IPv6 breaks less backwards compatibility than many people think. Many get caught up in all of the other changes you can (and often do) do because it makes life

IPv6 breaks less backwards compatibility than many people think. Many get caught up in all of the other changes you can (and often do) do because it makes life better and conflate that with IPv6 not letting them do things the same way. About the only generally true "it breaks backwards compatibility" is the format of the address being longer for the longer address. Netmask, gateways, DHCP, static assignment, and neighbor discovery are all about as 1:1 as one could ask if that's all you care about but it's just a dumb way to do things if you're upgrading everything so then you have SLAAC, a more present link local, DHCP-PD, and so on to hear/think about as well. E.g. you can still NAT the massive IPv6 private address space with static and/or DHCP assignments without having to change your understanding (addresses would even be darn short too!) but... it's just silly to do.