8 ms·

Tbh it’s is a huge PITA with little practical benefit. IPv6 is the Perl 6 of networking. Many of the big benefits are things that don’t deliver anything that f

by Spooky23 10mo ago

Tbh it’s is a huge PITA with little practical benefit. IPv6 is the Perl 6 of networking. Many of the big benefits are things that don’t deliver anything that folks are lacking. You also need to understand how you fit in the overall universe more.

avhception 10mo ago
I absolutely love the things that IPv6 delivers and employ it on purpose.
- UqWBcuFx6NV4r 10mo ago
  The world very clearly doesn’t revolve around what HN users “love”.
  - dijit 10mo ago
    I think the western world very much revolves around: * The internet * Linux servers * Automation I get your point, but it falls on deaf ears to me since most people don’t feel the benefits until some passionate nerd makes something that scratches an itch. For a practical example: peer-to-peer sharing like Airdrop is much easier to implement in a world with ipv6.
    - vbezhenar 10mo ago
      > For a practical example: peer-to-peer sharing like Airdrop is much easier to implement in a world with ipv6. And without firewalls. Unfortunately this world does not exist.
    - death916 10mo ago
      According to my last job interview, linux servers are only for websites and worthless otherwise.
  - avhception 10mo ago
    The world at large doesn't care what I love, correct. But my users care about whether they have to remember that they're supposed to use port bla instead of the standard port foo, which is a common scenario with v4. Not enough addresses, and / or you can't get them to the VM or container or VPN client or whatever that needs them. IPv6 can often fix these kinds of issues. Does the world at large care? No. Do I care? Yes. Do my users care? Yes, albeit indirectly. Does my organization care? Yes, in the sense that it removes friction from what it needs the employees to do. And that's all the justification that's needed, I'd say. The world very clearly doesn't need to revolve around what I love for IPv6 to be a good thing.
eulenteufel 10mo ago
What about the benefit of there being enough addresses?
- the_mitsuhiko 10mo ago
  The widespread deployment of NAT and VPNs has counter acted the market forces that were assumed to make IPv6 appealing.
  - NewJazz 10mo ago
    IPv4 addresses are still expensive. NAT is a value add for a lot of cloud platforms. IPv6 has arguably done more to counteract market forces related to IPv4 address exhaustion.
    - coredog64 10mo ago
      It's my dream that one day I'll be able to run an AWS VPC that only has IPv6 for the private subnets and then I'll never have to worry about managing the address space or how many IP addresses each ALB consumes.
  - throw0101a 10mo ago
    > The widespread deployment of NAT and VPNs has counter acted the market forces that were assumed to make IPv6 appealing. Tell that to everyone who is behind CG-NAT and has issues with (e.g.) video games. Or all the (small(er)) ISPs that have to layout CapEx for translation boxes.
    - rao-v 10mo ago
      Honestly the games issue might be out of day. Game devs have access to great services to punch through NAT at this point. Tech finds a way…
      - coryrc 10mo ago
        Which has led to every game needing a central server running, forcing centralization where p2p used to work great. Also how Skype was able to scale on a budget, something now blocked, forcing you to raise money for more ideas than before. Running a matrix(?) node should be as simple as clicking install and it's just there, next time you're with your friends, nfc tap or whatever and your servers talk to each other directly forever going forward. But nope, there always is a gatekeeper now and they need money and that poisons everything.
viraptor 10mo ago
An example for a small environment: I've got the whole homelab on unique ipv6 range. Whatever VPN connection happens to another network, I'll never have range collisions or need any fancy rewriting. Also the DNS will point at a specific address on my network, never at a random 192.168.x.x in a network I happen to be connected to.
- jamiek88 10mo ago
  > never at a random 192.168.x.x in a network I happen to be connected to. That’s a pretty good benefit, I hadn’t considered that!
- somerandomqaguy 10mo ago
  Eh, I've been thus far unimpressed. Part of it being that a lot of ISP's don't have static prefixes, they do get rotated pretty often and have no guarantee of CIDR size that you're going to get. By default my ISP will only give a single /64. You have to go out of your way to request more subnets and there's no guarantee that the ISP will honor that request. It's really problematic to try and base a non trivial network setup, when you have no guarantee of how many subnets you can run. Today I've got 256. Tomorrow it might be 16. Or 2. Maybe just 1 again. ISP's can be weird when they smell monetization dollars in the water. So I have to run a ULA in parallel to the publicly accessible networks specifically for internal routing, and then use a DNS server to try and correct it. Which works great! ...except when you run into this little niche operating system called Android. Which by default doesn't obey a network provided DNS server if you've got privacy DNS enabled. So if I've got guests over and I want them on a network in my place to access some sort of internal resource, then I've got to walk them through disabling privacy DNS. Either that or I need to go out and buy a domain... for my internal network...and then get a TLS certification for my private internal domain. I get how IPv6 can be great. But a lot of the advantages are also overhead I don't want to deal with. Short hand is a good example; I've lost count at the number of times I've typo'd short hand addresses because my eyes skip over a colon. At this point I've gotten into the habit of just writing out the whole address, leading 0's included because the time saved from not making a mistake reading the address often faster overall then making mistakes with shorthand.
bigstrat2003 10mo ago
That's a pretty bold claim. IMO IPv6 is not hard at all, and delivers significant benefit when dealing with anything outside your local network.
djha-skin 10mo ago
This is so right. No One believes us on hacker News. It feels very gaslighty. I have never talked to an IT engineer in person that thought IP version 6 in the data center or in the corporate network was a good idea.

avhception 10mo ago

I absolutely love the things that IPv6 delivers and employ it on purpose.

UqWBcuFx6NV4r 10mo ago
The world very clearly doesn’t revolve around what HN users “love”.
- dijit 10mo ago
  I think the western world very much revolves around: * The internet * Linux servers * Automation I get your point, but it falls on deaf ears to me since most people don’t feel the benefits until some passionate nerd makes something that scratches an itch. For a practical example: peer-to-peer sharing like Airdrop is much easier to implement in a world with ipv6.
  - vbezhenar 10mo ago
    > For a practical example: peer-to-peer sharing like Airdrop is much easier to implement in a world with ipv6. And without firewalls. Unfortunately this world does not exist.
  - death916 10mo ago
    According to my last job interview, linux servers are only for websites and worthless otherwise.
- avhception 10mo ago
  The world at large doesn't care what I love, correct. But my users care about whether they have to remember that they're supposed to use port bla instead of the standard port foo, which is a common scenario with v4. Not enough addresses, and / or you can't get them to the VM or container or VPN client or whatever that needs them. IPv6 can often fix these kinds of issues. Does the world at large care? No. Do I care? Yes. Do my users care? Yes, albeit indirectly. Does my organization care? Yes, in the sense that it removes friction from what it needs the employees to do. And that's all the justification that's needed, I'd say. The world very clearly doesn't need to revolve around what I love for IPv6 to be a good thing.

eulenteufel 10mo ago

What about the benefit of there being enough addresses?

the_mitsuhiko 10mo ago
The widespread deployment of NAT and VPNs has counter acted the market forces that were assumed to make IPv6 appealing.
- NewJazz 10mo ago
  IPv4 addresses are still expensive. NAT is a value add for a lot of cloud platforms. IPv6 has arguably done more to counteract market forces related to IPv4 address exhaustion.
  - coredog64 10mo ago
    It's my dream that one day I'll be able to run an AWS VPC that only has IPv6 for the private subnets and then I'll never have to worry about managing the address space or how many IP addresses each ALB consumes.
- throw0101a 10mo ago
  > The widespread deployment of NAT and VPNs has counter acted the market forces that were assumed to make IPv6 appealing. Tell that to everyone who is behind CG-NAT and has issues with (e.g.) video games. Or all the (small(er)) ISPs that have to layout CapEx for translation boxes.
  - rao-v 10mo ago
    Honestly the games issue might be out of day. Game devs have access to great services to punch through NAT at this point. Tech finds a way…
    - coryrc 10mo ago
      Which has led to every game needing a central server running, forcing centralization where p2p used to work great. Also how Skype was able to scale on a budget, something now blocked, forcing you to raise money for more ideas than before. Running a matrix(?) node should be as simple as clicking install and it's just there, next time you're with your friends, nfc tap or whatever and your servers talk to each other directly forever going forward. But nope, there always is a gatekeeper now and they need money and that poisons everything.

viraptor 10mo ago

An example for a small environment: I've got the whole homelab on unique ipv6 range. Whatever VPN connection happens to another network, I'll never have range collisions or need any fancy rewriting. Also the DNS will point at a specific address on my network, never at a random 192.168.x.x in a network I happen to be connected to.

jamiek88 10mo ago
> never at a random 192.168.x.x in a network I happen to be connected to. That’s a pretty good benefit, I hadn’t considered that!
somerandomqaguy 10mo ago
Eh, I've been thus far unimpressed. Part of it being that a lot of ISP's don't have static prefixes, they do get rotated pretty often and have no guarantee of CIDR size that you're going to get. By default my ISP will only give a single /64. You have to go out of your way to request more subnets and there's no guarantee that the ISP will honor that request. It's really problematic to try and base a non trivial network setup, when you have no guarantee of how many subnets you can run. Today I've got 256. Tomorrow it might be 16. Or 2. Maybe just 1 again. ISP's can be weird when they smell monetization dollars in the water. So I have to run a ULA in parallel to the publicly accessible networks specifically for internal routing, and then use a DNS server to try and correct it. Which works great! ...except when you run into this little niche operating system called Android. Which by default doesn't obey a network provided DNS server if you've got privacy DNS enabled. So if I've got guests over and I want them on a network in my place to access some sort of internal resource, then I've got to walk them through disabling privacy DNS. Either that or I need to go out and buy a domain... for my internal network...and then get a TLS certification for my private internal domain. I get how IPv6 can be great. But a lot of the advantages are also overhead I don't want to deal with. Short hand is a good example; I've lost count at the number of times I've typo'd short hand addresses because my eyes skip over a colon. At this point I've gotten into the habit of just writing out the whole address, leading 0's included because the time saved from not making a mistake reading the address often faster overall then making mistakes with shorthand.

bigstrat2003 10mo ago

That's a pretty bold claim. IMO IPv6 is not hard at all, and delivers significant benefit when dealing with anything outside your local network.

djha-skin 10mo ago

This is so right. No One believes us on hacker News. It feels very gaslighty. I have never talked to an IT engineer in person that thought IP version 6 in the data center or in the corporate network was a good idea.