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Support for IPv6
- kstrauser 2y agoOutstanding. As Google’s IPv6 traffic portion approaches 50% (https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html) it’s clear IPv6 is here, now, today. I wouldn’t dream of launching a new public-facing greenfield project without it.
- pclmulqdq 2y agoIPv4 stuff is accessible over IPv6. It's just the other way around that is not the case.
- ComputerGuru 2y agoNot by default it’s not. An ipv6-only deployment cannot natively access an ipv4 network, there is no backwards comparability in the protocol.
- ahoef 2y agoOne of the many missed opportunities of IPv6.
- ziedaniel1 2y agoWhat are some others?
- teraflop 2y agoI keep seeing people say this, but nobody ever takes the next step of proposing how this "missed opportunity" might have been fixed. The reality is that there is no possible way IPv6 could have been designed that would both solve the IPv4 address exhaustion problem and natively interoperate with IPv4. When you send a packet to an IPv4 host, it needs to know where to send the response, and there simply aren't enough bits in the IPv4 header to fit more than 2^32 possible addresses. You need something in the middle to translate between IPv6 and IPv4 addresses, and we already have that: it's called NAT64. It works the same way you would expect NAT to, and just like NAT on IPv4, there's no need to codify it as an explicit part of the IP protocol itself.
- Bluecobra 2y agoI think it was bad timing. We might have been able to migrate to IPv6 wholesale when the Internet was much smaller in the early 90s. One thing that comes to mind is the kumbaya moment when everyone got together to switch from BGP v3 to BGP v4 to support CIDR.
- dboreham 2y agoThat was the plan. V6 was killed by NAT and the commercial forces that promoted its use.
- kstrauser 2y ago"Killed" is a bit harsh, given that it's half of all Google's traffic. A huge chunk of that is probably from cell phones where IPv6 support is the norm.
- Borg3 2y agoNot really.. IPv6 was theoretically ready in 1997. But, it was theoretical. It was still buggy. In 2000s Internet expansion skyrocketed and noone really cared about IPv6. Buggy, too different from IPv4, basically overengineered. They made prediction that was absolutly off.. And thats why adoption is crappy.
- andrewshadura 2y agoIPv6 is not overengineered. It is, in fact, simpler in design than IPv4.
- throw0101a 2y ago> We might have been able to migrate to IPv6 wholesale when the Internet was much smaller in the early 90s. In the early 1990s IPng/IPv6 was not yet invented, and when it was being considered they realized a flag-day (like (mostly) happened with NCP->IP) was unlikely: We believe that it is not possible to have a "flag-day" form of transition in which all hosts and routers must change over at once. The size, complexity, and distributed administration of the Internet make such a cutover impossible. Rather, IPng will need to co-exist with IPv4 for some period of time. There are a number of ways to achieve this co-existence such as requiring hosts to support two stacks, converting between protocols, or using backward compatible extensions to IPv4. Each scheme has its strengths and weaknesses, which have to be weighed. Furthermore, we note that, in all probability, there will be IPv4 hosts on the Internet effectively forever. IPng must provide mechanisms to allow these hosts to communicate, even after IPng has become the dominant network layer protocol in the Internet. * https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1726#section-5.5 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1726#section-5.5
- commandersaki 2y agoI'm pretty sure we're discussing about connecting to the Internet. What I understood is being implied is that ipv6 has little utility if it cannot access ipv4, but is not the case the other way around.
- Arnt 2y agoHow would v6 connect to v4? Specifically, how would the return packets back from v4 to v6 be routed?
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y agoThrough a NAT64 NAT. Which is extra work, but not that bad.
- Arnt 2y agoWell, we have that. What GP refers to is a missed opportunity, so NAT64 can't be what GP has in mind.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- commandersaki 2y agoNot really my point, was just pointing out there's scant incentive to transition from the incumbent.
- Arnt 2y agoAnd to do that, you mentioned a condition that's either ① satisfied by current IPv6 or ② impossible to satisfy, and for which that's clear on even a moment's reflection. Not sure which of those two you had in mind, but in either case: Please don't do such things.
- commandersaki 2y ago
- pclmulqdq 2y agoI get that you're trying to make a point, but NAT64 makes this not a real problem. Every practical use of IPv6 can access IPv4 hosts.
- kitkat_new 2y agohow can I access IPV4 stuff over IPv6?
- Bluecobra 2y agoIt does seamlessly work w/ services like Apple's Private Relay. I was surprised to see an IPv6 address when checking my IP address on external websites. Maybe eventually proxies like this might be the solve for this.
- exabrial 2y agoThe fact that a company like monopolistic, abusive, privacy invading company like Google that desperately desperately wants me to run ipv6, ensures that I will disable it on every device I own and corporate network I run.
- Arnt 2y agoThey want you to run IPv4 too.
- nobody9999 2y ago>They want you to run IPv4 too. Exactly. I'd expect that they don't much care which version of IP you use, as long as they can show you ads -- which is their business model after all.
- Arnt 2y agoI… think that at the end of the day, Google wants you to run v6. Google competes with Facebook. Facebook wants sites to host Facebook Pages and such, which needs no IP addresses. Google wants lots of websites and other services on an open web, to which it can sell lots of ads, and for which it can run a good search engine that again brings in lots of opportunities. A lack of IP addresses isn't a problem for Facebook, but it is one for people who want to host new web sites and other services. And therefore Google wants to alleviate that problem, with which IPv6 can help.
- colechristensen 2y agoCalm down. Please try to make your point less flamboyantly.
- Workaccount2 2y agoThis is like boycotting 5G cell phones because you don't like Verizon.
- franga2000 2y agoExcellent logic! Hitler drank water and, if you had the chance to ask him, he would have likely suggested you also drink water. Does that mean you won't drink water now?
- mort96 2y agoNothing's realistically dropping support for v4 any time soon, so v6 support is optional. On the other hand, we're far, far away from all users supporting v6, so v4 support is not optional. Running a single IP stack is infinitely simpler and easier than running two concurrently, and until that "single IP stack" can be v6, I see very little reason to support it.
- zoky 2y ago> Running a single IP stack is infinitely simpler and easier than running two concurrently I’d say it’s marginally simpler. Unequivocally it’s quantifiably simpler. But infinitely simpler? That’s a pretty tall claim to make.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y agoDepends on your users; there are, for instance, plenty of phones that only natively have v6 and have to use NAT64 to reach v4 websites. So if you have such users, there might be a benefit to supporting v6 directly.
- mort96 2y agoAs you said though, those users can reach v4 websites.
- briffle 2y agoyes, with the increased latency of having to travel to the NAT64 server first. This can also cause you to not use the nearest CDN, etc.
- bigfatkitten 2y agoThe NAT64 server for those users is in the same place the CGNAT used to be.
- sylware 2y agoIn my country, nearly all ISPs provide native IPv6, and I include mobile internet (we are closer to 100% than 50%).
- ComputerGuru 2y agoThis seems as good a place to ask as any: how does one obtain a (larger) block of IPv6 not via their ISP/datacenter and then route it (to a network they control) through their ISP/datacenter-provided IPv6 uplink? Is that even possible?
- ta1243 2y agoYou get yourself an AS and a registration and then talk to your ISPs about how to BGP peer with them. Read this to start wtih https://www.arin.net/resources/guide/ipv6/first_request/#enduser https://www.arin.net/resources/guide/ipv6/first_request/#end...
- ComputerGuru 2y agoThanks. Same process as IPv4, but my question was more focused on the ??? magical last step of getting the ISP to advertise that route.
- FL410 2y agoIt’s not magical, it’s exactly the same as IPv4, you either peer with them via BGP and advertise it yourself, or you give them an LOA to advertise it on your behalf.
- bauruine 2y agoYou need to ask your ISP either to announce it with their own ASN or peer with you if you have your own.
- colechristensen 2y agoLiterally you just talk to your ISP. A support ticket or a technical phone contact. They'll either just do it for you or get you set up to announce your routes to them. You'll need an ISP that does actual business networking things, probably. I doubt Xfinity home service would do it for you.
- 2y ago
- daft_pink 2y agoWe need something better than IPv6 that better addresses the needs of users. IPv6 does too much and is too complicated.
- aleph_minus_one 2y agoWhat do you suggest as "something better than IPv6"?
- mort96 2y agov4 but with a larger address space?
- growse 2y agoHard to take seriously any suggestion which look at ARP (and the other warts in v4) and goes "yep, let's hang onto those". "Let's make a new, backwards incompatible protocol and not learn anything from the old one" doesn't feel like a good idea to me.
- mort96 2y agoI see nothing wrong with ARP.
- ianburrell 2y agoHow is that better than IPv6? Remember that there is no way to squeeze more address bits into IPv4 header, that need to come up with a new protocol. In fact, need to come up with a whole suite of new protocols. You could just make the addresses bigger but still need to deploy. IPv6 changed some things, most of them for the better, and it already works. The only problem is migrating and the problem is people who don't want to switch. One example of how IPv6 is better than IPv4 with more address bits, is that 128-bit address is big enough to put the whole IPv4 address in. NAT64 put the IPv4 address in the 64-bit host section. MAP-T puts the whole NAT state in address, getting rid of expensive CGNAT.
- Tempest1981 2y ago> route when you can, switch only when you need to mantra Naive question: isn't switching faster than routing?
- namibj 2y agoOnly at small scale: the flat MAC lookup quickly becomes more expensive than matching against a handful of (post-consolidation) routing prefixes. E.g. in their setup only the switch the hosts are directly plugged in needs to be aware of the individual hosts; all other switches/routers only look at it with a granularity no finer than this access switch. And at some point even coarser.
- londons_explore 2y agoAll 'boring' packets are hardware switched/routed with no CPU involvement in everything bigger than your home cable router. For both switched and routed networks it's possible to build hardware that can route at the same speed as the ports, so in 2024 performance isn't really a reason to choose switched or routed. Cost might be though - I believe that for the same number of gigabits, hardware sold as a switch is substantially cheaper.
- namibj 2y ago500 routes are still cheaper than 50k MACs, though, but I might be off a little with the number threshold there. Market segmentation is a thing, sadly :(
- immibis 2y agoIt is; it also provides less control. Some networks do it one way and some do it the other way.
- kuon 2y agoAbout two years ago, when we deployed our datacenter, I insisted for IPv6 first. All out management network is IPv6 only, all kvm, switches, routers... It was a pain and gives nearly no practical advantage (at the time), but the motivation was to make everyone "intimate" with IPv6. We learned a lot and we even discovered some implementation bugs (for example, Cisco default link local address is not /64 and this is not compliant with more recent RFC and will make them unable to communicate with BSD systems). Now we have IPv6 everywhere and everybody from dev to sysadmin is aware of IPv6 and we start to see some real advantages. VPN are easier to manage, routing is easier, firewall is easier, clustering, failover... everything is "cleaner". We still have IPv4 (dual stack) on some servers, but about 80% of them are IPv6 only with DNS64/NAT64.
- NewJazz 2y agoWhat do you use for a NAT64 gateway?
- BonoboIO 2y agoWhy is it now easier to manage?
- simoncion 2y agoI'm not the OP, but I expect VPNs are easier to manage because you don't have to worry about slicing up the very, very limited IPv4 non-public space and puzzling out how to resolve addressing collisions between all of the various networks you have to manage. With IPv6 you can just calculate a /48 ULA prefix and allocate /64s for your VPNs (and every other internal network) out of that. If ever you run out of room, just calculate another /48 and carry on... easy!
- Habgdnv 2y agoI am running as many IPv6 only services as I can. All MY core services that I use daily are v6 only. At the end of 2024 i am still shocked to see how much new software does not work without ipv4. My most recent struggle was with Seq - the opentelemetry server for example. It is full of new software created in the recent few years that just refuses to work without ipv4. And not because it need to reach some server on the internet. It just does not work if you do not have ipv4 (even private).
- mort96 2y agoWhy make so much trouble for yourself?
- miyuru 2y agofor me, its not really trouble. MY ISP has IPv6 and I have trouble using it. Also I have lot of small VPS and the cost of the IPv4 address is the highest cost of the price of VPS. removing it reduces the cost by a lot.
- mort96 2y agoHow cheap VPSes are you getting? I've always just used v4 on my $5/month VPSes, never felt the need to think about v6 on them because v4 just works
- miyuru 2y agoLess than $1 per month shared CPU and 1-2GB RAM for most of them. At that price I needs to pay annually. Take it to account that I am not from US and even $5 is kind of large amount per month to spend on hobby stuff.
- nobody9999 2y ago>Why make so much trouble for yourself? I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm not GP, but I actually have to do more work to disable IPv6 on my systems than to use a dual stack. As such, please explain what you mean by making "so much trouble for yourself."
- everfrustrated 2y agoThere's also a cool trick you can do with IPv6 addresses for servers where you use RA to broadcast your IPv6 prefix on the LAN and the OS assigns itself a valid public IPv6 using the MAC address for uniqueness. Very clean and easy.
- elchief 2y agoHoping AWS and my ISP implement IPv6 before I retire... (AWS has partially implemented IPv6, but it's still not usable in my mind)
- doublepg23 2y agoI was very happy to get symmetric Gig internet at my new place but very bummed that my ISP doesn’t offer IPv6. I had enjoyed learning about and deploying it on my LAN whenever Comcast added support (SLAAC is magical) but I guess I’ll be waiting for quite a while to play with it again :(
- hnbukkake 2y ago[flagged]
- BruhWasH3r3 2y agoIPv6 is great, but it does open up new challenges with traffic management, reputation, and bot analysis. We need advances there.
- BrandoElFollito 2y agoI had to get into IPv6 for real when I switched ISPs and the French Free relies on IPv6 for some services. IPv6 is hard. You have to learn brand new concepts for something which is only a medium for your actual apps (I self host a lot). I do not know if there would have been a way to make it more "advanced user" friendly but if the was, it's a lost opportunity to get wider adoption faster.