8 ms·
IPv4 is absolutely fine. Consumers can be behind NAT. That's fine. Servers can be behind reverse proxies, routing by DNS hostname. That's also fine. IPv4 addres
by vbezhenar 6mo ago
IPv4 is absolutely fine. Consumers can be behind NAT. That's fine. Servers can be behind reverse proxies, routing by DNS hostname. That's also fine. IPv4 address might be a valuable resource, shared between multiple users. Nothing wrong with it.
Yes, it denies simple P2P connectivity. World doesn't need it. Consumers are behind firewalls either way. We need a way for consumers to connect to a server. That's all.
- estimator7292 6mo agoYeah, if you ignore literally every use of the internet except "check Facebook" then it's perfect. Unfortunately, the internet is used for a lot more than using one of the six gigantic centralized websites.
- moffkalast 6mo agoI used to think that too, but outside of our niche bubble most people genuinely do only be web browsing. Speaking of that, why don't we just keep ipv4 for ourselves and let them eat ipv6?
- betaby 6mo agoMost people browse Facebook/Youtube over IPv6 as a matter of fact and that work perfectly.
- Lt_Riza_Hawkeye 6mo agoYou're the reason I have to call my ISP to host a minecraft server for a couple of my friends.
- mort96 6mo agoNo, they're not. That's other weird policies specific to your ISP. With IPv4 + NAT, you have a public IP address. That public address goes to your router. Your router can forward any port to any machine on your LAN. I used to run Minecraft servers from a residential connection on IPv4, it was fine. Never had to call the ISP.
- voxic11 6mo agoNope, CGNAT means I need to call my ISP. We now have 2 levels of NAT because the IPv4 address situation has gotten so bad they can't even give every residence its own public IP. If your ISP hasn't adopted it yet its likely they got lucky and bought a ton of IPv4 addresses a long time ago when they were cheap and have decided using them is cheaper than upgrading their network to support CGNAT.
- Symbiote 6mo agoThis assumes the ISP allocates a public IPv4 address. In many countries they don't have enough, so you have CGNAT.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- mort96 6mo agoThat's a fair point. In my mind, residential ISPs give out public IP addresses and CGNAT is just for cell phones. But I recognize that the philosophy of, "we don't need to solve IP address exhaustion, we just need to keep people able to access Facebook" leads to CGNAT or multi level NAT. Still, I do think that the solution of, "one IPv4 address per household + NAT" is a perfectly good system. I view the IPv6 mentality of giving each computer in the world a globally unique IPv6 address as a non-goal.
- wyufro 6mo agoEven if you go with one IPv4 per household + 1 per company you're going to be hard stretched to find room for that in 32 bits, at least after you add the routing infrastructure.
- pocksuppet 6mo agoThere are more households than IP addresses. They can't all have one each. So you need longer addresses, and then you're already reinventing IPv6.
- Spooky23 6mo agoNope. If you get assigned a routable IPv4 IP, you just have a shit ISP. I led the rollout one of the larger O365 implementations. Outlook and the office stack needed like 10-16 ports per user. We served like 150k people with 30 outbound IPs. If you have an IP, you have 64k+ ports to use. I also deployed it as a pilot on an internal network. Other than getting direct IPv6 connectivity to some services, which sometimes gave us better performance, it conferred no advantage to us. IPv6 is great for phones where you don't expect any inbound traffic. Even then, every US carrier is using Carrier NAT to route and proxy traffic for their own purposes.
- unethical_ban 6mo agoI'm glad I have a shit ISP, then. So shitty being able to host my own software.
- Spooky23 6mo agoThe “don’t” was missing. Honestly, I give up with Siri dictation. Either my voice has changed or it’s changed in a way that it doesn’t like my cadence or diction. Either way, mea culpa.
- unethical_ban 6mo agoAh, no problem. It ended up with me doing a half day deep dive on IPv6 internals.
- Fnoord 6mo agoIPv4 usage in its current state would've been much more limited and annoying in a world without IPv6. Therefore, IPv4 exists as-is thanks to others adopting IPv6.
- RIMR 6mo ago> Yes, it denies simple P2P connectivity. World doesn't need it. Worth pointing out that this article was written by the now-CEO of Tailscale. I don't know if "The world doesn't need P2P connectivity" is a compelling take.
- fc417fc802 6mo agoWith the obligatory caveat that I am but a single datapoint, I use various P2P apps through multiple levels of NAT without issue and I very intentionally prevent devices on my local LAN from being publicly reachable. So it rings true to me. I do wish ISPs would refrain from intentionally breaking things though. It ought to be illegal for them to block specific ports or filter specific sorts of traffic absent a pressing and active security concern.
- jrm4 6mo agoThis comment exemplifies my worst fear and reinforces my somewhat incomplete idea that IPv4 is perhaps overall safer for the world, and that "worse is better" depending on what you're optimizing for. Roughly, it's my belief that an IPv6 world makes it easier for centralizing forces and harder for local p2p or p2p-esque ones; e.g. an IPv6 world would have likely made it easier to do bad things like "charge for individual internet user in a home." The decentralization of "routing power" is more a good thing than bad, what you pay for in complexity you get back in "power to the people."
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- MrDOS 6mo ago> easier to do bad things like "charge for individual internet user in a home." This idea comes up in every HN conversation about IPv6, and so I suppose this time it's my turn to point out RFC 8981[0]. tl;dr: typically, machines which receive IPv6 address assignment via SLAAC (functional equivalent of DHCP) periodically cycle their addresses. Supposed to offer pretty effective protection against host-counting. 0: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8981 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8981
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- throw0101a 6mo ago> IPv4 is absolutely fine. Consumers can be behind NAT. I don't want our communications infrastructures to be just for consumers.
- kalleboo 6mo agoA lot of us don't like this "you will own nothing and you will be happy" kind of energy.