4 ms·

Can IPv6 become, ironically, the reason ipv4 never dies? Once a majority move to v6 wouldn't that mean a whole bunch of the ipv4 space is being free'd up. This

Can IPv6 become, ironically, the reason ipv4 never dies? Once a majority move to v6 wouldn't that mean a whole bunch of the ipv4 space is being free'd up. This allows those who never update to actually never update.

Arnt 12y ago
Unlikely. It's difficult to remove the last v4-only device from a network. Much easier to just leave the migration at 90, 95 or 99% complete and keep the v4 addresses.
yoha 12y ago
People who adopt IPv6 addresses tend to keep an IPv4 address as well.
- kalleboo 12y ago
  Until we see more carriers moving users over to DS-Lite, where their IPv4 usage is NATed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8680759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8680759
icebraining 12y ago
I think there will remain a minority, yes. Probably older devices which still work fine otherwise (especially appliances, sensors, etc). We'll probably see a bunch of such IPv4 LANs behind NAT64 gateways, so that the rest of the 'net can still talk to them. But I don't think having more free space will make much difference; they can use a reserved IPv4 address (in the 10.* range or so) and have a public IPv6 address configured in the NAT gateway.
netheril96 12y ago
But if a majority move to IPv6, wouldn't the holdouts have difficulty communicating?
- cm2187 12y ago
  There has to be bridges to IPv4. There will be IPv4 only servers for a long long long time.
ay 12y ago
Once the critical mass is reachable over IPv6, the rest becomes "long-tail" which will eventually be too expensive to bother about. An extreme example: if an internet user has IPv6 and just uses gmail, youtube and facebook - they can turn off IPv4 right now and not notice anything. Lee Howard has had an interesting presentation on the subject: https://www.nanog.org/sites/default/files/wed.general.howard.gametheory.17.pdf https://www.nanog.org/sites/default/files/wed.general.howard... p.s. Quite a few million of T-mobile's subscribers are also IPv6-only today, just that they use NAT64/464XLAT to connect to IPv4-only services.

Arnt 12y ago

Unlikely. It's difficult to remove the last v4-only device from a network. Much easier to just leave the migration at 90, 95 or 99% complete and keep the v4 addresses.

yoha 12y ago

People who adopt IPv6 addresses tend to keep an IPv4 address as well.

kalleboo 12y ago
Until we see more carriers moving users over to DS-Lite, where their IPv4 usage is NATed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8680759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8680759

icebraining 12y ago

I think there will remain a minority, yes. Probably older devices which still work fine otherwise (especially appliances, sensors, etc). We'll probably see a bunch of such IPv4 LANs behind NAT64 gateways, so that the rest of the 'net can still talk to them. But I don't think having more free space will make much difference; they can use a reserved IPv4 address (in the 10.* range or so) and have a public IPv6 address configured in the NAT gateway.

netheril96 12y ago

But if a majority move to IPv6, wouldn't the holdouts have difficulty communicating?

cm2187 12y ago
There has to be bridges to IPv4. There will be IPv4 only servers for a long long long time.

ay 12y ago

Once the critical mass is reachable over IPv6, the rest becomes "long-tail" which will eventually be too expensive to bother about. An extreme example: if an internet user has IPv6 and just uses gmail, youtube and facebook - they can turn off IPv4 right now and not notice anything. Lee Howard has had an interesting presentation on the subject: https://www.nanog.org/sites/default/files/wed.general.howard.gametheory.17.pdf https://www.nanog.org/sites/default/files/wed.general.howard... p.s. Quite a few million of T-mobile's subscribers are also IPv6-only today, just that they use NAT64/464XLAT to connect to IPv4-only services.