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We don't live in the world in which IPv6 was a good design. Please avoid acting like IPv6 makes for a good design, because it doesn't. See apenwarr's by now ne

We don't live in the world in which IPv6 was a good design. Please avoid acting like IPv6 makes for a good design, because it doesn't. See apenwarr's by now nearly a decade old blog post "The world in which IPv6 was a good design": https://apenwarr.ca/log/20170810 https://apenwarr.ca/log/20170810, previous discussions of it here: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=The%20world%20in%20which%20IPv6%20was%20a%20good%20design&type=story&dateRange=all&sort=byDate&storyText=false&prefix&page=0 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=The%20world%20in%20which%20IPv..., as well as the follow up blog post here: https://apenwarr.ca/log/20200708 https://apenwarr.ca/log/20200708, previous discussions here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=IPv4%2C%20IPv6%2C%20and%20a%20sudden%20change%20in%20attitude&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... And the issues with IP (and by extension, TCP, ignoring the fundamental results from the Delta-T research at Lawrence Livermore keeps biting us all in the ass) whether IPv4 or IPv6 go even deeper, far deeper, than what that blog post already tells us, so here, have this—flawed in some minor aspects, which makes CCIEs burry their head in the sand of denial about the deeper point of it—polemic for dessert: https://web.archive.org/web/20210415054027if_/http://rina.tssg.org/docs/How_in_the_Heck_do_you_lose_a_layer.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20210415054027if_/http://rina.ts...

ninkendo 2y ago
> Please avoid acting like IPv6 makes for a good design, because it doesn't. Where did I give that impression? I tried my hardest in that post to not make a judgement call one way or the other as to whether it was a good design, only that dual stack fucking sucks. My followup post in fact, totally agrees with you? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43070286 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43070286
convolvatron 2y ago
that's not what this article says. I dug through it, and the main point seems to be 'It would have been beautiful. Except for one problem: it never happened.' there is nothing really wrong with the design of ipv6 relative to ipv4
immibis 2y ago
It's almost exactly just IPv4 with longer addresses. If IPv6 isn't a good design then IPv4 is even worse because of the address shortage.
- growse 2y ago
  Well, they also junked useless un-scalable things like broadcast and ARP.
  - j16sdiz 2y ago
    Meanwhile adding science fiction things like mobile IP.
    - growse 2y ago
      Yeah, that one's a bit silly.
    - immibis 2y ago
      That's a solution to a problem you don't personally have, and it exists in IPv4 too. Your cellphone company uses it - or would like to. It's like SCTP: just because you don't use it doesn't mean there isn't a big group of people who do.
  - immibis 2y ago
    That's the adaptation layer between Ethernet and IP. Broadcast was renamed to "all nodes multicast". ARP was renamed to Neighbor Discovery. Slight improvements: ND isn't broadcast, but multicast based on several bits of the IP address. This allows NICs to filter most of the irrelevant ones based on multicast MAC address. And subnet broadcast addresses were removed. There's only local broadcast to your own subnet and not to someone else's subnet, since IPv4 routers found that to be a bad idea and mostly started blocking it anyway.
- aboardRat4 2y ago
  >It's almost exactly just IPv4 with longer addresses No it's not. Slaac and NA make it a totally different beast. If ipv6 only had dhcp6-pd, it would have been "just like ipv4 with longer addresses".

ninkendo 2y ago

> Please avoid acting like IPv6 makes for a good design, because it doesn't. Where did I give that impression? I tried my hardest in that post to not make a judgement call one way or the other as to whether it was a good design, only that dual stack fucking sucks. My followup post in fact, totally agrees with you? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43070286 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43070286

convolvatron 2y ago

that's not what this article says. I dug through it, and the main point seems to be 'It would have been beautiful. Except for one problem: it never happened.' there is nothing really wrong with the design of ipv6 relative to ipv4

immibis 2y ago

It's almost exactly just IPv4 with longer addresses. If IPv6 isn't a good design then IPv4 is even worse because of the address shortage.

growse 2y ago
Well, they also junked useless un-scalable things like broadcast and ARP.
- j16sdiz 2y ago
  Meanwhile adding science fiction things like mobile IP.
  - growse 2y ago
    Yeah, that one's a bit silly.
  - immibis 2y ago
    That's a solution to a problem you don't personally have, and it exists in IPv4 too. Your cellphone company uses it - or would like to. It's like SCTP: just because you don't use it doesn't mean there isn't a big group of people who do.
- immibis 2y ago
  That's the adaptation layer between Ethernet and IP. Broadcast was renamed to "all nodes multicast". ARP was renamed to Neighbor Discovery. Slight improvements: ND isn't broadcast, but multicast based on several bits of the IP address. This allows NICs to filter most of the irrelevant ones based on multicast MAC address. And subnet broadcast addresses were removed. There's only local broadcast to your own subnet and not to someone else's subnet, since IPv4 routers found that to be a bad idea and mostly started blocking it anyway.
aboardRat4 2y ago
>It's almost exactly just IPv4 with longer addresses No it's not. Slaac and NA make it a totally different beast. If ipv6 only had dhcp6-pd, it would have been "just like ipv4 with longer addresses".