4 ms·

The article engages in a little bit of hyperbole with statements like this: "Not only is this a protracted calamity for the Internet". I work in a lot of regio

The article engages in a little bit of hyperbole with statements like this: "Not only is this a protracted calamity for the Internet". I work in a lot of regions in the world, (Mexico, UAE), where they've been used to the reality that they won't be assigned any IPv4 addresses. I'm talking about large $Billion+ organizations that made it abundantly clear to me, that the applications we were deploying ($100million plus network deployments) - would have to operate with PAT, or we would not be able to deploy them. And so we worked around the requirements that we deploy everything on PAT, and our network deployments (sometimes with thousands of IPV4 network elements) would have to operate purely within RFC1918 address space. Speaking as someone who has worked on million+ IPv6 node deployments, (So I clearly don't have a bias against IPv6) I can say with some certainty that the only "calamity" we are going to see is increased use of PAT on clients, and somewhat more expensive IPv4 addresses for those who need to act as a server. Everyone else will be fine. (Have been fine for years in places where public IPv4 addresses ceased to be available). The reality is that this lack of pressure to transfer to IPv6 means that we're going to see an extended period of time in which we migrate. It will happen eventually (IPv6 has a lot of awesome features, particularly around self-addressing, and lord is it wonderful not to have to play CIDR addressing games, everything is a ::/64) - but it's going to be a lot longer than most IPv6 advocates would prefer.

danellis 11y ago
> lord is it wonderful not to have to play CIDR addressing games, everything is a ::/64 /64 is the smallest network, but there are certainly larger aggregates with smaller prefixes.
- kordless 11y ago
  Honestly, did he say otherwise? "Everything" in his world is "I use /64s everywhere."
  - danellis 11y ago
    "I use /64s everywhere" would be unusual for "someone who has worked on million+ IPv6 node deployments".
- plq 11y ago
  I think he's talking from an end-user point of view.
  - danellis 11y ago
    Even from an end user point of view, the recommendation is to assign a /64 for a single network or a /48 for multiple networks. (Assuming 'end user = homeowner' here.)
    - ghshephard 11y ago
      And, as it turns out, the original recommendation to go with /48s turned out to be insufficiently flexible, and was overridden with https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6177 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6177. In particular, some ISPs will hand out a /56 - allowing the home user 256 /64s. But, once again, these are administrative routing decisions - on the interface, it's always a /64 or (in some rare cases - though I'd love to hear if people still see this in the wild) /127s for router-router connections. You will never, ever see, for example, a /72 IPv6 network in the wild.
- ghshephard 11y ago
  Yes - you're absolutely right. There are administrative collections of /32s, /48s, /56s - but when it comes time to lighting up a network interface - it's a /64. Even if I only have two devices on a network segment, (two routers that can perform ND with each other), a place that would have used a /30 in the IPv4 space, I'll light up a /64 and burn the other (2^64)-2 addresses. With the possible exception of some security scenarios in which a /127 might be desirable, there is no "address conservation" requirement to use blocks smaller than a /64. For those IPv4 network engineers who have a decade+ of jugglings /25s, /26s, /27s, /28s and /29s, and trying to preserve IP space (particularly globally routable), this is nice change of affairs.
  - danellis 11y ago
    Okay, sure, on hosts you're only going to see /64s, but unless I'm seriously misunderstanding something, anyone dealing with route aggregation is going to have to deal with smaller prefixes. And even just talking about "this is global unicast space", "this is 6to4 space" and "this is link local space" involves small prefixes. So, for example, you still need to do the same mental juggling to know that 2000::/3 is 2000... to 3fff....
    - ghshephard 11y ago
      Agreed. You can't get away from network blocks at the administrative routing level. But, at least life is a bit easier by making more common use of /48s and /32s - I.E. 2001:1868::/32 being 2001:1868:0000:0000::/64 -> 2001:1868:FFFF:FFFF::/64. Thankfully, the 100x more common task of configuring an interface, will always be a /64.
loup-vaillant 11y ago
> I can say with some certainty that the only "calamity" we are going to see is increased use of PAT on clients, and somewhat more expensive IPv4 addresses for those who need to act as a server. Quite the calamity if you ask me: Users have to actively ask for the permission to act as a server. And at a significant monetary cost, if I understand the constraints correctly. Sure, right now, nobody has a server at home. But if we did (and this is certainly technically possible), then centralised spying-ridden services such as Gmail, Facebook, and YouTube would be mostly useless. (Assuming peer to peer distribution, you don't need a server farm to scale.) This would also help with routing by the way, by keeping communications more local.
- xorcist 11y ago
  > right now, nobody has a server at home I don't think it's that uncommon (and I say that not only because I have one myself). Home routers make it trivial to add one, and NAS boxes are more common than ever. Almost every game and torrent client needs to have ports forwarded (which it a server in the network sense), and UPnP is a "feature" most people have that makes it possible to be unaware of it all.
  - freehunter 11y ago
    In the US, every ISP contract I've seen says you're not allowed to run a server from your home. And when they structure your connection to have 50mbps down and 0.5mbps up, that's the enforcement.
    - hobarrera 11y ago
      And that's a pretty unenforceable contract. A lot of video-games have the host of a match actually work as a server. NAS as servers. In lots of inter-device applications, one of them works as a server. Oh, right, and Xorg.
- ghshephard 11y ago
  What will happen is that IPv4 addresses won't be free anymore, and you'll have to pay a surcharge. This is already happening with some providers. Also, instead of being given a /29, providers will start handing out /32s. I'm not suggesting this is a good thing, but "calamity" isn't the word that comes to mind.

danellis 11y ago

> lord is it wonderful not to have to play CIDR addressing games, everything is a ::/64 /64 is the smallest network, but there are certainly larger aggregates with smaller prefixes.

kordless 11y ago
Honestly, did he say otherwise? "Everything" in his world is "I use /64s everywhere."
- danellis 11y ago
  "I use /64s everywhere" would be unusual for "someone who has worked on million+ IPv6 node deployments".
plq 11y ago
I think he's talking from an end-user point of view.
- danellis 11y ago
  Even from an end user point of view, the recommendation is to assign a /64 for a single network or a /48 for multiple networks. (Assuming 'end user = homeowner' here.)
  - ghshephard 11y ago
    And, as it turns out, the original recommendation to go with /48s turned out to be insufficiently flexible, and was overridden with https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6177 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6177. In particular, some ISPs will hand out a /56 - allowing the home user 256 /64s. But, once again, these are administrative routing decisions - on the interface, it's always a /64 or (in some rare cases - though I'd love to hear if people still see this in the wild) /127s for router-router connections. You will never, ever see, for example, a /72 IPv6 network in the wild.
ghshephard 11y ago
Yes - you're absolutely right. There are administrative collections of /32s, /48s, /56s - but when it comes time to lighting up a network interface - it's a /64. Even if I only have two devices on a network segment, (two routers that can perform ND with each other), a place that would have used a /30 in the IPv4 space, I'll light up a /64 and burn the other (2^64)-2 addresses. With the possible exception of some security scenarios in which a /127 might be desirable, there is no "address conservation" requirement to use blocks smaller than a /64. For those IPv4 network engineers who have a decade+ of jugglings /25s, /26s, /27s, /28s and /29s, and trying to preserve IP space (particularly globally routable), this is nice change of affairs.
- danellis 11y ago
  Okay, sure, on hosts you're only going to see /64s, but unless I'm seriously misunderstanding something, anyone dealing with route aggregation is going to have to deal with smaller prefixes. And even just talking about "this is global unicast space", "this is 6to4 space" and "this is link local space" involves small prefixes. So, for example, you still need to do the same mental juggling to know that 2000::/3 is 2000... to 3fff....
  - ghshephard 11y ago
    Agreed. You can't get away from network blocks at the administrative routing level. But, at least life is a bit easier by making more common use of /48s and /32s - I.E. 2001:1868::/32 being 2001:1868:0000:0000::/64 -> 2001:1868:FFFF:FFFF::/64. Thankfully, the 100x more common task of configuring an interface, will always be a /64.

loup-vaillant 11y ago

> I can say with some certainty that the only "calamity" we are going to see is increased use of PAT on clients, and somewhat more expensive IPv4 addresses for those who need to act as a server. Quite the calamity if you ask me: Users have to actively ask for the permission to act as a server. And at a significant monetary cost, if I understand the constraints correctly. Sure, right now, nobody has a server at home. But if we did (and this is certainly technically possible), then centralised spying-ridden services such as Gmail, Facebook, and YouTube would be mostly useless. (Assuming peer to peer distribution, you don't need a server farm to scale.) This would also help with routing by the way, by keeping communications more local.

xorcist 11y ago
> right now, nobody has a server at home I don't think it's that uncommon (and I say that not only because I have one myself). Home routers make it trivial to add one, and NAS boxes are more common than ever. Almost every game and torrent client needs to have ports forwarded (which it a server in the network sense), and UPnP is a "feature" most people have that makes it possible to be unaware of it all.
- freehunter 11y ago
  In the US, every ISP contract I've seen says you're not allowed to run a server from your home. And when they structure your connection to have 50mbps down and 0.5mbps up, that's the enforcement.
  - hobarrera 11y ago
    And that's a pretty unenforceable contract. A lot of video-games have the host of a match actually work as a server. NAS as servers. In lots of inter-device applications, one of them works as a server. Oh, right, and Xorg.
ghshephard 11y ago
What will happen is that IPv4 addresses won't be free anymore, and you'll have to pay a surcharge. This is already happening with some providers. Also, instead of being given a /29, providers will start handing out /32s. I'm not suggesting this is a good thing, but "calamity" isn't the word that comes to mind.