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If IPv6 were wholeheartedly "adopted" then I and most consumers would not require "dual-stack" at home. Dual-stack is a terrible curse and a hack. IPv4 NAT is l

If IPv6 were wholeheartedly "adopted" then I and most consumers would not require "dual-stack" at home. Dual-stack is a terrible curse and a hack. IPv4 NAT is likewise a curse and a hack. We are left with these legacy curses only because the world can't seem to adopt IPv6. You don't need to abolish IPv4 to do it, you just need to get AAAA records and support the protocol! If you run a server or a public network, and you're not reachable by IPv6 in 2026, you're part of the problem. I would not need "a home LAN" at home; I would not need "Private IP address space"; I would not need NATing router technology; my router software and configuration would be far, far simpler if my devices were able to single-stack. I believe the source of a lot of connectivity errors and difficult Heisenbugs involve dual-stack problems. My devices don't need lateral connectivity on the LAN except for the printer. I attempted shutting off IPv4 on the printer and it dropped off entirely. I can't understand that. It doesn't need to reach the outside world for any reason. My Chromebook and Android don't speak to each other, except for Quick Share, which shouldn't require IPv4 addressing. Has anyone devised a protocol or scheme by which an IPv6-only device can seamlessly access IPv4-only devices through their ISP and not local support? In other words, opportunistically intercept connection attempts and interpose a tunnel? It seems like this would be a final component to just killing off IPv4, en masse, in people's homes.

wmf 2mo ago
a protocol or scheme by which an IPv6-only device can seamlessly access IPv4-only devices NAT64 which is used extensively in cellular networks.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- ButlerianJihad 2mo ago
  It is unclear whether this requires cooperation or knowledge on the IPv6-only side. It says it can be deployed to service providers. Do my IPv6 clients need to be NAT64 aware to participate? Or can this be transparently implemented to furnish IPv4 connectivity where normally it would just be an error? That's the sort of model I'm thinking of.
  - wmf 2mo ago
    NAT64 is transparent and requires no support on the client side. The client does need a CLAT to use 464 for apps that connect to IPv4 addresses without using DNS.
simoncion 2mo ago
> Dual-stack is a terrible curse and a hack. Odd. Is the IPX + IP dual stack a terrible curse and a hack? [0] IP + Ethernet? [1] [0] If you think this isn't real, you're not old enough. [1] Given that your focus is home networks, other than "legacy baggage" there's zero reason that switches and IP implementations couldn't eliminate Ethernet addresses and use IP as their lowest logical layer. Switches already have to maintain a "MAC address -> switch port" lookup table. Converting that to an "IP address -> switch port" lookup table is easy. With the removal of Ethernet addresses, the need for ARP is eliminated, so there's no need for hosts to remember MAC addresses. Things are much simpler without all that legacy baggage, don't you agree?
- ButlerianJihad 2mo ago
  Eliminating MAC addresses is a novel idea. I have not seen it credibly suggested before. Surely some functionality would be lost? Surely you'd at least need to redesign all Ethernet controllers around it? Anyway, IPX, and Ethernet MAC, are different protocols with unique aims. I guess IPX was routable. But it was proprietary; it was Novell's baby, and it was serving a particular purpose for their software and network architecture. There was no sin in running it parallel to IP stacks. The sin in dual-stack IPv4 + IPv6 is that they're the same protocol. There is nothing different in their aims, their reach, their utility or their transit networks. They're all serving the same Internet purposes, and the same protocols are both on top and below them, layer-wise. Same old TCP, UDP, QUIC, etc. So, the only reason 4 and 6 coexist is transitional support. The only reason 4 still needs support and dual-stacking is because of a lack of 6 support. When/if IPv6 is wholeheartedly embraced, then dual-stacking is obsolete. I'd like to reiterate that dual-stacking is an administrative pain and possibly the source of some really crazy connectivity bugs. A dual-stack system is unnecessarily complex. Eliminating Ethernet and MAC addresses is a revolutionary idea that would simplify things. But today, it is realistic to eliminate IPv4 just by widening support for v6. And that's something we should be working towards.
  - simoncion 2mo ago
    > I'd like to reiterate that dual-stacking is an administrative pain... This professional administrator disagrees. > The sin in dual-stack IPv4 + IPv6 is that they're the same protocol. There is nothing different in their aims, their reach, their utility or their transit networks. That same commentary applies to IP + IPX. Your understanding of IPX is poor. This was about the depth of analysis I was expecting. Pity. > Eliminating MAC addresses is a novel idea. I have not seen it credibly suggested before. Surely some functionality would be lost? No more than eliminating IPv4 addresses in the far future, and far less if that elimination was done today. Go read up. It'll probably take you a few weeks to get up to speed. > But today, it is realistic to eliminate IPv4 just by widening support for v6. lol.
simoncion 2mo ago
> If IPv6 were wholeheartedly "adopted" then I and most consumers would not require "dual-stack" at home. Nah. We're not going to shut down IPv4 service for many, many decades. IPv6 is primarily an global-address-space-pressure-relief mechanism. In the next five, ten, fifteen years, enough end-user sites will have IPv6 GUA service that putting every end-user behind an IPv4 CGN and reducing the IPv4 GUA to end-user ratio to 50:1 or more will be a quite reasonable thing to do. Any complaints you have about what you believe to be added complexity are mooted by one or more of the following: 1) End-users typically plug the magic internet router into the ISP-provided magic internet cable or box. They then magically get internet access in their house. They typically have no understanding of how any of this works. 2) Because the firewalls provided by Windows and OSX primarily care about which application is doing the network traffic, they're inherently IP version agnostic. I know that on the Linux side of things, nftables has been available for a decade and -by default- gives zero shits about the IP version of the traffic it's inspecting. So, for the three major consumer OSs it's easy to write firewall rules exactly once and have them apply regardless of what version of IP carries the traffic. 3) The major IP implementations were written years ago. That work's already been done. Removing one of those stacks is even more work.

wmf 2mo ago

a protocol or scheme by which an IPv6-only device can seamlessly access IPv4-only devices NAT64 which is used extensively in cellular networks.

deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
ButlerianJihad 2mo ago
It is unclear whether this requires cooperation or knowledge on the IPv6-only side. It says it can be deployed to service providers. Do my IPv6 clients need to be NAT64 aware to participate? Or can this be transparently implemented to furnish IPv4 connectivity where normally it would just be an error? That's the sort of model I'm thinking of.
- wmf 2mo ago
  NAT64 is transparent and requires no support on the client side. The client does need a CLAT to use 464 for apps that connect to IPv4 addresses without using DNS.

simoncion 2mo ago

> Dual-stack is a terrible curse and a hack. Odd. Is the IPX + IP dual stack a terrible curse and a hack? [0] IP + Ethernet? [1] [0] If you think this isn't real, you're not old enough. [1] Given that your focus is home networks, other than "legacy baggage" there's zero reason that switches and IP implementations couldn't eliminate Ethernet addresses and use IP as their lowest logical layer. Switches already have to maintain a "MAC address -> switch port" lookup table. Converting that to an "IP address -> switch port" lookup table is easy. With the removal of Ethernet addresses, the need for ARP is eliminated, so there's no need for hosts to remember MAC addresses. Things are much simpler without all that legacy baggage, don't you agree?

ButlerianJihad 2mo ago
Eliminating MAC addresses is a novel idea. I have not seen it credibly suggested before. Surely some functionality would be lost? Surely you'd at least need to redesign all Ethernet controllers around it? Anyway, IPX, and Ethernet MAC, are different protocols with unique aims. I guess IPX was routable. But it was proprietary; it was Novell's baby, and it was serving a particular purpose for their software and network architecture. There was no sin in running it parallel to IP stacks. The sin in dual-stack IPv4 + IPv6 is that they're the same protocol. There is nothing different in their aims, their reach, their utility or their transit networks. They're all serving the same Internet purposes, and the same protocols are both on top and below them, layer-wise. Same old TCP, UDP, QUIC, etc. So, the only reason 4 and 6 coexist is transitional support. The only reason 4 still needs support and dual-stacking is because of a lack of 6 support. When/if IPv6 is wholeheartedly embraced, then dual-stacking is obsolete. I'd like to reiterate that dual-stacking is an administrative pain and possibly the source of some really crazy connectivity bugs. A dual-stack system is unnecessarily complex. Eliminating Ethernet and MAC addresses is a revolutionary idea that would simplify things. But today, it is realistic to eliminate IPv4 just by widening support for v6. And that's something we should be working towards.
- simoncion 2mo ago
  > I'd like to reiterate that dual-stacking is an administrative pain... This professional administrator disagrees. > The sin in dual-stack IPv4 + IPv6 is that they're the same protocol. There is nothing different in their aims, their reach, their utility or their transit networks. That same commentary applies to IP + IPX. Your understanding of IPX is poor. This was about the depth of analysis I was expecting. Pity. > Eliminating MAC addresses is a novel idea. I have not seen it credibly suggested before. Surely some functionality would be lost? No more than eliminating IPv4 addresses in the far future, and far less if that elimination was done today. Go read up. It'll probably take you a few weeks to get up to speed. > But today, it is realistic to eliminate IPv4 just by widening support for v6. lol.

simoncion 2mo ago

> If IPv6 were wholeheartedly "adopted" then I and most consumers would not require "dual-stack" at home. Nah. We're not going to shut down IPv4 service for many, many decades. IPv6 is primarily an global-address-space-pressure-relief mechanism. In the next five, ten, fifteen years, enough end-user sites will have IPv6 GUA service that putting every end-user behind an IPv4 CGN and reducing the IPv4 GUA to end-user ratio to 50:1 or more will be a quite reasonable thing to do. Any complaints you have about what you believe to be added complexity are mooted by one or more of the following: 1) End-users typically plug the magic internet router into the ISP-provided magic internet cable or box. They then magically get internet access in their house. They typically have no understanding of how any of this works. 2) Because the firewalls provided by Windows and OSX primarily care about which application is doing the network traffic, they're inherently IP version agnostic. I know that on the Linux side of things, nftables has been available for a decade and -by default- gives zero shits about the IP version of the traffic it's inspecting. So, for the three major consumer OSs it's easy to write firewall rules exactly once and have them apply regardless of what version of IP carries the traffic. 3) The major IP implementations were written years ago. That work's already been done. Removing one of those stacks is even more work.