3 ms·

I think you’re making my point for me quite nicely… Originally it was “IPv6 is great, you don’t need dhcp”, but then it became “well you may need DHCP anyway s

I think you’re making my point for me quite nicely… Originally it was “IPv6 is great, you don’t need dhcp”, but then it became “well you may need DHCP anyway so here’s DHCPv6”, and then that becomes necessary often enough that you can’t really point to that as a benefit of IPv6 any more. You don’t need NAT but you need a lot of the systems complexity that NAT requires, because you have to manage two sets of addresses in various configurations. Split DNS, etc. You’re fine if you own the address range and it isn’t provided to you dynamically with DHCP-PD, but that isn’t the case with basically 100% of residential deployments. You need to multihome to even apply as a RIR to get your own prefix.

ninkendo 2y ago
Thinking aloud: there needs to be a rethinking of how prefixes work in the next ::/3 we allocate for global unicast: it should be possible for individuals to get their own /48 for basically the same price as a domain name today. Hell, they could make cash as people rush to buy the memorable ones. Make personal route announcement a basic part of ISP service as defined by the FCC. We’d have a fighting chance of actually having a decentralized internet again. But I’m basically wishing for a pony at this point.
- icedchai 2y ago
  You can basically do this today. There are RIPE LIRs that will allocate you a /48 pretty cheaply. There are tunneling services that will route it to you.
- sgjohnson 2y ago
  It’s not actually expensive or difficult for an individual to get an ASN and IPv6 space. https://lagrange.cloud/products/lir https://lagrange.cloud/products/lir £15 one-off for an ASN and £7/y for a /48. Then you just need to find someone to give you a BGP session. https://bgp.services https://bgp.services
  - ninkendo 2y ago
    I can't get any of that to my house. Comcast doesn't support BGP advertising a custom /48, and I can't even get one in the first place unless I'm dual-homed. The product you linked to has no details but it seems like you can get a /48 for their services, ie. if they're hosting my machines, they'll give me a /48. That doesn't help me.
    - icedchai 2y ago
      It helps you if you set up a tunnel back to your location. I have a /48 tunneled back to my home network over wireguard. There are several RIPE LIRs that will guide you through this, even if you're in the US. (You'll need a VPS in the EU to satisfy the contractual requirements. Your other VPSes can be closer to you.)
  - lmz 2y ago
    That 7£ /48 is a PA assignment, you can't take it home with you. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provider-aggregatable_address_space https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provider-aggregatable_addres...
    - icedchai 2y ago
      You can. I have some PA address space, assigned by an LIR, that I announce out of my own AS. All "PA" means is it comes out of their parent block and, if you stop paying, they'll probably want it back.
      - sgjohnson 2y ago
        Exactly. I have a PA /32 of IPv6 that I can sub-allocate and announce however I want. Or even lease to other people. It's my space, as long as I'm paying my LIR for it.
    - sgjohnson 2y ago
      You can do whatever you want with that PA assignment. PA means that it's the provider's address space, not yours. You can announce it wherever you want though. The Wikipedia explanation is flat-out wrong.
simoncion 2y ago
> I think you’re making my point for me quite nicely Sorry, what's your point? That having both address autoconfiguration and DHCP is too complex? If so, that's has been the standardized state of the art in IPv4 since 2005 with RFC 3927, and has been non-standard actual practice with Windows and Mac since like 1998. > ...you need a lot of the systems complexity that NAT requires... No, all you need is a router that can do IPv6. It doesn't even have to have a firewall, which is absolutely mandatory for consumer-grade border-router NAT. > ...Split DNS... I don't run that. My DNS answers local queries for LAN hostnames it knows about and forwards global queries upstream. Just like nearly every consumer edge-router DNS server. > ...DHCP-PD... Yep. My ISP runs that on the WAN side of the router. I just do RAs on the LAN side of the router.
- tsimionescu 2y ago
  > Sorry, what's your point? That having both address autoconfiguration and DHCP is too complex? If so, that's has been the standardized state of the art in IPv4 since 2005 with RFC 3927, and has been non-standard actual practice with Windows and Mac since like 1998. I don't think I've ever seen two computers communicate over a 169.254 address. Also, OS network stacks normally don't even try to get a link-local IPv4 address if they can get to a DHCP server or have a static address assigned. The RFC even recommends not using the link-local address if any other address is available. It's quite different from the way IPv6 works (as usual).
  - simoncion 2y ago
    > I don't think I've ever seen two computers communicate over a 169.254 address. I have. Used to do it often in the dorms when the uni's DHCP server was on the fritz. Zeroconf/Avahi wasn't really a thing, so we'd use Network Neighborhood to get people's IP addresses to browse files or play on servers they were hosting or whatever. I have also (as the RFC envisions) done it when connected to ad-hoc WiFi networks, and also while directly connecting two Windows PCs. In those scenarios, I asked my peer what their IP address was, rather than bothering with going to Network Neighborhood. > Also, OS network stacks normally don't even try to get a link-local IPv4 address if they can get to a DHCP server or have a static address assigned. Correct. From the second paragraph of the Abstract of RFC 3927: [0] > IPv4 Link-Local addresses are not suitable for communication with devices not directly connected to the same physical (or logical) link, and are only used where stable, routable addresses are not available (such as on ad hoc or isolated networks). > The RFC even recommends not using the link-local address if any other address is available. It's quite different from the way IPv6 works (as usual). No, it's also recommended when using IPv6 to not use link-local addresses if any other address is available. (Both because those addresses are only link-local, and because one usually needs to put an outbound interface specifier on the address when you go to contact another host, which is pretty obnoxious.) It just happens that IPv6's address autoconfiguration has been upgraded to be useful for globally-routable addressing, too. So, yeah, a usual mode of both IPv4 and IPv6 networks is to have autoconfigured addresses, as well as DHCP-assigned addresses. It just so happens that most of the time IPv4 addresses are not autoconfigured, and most of the time IPv6 addresses are not assigned by DHCP. That's equivalent complexity. [0] <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3927 https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3927>

ninkendo 2y ago

Thinking aloud: there needs to be a rethinking of how prefixes work in the next ::/3 we allocate for global unicast: it should be possible for individuals to get their own /48 for basically the same price as a domain name today. Hell, they could make cash as people rush to buy the memorable ones. Make personal route announcement a basic part of ISP service as defined by the FCC. We’d have a fighting chance of actually having a decentralized internet again. But I’m basically wishing for a pony at this point.

icedchai 2y ago
You can basically do this today. There are RIPE LIRs that will allocate you a /48 pretty cheaply. There are tunneling services that will route it to you.
sgjohnson 2y ago
It’s not actually expensive or difficult for an individual to get an ASN and IPv6 space. https://lagrange.cloud/products/lir https://lagrange.cloud/products/lir £15 one-off for an ASN and £7/y for a /48. Then you just need to find someone to give you a BGP session. https://bgp.services https://bgp.services
- ninkendo 2y ago
  I can't get any of that to my house. Comcast doesn't support BGP advertising a custom /48, and I can't even get one in the first place unless I'm dual-homed. The product you linked to has no details but it seems like you can get a /48 for their services, ie. if they're hosting my machines, they'll give me a /48. That doesn't help me.
  - icedchai 2y ago
    It helps you if you set up a tunnel back to your location. I have a /48 tunneled back to my home network over wireguard. There are several RIPE LIRs that will guide you through this, even if you're in the US. (You'll need a VPS in the EU to satisfy the contractual requirements. Your other VPSes can be closer to you.)
- lmz 2y ago
  That 7£ /48 is a PA assignment, you can't take it home with you. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provider-aggregatable_address_space https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provider-aggregatable_addres...
  - icedchai 2y ago
    You can. I have some PA address space, assigned by an LIR, that I announce out of my own AS. All "PA" means is it comes out of their parent block and, if you stop paying, they'll probably want it back.
    - sgjohnson 2y ago
      Exactly. I have a PA /32 of IPv6 that I can sub-allocate and announce however I want. Or even lease to other people. It's my space, as long as I'm paying my LIR for it.
  - sgjohnson 2y ago
    You can do whatever you want with that PA assignment. PA means that it's the provider's address space, not yours. You can announce it wherever you want though. The Wikipedia explanation is flat-out wrong.

simoncion 2y ago

> I think you’re making my point for me quite nicely Sorry, what's your point? That having both address autoconfiguration and DHCP is too complex? If so, that's has been the standardized state of the art in IPv4 since 2005 with RFC 3927, and has been non-standard actual practice with Windows and Mac since like 1998. > ...you need a lot of the systems complexity that NAT requires... No, all you need is a router that can do IPv6. It doesn't even have to have a firewall, which is absolutely mandatory for consumer-grade border-router NAT. > ...Split DNS... I don't run that. My DNS answers local queries for LAN hostnames it knows about and forwards global queries upstream. Just like nearly every consumer edge-router DNS server. > ...DHCP-PD... Yep. My ISP runs that on the WAN side of the router. I just do RAs on the LAN side of the router.

tsimionescu 2y ago
> Sorry, what's your point? That having both address autoconfiguration and DHCP is too complex? If so, that's has been the standardized state of the art in IPv4 since 2005 with RFC 3927, and has been non-standard actual practice with Windows and Mac since like 1998. I don't think I've ever seen two computers communicate over a 169.254 address. Also, OS network stacks normally don't even try to get a link-local IPv4 address if they can get to a DHCP server or have a static address assigned. The RFC even recommends not using the link-local address if any other address is available. It's quite different from the way IPv6 works (as usual).
- simoncion 2y ago
  > I don't think I've ever seen two computers communicate over a 169.254 address. I have. Used to do it often in the dorms when the uni's DHCP server was on the fritz. Zeroconf/Avahi wasn't really a thing, so we'd use Network Neighborhood to get people's IP addresses to browse files or play on servers they were hosting or whatever. I have also (as the RFC envisions) done it when connected to ad-hoc WiFi networks, and also while directly connecting two Windows PCs. In those scenarios, I asked my peer what their IP address was, rather than bothering with going to Network Neighborhood. > Also, OS network stacks normally don't even try to get a link-local IPv4 address if they can get to a DHCP server or have a static address assigned. Correct. From the second paragraph of the Abstract of RFC 3927: [0] > IPv4 Link-Local addresses are not suitable for communication with devices not directly connected to the same physical (or logical) link, and are only used where stable, routable addresses are not available (such as on ad hoc or isolated networks). > The RFC even recommends not using the link-local address if any other address is available. It's quite different from the way IPv6 works (as usual). No, it's also recommended when using IPv6 to not use link-local addresses if any other address is available. (Both because those addresses are only link-local, and because one usually needs to put an outbound interface specifier on the address when you go to contact another host, which is pretty obnoxious.) It just happens that IPv6's address autoconfiguration has been upgraded to be useful for globally-routable addressing, too. So, yeah, a usual mode of both IPv4 and IPv6 networks is to have autoconfigured addresses, as well as DHCP-assigned addresses. It just so happens that most of the time IPv4 addresses are not autoconfigured, and most of the time IPv6 addresses are not assigned by DHCP. That's equivalent complexity. [0] <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3927 https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3927>