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Genuine question—how are ip4 local networks any easier to administrate with ip4 than ip6? Ip6 seems like it has the same capabilities but without the misery of

Genuine question—how are ip4 local networks any easier to administrate with ip4 than ip6? Ip6 seems like it has the same capabilities but without the misery of a constrictive address space and its solution, NAT. Hell, if I could DISABLE ip4 locally on my router it'd only make my life easier. (The only answer that makes sense here is supporting legacy devices, which will probably be a problem we'll have to deal with for the rest of our lives. Thankfully I don't appear to have any such devices on my network!)

apitman 3y ago
Can't speak for GP but I regularly type IPv4 addresses manually. That probably makes me a heathen but it just feels easier a lot of the time.
- labcomputer 3y ago
  "fc12:3456::1", "fc12:3456::2", "fc12:3456::3", etc, seem pretty easy to type, no? It's literally one extra character compared to "192.168.0.1" Not that I'm advocating anyone use that particular subnet of fc00::/7 for their local network.
  - apitman 3y ago
    Some IPv6 addresses are easy to type but all IPv4 are.
  - cchance 3y ago
    #1 issue ... you've gotta hold shift for : it's a minor annoyance but it's an annoyance lol that you have to do 3 times even in those nice short addresses
JohnFen 3y ago
Can't speak for the commenter, but I'm not personally planning on shifting my LAN to IPv6 because doing that is a heavy lift (made worse by having many IPv4-only devices), and IPv6 doesn't bring anything to my LAN that I want or need. It's as simple as that. I dual-stack for my internet gateway.
- ianburrell 3y ago
  Are you talking about home or work network? If you have dual-stack gateway, then your LAN has should have IPv6 unless you deliberately disabled it. For simple networks, should just need to enable IPv6 on router. If you haven't disabled it on each machine, they are using site-local IPv6. I don't know which devices on my home network use IPv6, but I haven't had to enter IPv6 addresses anywhere. IPv6 networks are simpler. They do many things automatically that have to be entered manually. The big one is don't have to worry about subnet size or subnet masks; all subnets are /64 and effectively infinite. This doesn't matter for home network but it is big advantage for corporate networks.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    Home network, albeit a complex one. I did deliberately disable IPv6 on my LAN, because configuring and administering a dual-stack LAN is more hassle than I'm willing to engage in. The cost/benefit of doing that just isn't favorable for me. All I really need is to be able to accommodate IPv6 on the internet side, which I can currently do.
acuozzo 3y ago
For a novice running a home network or lab there are a seemingly-endless number of on&offline resources and soft&hardware tools with IPv4 capability.
yyyk 3y ago
ipv6 was designed for global addresses used on the global address namespace. The community hates anything not doing that since that would remind too much of NAT. So anything intentionally not on the global namespace is second rate and not quite supported*. Alas, being on the global namespace means being dependent on your ISP** - what if they renumber or you want to move ISPs? - or going through the bureaucracy of registering your own block. Yes, despite an infinite space you still need to register to avoid fragmentation. That's something I never want to do. * For example, IPv6 ULAs have a stupid lookup precedence - IPv4 addresses are higher which means ULA can't be used anywhere which is dual stack. ** There are ways around the latter like ULAs (see above) or using a local DNS (more mess if it fails, assuming everything supports this), or NPT - which would work, but again, the community hates anything that reminds of NAT even when it's totally stateless, so this is little documented. I don't think going against the entire community is a worthwhile endeavor. This should also limit your choice of routers since IIRC not everything supports this.

apitman 3y ago

Can't speak for GP but I regularly type IPv4 addresses manually. That probably makes me a heathen but it just feels easier a lot of the time.

labcomputer 3y ago
"fc12:3456::1", "fc12:3456::2", "fc12:3456::3", etc, seem pretty easy to type, no? It's literally one extra character compared to "192.168.0.1" Not that I'm advocating anyone use that particular subnet of fc00::/7 for their local network.
- apitman 3y ago
  Some IPv6 addresses are easy to type but all IPv4 are.
- cchance 3y ago
  #1 issue ... you've gotta hold shift for : it's a minor annoyance but it's an annoyance lol that you have to do 3 times even in those nice short addresses

JohnFen 3y ago

Can't speak for the commenter, but I'm not personally planning on shifting my LAN to IPv6 because doing that is a heavy lift (made worse by having many IPv4-only devices), and IPv6 doesn't bring anything to my LAN that I want or need. It's as simple as that. I dual-stack for my internet gateway.

ianburrell 3y ago
Are you talking about home or work network? If you have dual-stack gateway, then your LAN has should have IPv6 unless you deliberately disabled it. For simple networks, should just need to enable IPv6 on router. If you haven't disabled it on each machine, they are using site-local IPv6. I don't know which devices on my home network use IPv6, but I haven't had to enter IPv6 addresses anywhere. IPv6 networks are simpler. They do many things automatically that have to be entered manually. The big one is don't have to worry about subnet size or subnet masks; all subnets are /64 and effectively infinite. This doesn't matter for home network but it is big advantage for corporate networks.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  Home network, albeit a complex one. I did deliberately disable IPv6 on my LAN, because configuring and administering a dual-stack LAN is more hassle than I'm willing to engage in. The cost/benefit of doing that just isn't favorable for me. All I really need is to be able to accommodate IPv6 on the internet side, which I can currently do.

acuozzo 3y ago

For a novice running a home network or lab there are a seemingly-endless number of on&offline resources and soft&hardware tools with IPv4 capability.

yyyk 3y ago

ipv6 was designed for global addresses used on the global address namespace. The community hates anything not doing that since that would remind too much of NAT. So anything intentionally not on the global namespace is second rate and not quite supported*. Alas, being on the global namespace means being dependent on your ISP** - what if they renumber or you want to move ISPs? - or going through the bureaucracy of registering your own block. Yes, despite an infinite space you still need to register to avoid fragmentation. That's something I never want to do. * For example, IPv6 ULAs have a stupid lookup precedence - IPv4 addresses are higher which means ULA can't be used anywhere which is dual stack. ** There are ways around the latter like ULAs (see above) or using a local DNS (more mess if it fails, assuming everything supports this), or NPT - which would work, but again, the community hates anything that reminds of NAT even when it's totally stateless, so this is little documented. I don't think going against the entire community is a worthwhile endeavor. This should also limit your choice of routers since IIRC not everything supports this.