv4 with longer addresses.
- Thiez 3y ago
  That would be absurd. Why introduce a completely new protocol with 0 hardware or software support? Who would possibly adopt this over IPv6?
  - hot_gril 3y ago
    It would be possible to do basically this with the existing IPv6 header and much of the v6 infra. All existing IPv4 hosts get the same /32 on v6, and any NATs stay intact. On the UI side, keep the ipv4 address format like 8.8.8.8. Going to V6 is very low-risk, low-impact this way. V4 packets can even be converted to V6 and vice versa because it's the same address space at first. Once there's sufficient adoption of V6, individual network operators can break things up into /40, /48, etc if needed, which wouldn't be reachable via V4 anymore*. Back to UI, a /40 would look like 8.8.8.8.4. Unlike today's v6 which is a totally separate network with new routes and randomized addresses. It also has v6-mapped-v4 addresses, but that's different. * If you really want some more temporary compatibility, /40 would still be sorta reachable from V4 if you added a special kind of NAT that encodes the extra 8 address bits into the port number, but idk if that'd be palatable.
api 3y ago
NAT isn’t an alternative. It breaks end to end connectivity and doesn’t scale well.
- hot_gril 3y ago
  The default and recommended way of using IPv6 is to have a default-deny-inbound firewall. That also breaks end to end connectivity.

bombcar 3y ago

> Are there any examples of protocols that took a similarly long time to achieve adoption but eventually did saturate the market? That would be hopeful. There are quite a few, but people probably haven't heard of them, because either they were involved below the Internet (think: physical links) or were used for things like telephony or other interconnects. There are also other interfaces that involve communication but aren't Internet or telephone like (think things like ic2 or canbus, etc).

dehrmann 3y ago

If it's still not adopted more in 5-10 years, I wonder if they'll make what everyone wanted all along: IPv4 with longer addresses.

Thiez 3y ago
That would be absurd. Why introduce a completely new protocol with 0 hardware or software support? Who would possibly adopt this over IPv6?
- hot_gril 3y ago
  It would be possible to do basically this with the existing IPv6 header and much of the v6 infra. All existing IPv4 hosts get the same /32 on v6, and any NATs stay intact. On the UI side, keep the ipv4 address format like 8.8.8.8. Going to V6 is very low-risk, low-impact this way. V4 packets can even be converted to V6 and vice versa because it's the same address space at first. Once there's sufficient adoption of V6, individual network operators can break things up into /40, /48, etc if needed, which wouldn't be reachable via V4 anymore*. Back to UI, a /40 would look like 8.8.8.8.4. Unlike today's v6 which is a totally separate network with new routes and randomized addresses. It also has v6-mapped-v4 addresses, but that's different. * If you really want some more temporary compatibility, /40 would still be sorta reachable from V4 if you added a special kind of NAT that encodes the extra 8 address bits into the port number, but idk if that'd be palatable.

api 3y ago

NAT isn’t an alternative. It breaks end to end connectivity and doesn’t scale well.

hot_gril 3y ago
The default and recommended way of using IPv6 is to have a default-deny-inbound firewall. That also breaks end to end connectivity.